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NSA Had Domestic Call Monitoring Before 9/11?
MarkusQ writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, according to documents filed in the breach of privacy suit on behalf of Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA asked AT&T to set up its domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the 'Global War on Terror' was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?" From the article: "...an unnamed former employee of the AT&T unit provided them with evidence that the NSA approached the carrier with the proposed plan. Afran said he has seen the worker's log book and independently confirmed the source's participation in the project. He declined to identify the employee."
"Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the 'Global War on Terror' was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?"
Of course the so-called "War on Terror" is just an excuse! Before the illegal
invasion of Iraq, no terrorist groups were based there, but look now! This
was widely expected to happen. So the current Administration has increased, not
reduced, the risk of Americans to be victims of terrorists.
Evidence has to be weighed in context. For example, having a book on bomb making is very weak evidence of having terrorist intent. There are many more people in the world with a fascination with making things go boom than there are people with a fascination with making people go boom. However if there are extremist political tracts and plans for local infrastructure like dams or bridges, it becomes a matter of concern even though any one of these in isolation is harmless.
In a sense, there is no such thing as a strong piece of evidence. Only a strong pattern of evidence. It bugs me when people talk about "confirmation bias" as if it is some kind of logical fallacy. It's not. At least in part it is not: it's the inevitable consequence of living in a world of uncertainty and contradictory evidence.
The thing about the MIHOP people is that they start with the strong belief that Bush is evil. Given that, it's easy to believe he knew about 9/11 but let it happen so that he could use it as an excuse for all the evil things he wanted to do. Things that would strike the neutral observer as ordinary incompetence become part of a sinister plan. The same thing happened a few years ago with the Republicans who were sure that Clinton arranged murders and other outrageous pieces of skullduggery.
The thing is, if this particular piece of information is confirmed, it will actually provide strong support one of the MIHOP standpoints central assumptions: the Bush Administration needed an excuse to justify things it wanted to do. Maybe not enough for the mythical unbiased observer to buy the whole MIHOP package, but enough to buy several signigifant pieces of it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
When you give you president dictatorial powers and have no oversight and no way of getting rid of a president during his term, you have put yourself at risk. Add to that the ever increasing polarization of the politics in this country and you'll understand that there are no difference between a one-party state and a two-party state.
I have to disagree with that argument: In recent memory, government worked fairly well (not great, but relatively sane) when 2 parties held control of a branch of government (Reagan vs Democratic Congress, Clinton vs Republican Congress), and sucked when a single party controlled all branches of government (George W Bush, Carter). The reason for this phenomenon seems pretty obvious to me: When one party controls all branches of government, the Constitutional checks and balances are ineffective because everyone with the power to stop a branch of government is part of the same organization. In other words, there's really one-party rule going on, even if it's officially a two-party system.
That can lead to a lot of the polarization you're worried about. If one side can't be heard except by screaming as loudly as possible in public, that's exactly what they're going to do, and the other side will start screaming to drown out the screaming of the group not in power. Hence a shrill political debate, and increased polarization as politicians take more extreme positions in order to get noticed.
I am officially gone from
google for United Nations veto America United States. no wait, i know you require that life be made easier for you so here is the direct link: http://www.google.com.eg/search?hs=WQL&hl=en&safe= off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aoff icial&q=United+Nations+veto+America+United+States& btnG=Search&meta=
now do some work and search for america vetoing the war was illegal, maybe you should also read up on different cultures to find out what is going on in the world around you
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
I hope you do feel safe while the last of your freedoms is taken from you. Freedom of speach this is. The real reason for such monitoring is to supress political dissent. You see a monitored populace is a complient one.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Yeah, because before 9-11, terrorism was completely unknown in the United States. Its not like anyone had ever tried to detonate a bomb in the parking garage of the world trade center, or someone had tried to blow up the Federal Builing in Oklahoma City (ok, so since that was entirely domestic this program wouldn't have helped there, but you get the point).
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
One is assumed innocent until proven guilty. Jack the Ripper was never found either. But since he was never indicted, did he break the law?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I can't believe it's 2006 and there are still people who believe that in 2003:
1. Iraq posed a threat to the coalition
2. Iraq had functional weapons of mass destruction
3. Iraq had anything to do with Al Qaeda, terrorists or terror suspects
Of all the evil this war has caused, I think the worst is the new American Culture of Willful Ignorance that its backers have advocated since before the opening shots were fired.
The flaw is even worse than you think, because it can't be remedied through "proper" voting. No matter what your political affiliation, you have no choice but re-electing a caste of professional politicians, which differ only on superficial and relatively inconsequential issues like a constitutional amendment explicitly banning gay flag-burning.
Vote for minor party? Only if you want to throw away your vote, for the complete lack of enforcement of gerrymandering laws means even the most incompetent of incumbents win over 90% of the time. Even the recent supreme court ruling tacitly condoned it by only complaining about instances of potential racial gerrymandering. Apparently, cheating is fine, as long as you aren't a bigot when you do it.
Spread the word? Anything you say can be countered by a bombardment of disinformation and distractions that prevent effective dissent. One would think that the alternative media/internet get around this, and it can--but they're going to change that. Plans for complete regulation of the internet are already in the works under the guise of "tiered-service". As John Devorak says, we're in the golden age of the internet--enjoy it while it lasts, because it's soon to end.
