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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."
James Bamford in his book Body of Secrets and in his numerous interviews with the press defended the NSA and said they really did change their ways after the scandals of the 1970s (telegram interception). Could it be that there never was a period of "gentlemanly spying" between then and September 11?
So you tell me that it wasn't about the terrorists? I can't believe it.
"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.
Don't tell me you are surprised by this... I am not.
After all Echelon has been around much longer so this was only to be expected to happen.
The scary thing however is that it took so long to get out. Makes you wonder what else they have in hiding...
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - Carl Sagan
Alright so besides the point that call monitoring is unconstitutional, if they had it 7 months before 9/11, then why did 9/11 still happen?
Idiot or not, you're still an idiot.
So Bush takes office, the NSA starts wiretapping everybody? I bet the MIHOP nuts are going to make a mountian out of this fairly large hill.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
I can see their argument now.
"See the NSA already started to take the civil liberties away and they wanted more so they planned out 9/11."
MIHOP == Made IT Happen On Purpose.
As if, a president so incompentent as to do nothing when the security agencies started seeing red isn't enough. He has to part of a criminal cabal to do it their damned selves.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
I have NO doubt that our government was just doing the prudent thing. 9/11 is proof that it was necessary. You guys are just too cynical.
or looking at it a different way, it shows how worthless information gathered this way can be.
The dogs were carefully watching the henhouse but the weasels still got in. So what good are they?
I would only hope the government is trying to see who the bad guys are calling.
Evidently, every law abiding citizen in the United States.
May the Maths Be with you!
According to the UN. You know, that international body that the US blatently ignored when they invaded Iraq because those double-u em dee's were such a threat... oh right, what weapons were those again??
Iraq war illegal, says Annan
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> Illegal according to what law? You know that when they are attacking other countries they are not required to obey the laws in that country.
D =10038
Invading another country, when not in self-defense, is a war crime ("supreme crime"),
by the Geneva conventions, and USA has signed those and are bound by them. War crimes
carries the death penality in USA. As an invader you are also required to follow
local laws, with some exceptions. Of course, the invader may make new laws, but they
may be illegal as well. Instituting new laws in order to loot Iraq is not legal, and
you might have noticed oil companies reluctance to invest there...
Notice how the Bush Administration tries to avoid beeing persecuted for war crimes:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemI
...Welcome to the world of ECHELON, the world-wide surveillance system.
The EU recommends European citizens use cryptography in all communications to protect them from commercial theft and invasion of privacy, of which ECHELON is suspected of doing. But this advice really applies to everyone, as UK intercepts communications on behalf of the US, and visa versa, to avoid the constitutionally illegal act of spying on ones own citizens, although this in itself has recently emerged as a bit of a legal grey-area.
President Bush's major legal defense for the NSA call database was that the resolution passed by Congress on September 14, 2001 authorizing military force against those that caused 9/11 and organizations that aided those that caused 9/11 was a declaration of war. When the Democrats voted for that resolution, and then the resolution to go to war with Iraq, both times they enacted the President's war powers embedded by statute in FISA.
Check FISA at Cornell University and you see statutes giving the President to use pen registers and trap and trace devices. If you didn't know, those things constitute the technology used to record numbers a phone has been dialing, and numbers that have called a phone. They also give the President the power to search and seize without a warrant and to use electronic surveillance without a warrant. Here is the exact statute. There are three identical sections with "electronic surveillance," "pen register or trap and trace device," and "search and seizure" being replaced by the other in each one.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize the use of a pen register or trap and trace device without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days following a declaration of war by Congress.
Even then, the statute may be interpreted many ways. "for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days" could mean that the authorization must be repeated every 15 days, that individual authorizations may last no longer than 15 days, that the power lasts 15 days once the President has used it, that the power may only be used for 15 days after Congress has declared war, or any number of interpretations, many more plausible than others.
It depends on to what extent your judicial interpretation philosophy incorporates "originalism," thinking about what Congress intended, "starre decisis," looking at prior court decisions, and "strict constructionism," which limits judicial interpretation to the meanings of the actual words and phrases used in law, and not on other sources or inferences.
There was a huge debate over whether the authorizations of military force constituted declarations of war for the reasons given above. The Democrats, they say, did not mean to give the President war powers and thought that the authorizations did not constitute declarations of war because they had been used as a means of allowing deployment of armed forces without giving the president war powers since at least the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed an "escalation of military forces" in the Vietnam War. The Republicans mock them for this, and the debate was even brought up in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld if you watch the oral arguements on C-SPAN like I did.