-Grym
In some parts of the world, leaders lead from a position of moral authority, not from the threat of force.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
ok, so since that was entirely domestic this program wouldn't have helped there, but you get the point).
/. I'm too lazy to RTFA, but the headline says "domestic call monitoring". Why would you then conclude that it would be ineffective against domestic terrorism but effective against international terrorism?
Well, since this is
Anyway, 'terrorism' (both domestic and Islamic) weren't a significant problem before 9-11 and they aren't a significant problem today, despite what the 6 o'clock news wants you to believe. Murder takes the lives of many more people (as in several orders of magnitude) per year. Suicide takes 4x more than murder, and car accidents take over 5x more. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and smoking-related respitory diseases together claim over 200x the lives that murder claims (which is itself claims several orders of magnitude more lives than terrorism.)
In terms of human lives, terrorism in America isn't even a blip on the radar. It certainly doesn't justify the expenditure of trillions of dollars on wars and "Homeland Security", nor does it justify the wholesale slaughter of our freedoms and even if it did a domestic call tracking program would do jack shit. Despite what the pundits want you to believe, there is no vast centralized network of terrorists. They have no need to keep in constant contact with each other over long distances, and ruthlessly and indiscriminately monitoring law-abiding American citizens (incidentally, none of the 9-11 terrorists were American citizens) will give us nothing but another step towards a police state.
And the answer is "no". Any system will have "false positives", "false negatives", "true positives" and "true negatives".
The "false negatives" mean you miss a plot. As long as the false negative rate is above a certain percentage of the actual plots, it will work.
More problematic is the "false positive" rate. This is when a non-plot is identified as a plot. Innocent people are investigated. This takes time / money / effort.
Given that there is an upper limit on the time / money / effort available, the government will waste resources chasing false leads.
People who do not understand that will look at the extreme rarity of "terrorist attacks" in the US (try to name 5 attacks in the US in the last 100 years without using Google) and conclude that the time / money / effort spent was successful.
However, looking at the budget, you will see that our government is BORROWING the money.
We are going bankrupt in an attempt to chase down a threat that kills fewer people every year than car accidents.
And we are surrending the Rights that our forefathers were willing to give THEIR lives for.
What is this international law that you speak of?
Exactly the one we invoke when, for example, claim the right to navigate certain waters. Or the rights of our uniformed soldiers to certain standards of treatment when captured by the enemy. The same international law that says we can retaliate when our territory is violated, but then enter another country's territory in hot pursuit. The same international law that says it's a crime for a country to harbor terrorist organizations and facilitate their financial and other dealings.
Exactly what body is going to prosecute, convict, and punish a superpower like the United States of America?
International law is for small states violating it partly enforced by the UN security council.
But for states large and small, it is enforced by mutual exchange and recognition of rights. I do not molest your ships on the high seas or press their crews into servitude, and you don't do mine. I don't parade your soliders stripped naked through the streets, nor do I subject them to summary executions. Likewise, you do not do those things to my soliders.
The entire phrase of "international law" is a trite thing. Let's not kid ourselves, international norms and laws only apply to weak countries.
There is some truth in what you say. The same can be said domestically: if a man is rich enough, he is beyond laws that bind poor men. But there are limits. Even the United States depends on the mutual recognition of its rights by other countries. And while we have for many years spent far more money on defense than the rest of the world put together, yet it is not within an order of magnitude of what we would need to enforce our will on the rest of the world.
Don't be to proud of the technological terror we have created. Right now, we can't even really handle Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. North Korea, in our present circumstances, is completely beyond our ability to handle useing "superpower" tools. Absent Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly Iran on the horizon, it might be possible. Military officers I've talked to think that the biggest issue in a military solution, the presence of artillery batteries so close to Seoul, could be managed with our military technology. But we can't do that and Iraq at the same time.
In reality military might only takes you so far in the world. There are other dimensions on which a country can be a superpower, particularly political and economic, that are key to sustaining military superpower status. We have lost our political standing in the world, and our position of economic leadership is very shaky.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
We will now see Bush's media flacks spinning his bottomless hunger for spying on Americans by saying that "if we had gotten this program before 9/11/2001, we would have had what we needed to stop those terrorists".
Even though we of course had more than enough info and spying programs to catch and stop them. The FBI tried to stop the hijackers in flight school, but the FBI refused to act. One FBI whistleblower has been gagged for years because she's tried to tell too much about how badly broken is our counterterrorism system. Amidst mountains of intelligence, Bush has been unable to even find Bin Laden for longer than it took FDR and Truman to beat Germany and Japan in WWII.
We don't need more mountains of intelligence, especially spying on every American's every transaction. We need regime change to one that will actually protect us, the way we elected them and pay them to do. Every threat we've faced - terrorists, recession, hurricane, and smaller - has been bungled or worse by the Bush regime. Giving them more power is like giving the school bully a gun. They'll just pistol whip everyone to make stealing our lunch money that much more efficient.
--
make install -not war
"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... [sic] censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything --you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
-- Robert A. Heinlein