For all this, how much has this of President Bush's arguements been brought up in the mainstream media? I have seen 2 paragraphs in an Associated Press article and nothing more. Regardless of the debate being all worthless now that he is discovered perhaps to have begun the program before 9/11, the debate is something I feel needs to be known. Just don't berate the Democrats for wanting to debate whether the Iraq War's a war. If the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution had been a declaration of war giving Richard Nixon wiretapping powers, the Supreme Court would not have ruled against him in East District of Michigan v. Nixon.
A statute in FISA does not make a difference in constitutional law. President Bush wants the statutes to make legal what he does with no regard to the Constitution, but when statutes prohibit his actions, he can cite constitutional authority. If it's legally a war, he'd say it's the first case, and if it's not he'd say it's the other.
This apparent legal paradox has arisen in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld---if he's a POW he's under the Geneva Convention, and if not he's a criminal entitled to a trial. The Bush administration argues he's not a POW because he was not fighting for an organized g
Do you honestly think that the Hague would indict an American for war crimes? And even if Bush were indicted, do you really think that anyone would try arresting him when the Marines would immediately be sent in to kick ass and retrieve the president?
Because of the nature of Realpolitik, only figures from nations that can't actually put up a fight would be tried for war crimes.
I like how people keep saying "in the months before 9/11". As if these programs were instituted by der furher the day he was inaugurated. The truth is that these programs have been going on for years but none of you cared.
1. Carnivore first hit slashdot during the Clinton Administration. The oldest reference I found on slashdot is about Earthlink refusing to install it in 2000 - which means it had been in development for several years before that.
2. The legendary "Echelon" - the NSA program for monitoring all telecom traffic has been bandied about for many years - Slashdot posted several articles about it in May of 1999 but the news about it first broke in 1998. The program itself is probably 50 years old.
Clear, Dark Skies
The operation was legal? The operation was planned because its not to much of a stretch from other operations from the last 30 years?
Instead of gasping about how they *planned to do this horrible thing* even *before* 9/11 like a little school girl you should go out and work on the political side that made this even possible. Instead of railing against Bush for using the tools at his disposal you should work on modifying those tools.
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.
> Do you honestly think that the Hague would indict an American for war crimes?
They may very well do so.
> And even if Bush were indicted, do you really think that anyone would try
> arresting him when the Marines would immediately be sent in to kick ass and
> retrieve the president?
It's unlikely that they'll indict while Bush and his croonies while he is in
office, but hey, there is no limit of stature for War Crimes. Note that the Bush
Administration has bullied many states into agreements of not delivering US citizens
(officials only?) to the International Court in Hague. This is an attempt to protect
themselves from persecution of their war crimes.
Presumably under international law.
Strictly speaking, President Bush was authorized by the Congress of the United States to invade Iraq, so it was not illegal under US law. Furthermore, a case can be made that, although hostilities were ceased, we were still effectively in a state of war. Iraq was still shooting at aircraft in the non-fly zone for example. If we presented evidence that Iraq had violated the terms under which hostilities ceased, then arguably the invasion was was legal under international law.
But...
If it turns out the "evidence" presented was faulty, or unreliable and the Bush administration knew it, then the legal basis for the war evaporates.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> Since in the American concept of justice, one is not innocent until proven guilty, > if Bush is not indicted, then he cannot be said to have broken the law. So, no indictement implies that no law is broken? You really believe that?
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
They still make wonderful companion animals, or were you referring to the call monitoring?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
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.
Do you remember Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness proposal that came out shortly after 9/11? A gigantic database that aggregated all available electronic information on US citizens -- financial and credit card records, grocery store shopper cards, movie rentals, library books, maybe even medical records? And how people raised such a stink that congress cut off funding for it?
Well, guess what. It's still up and running.. It simply moved over to the pentagon, that's all.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
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.
Fascinating. You have a blanket label for anyone who thinks Bush is evil. I don't think "purpose" has any bearing on the definition of evil. Incompetence raised to a high enough level is, in many ways, indistinguishable from deliberate intent. You don't have to be Darth Vader to personify evil. The most evil people I know tend to be ideologues who feel their dogma is more important than the means to institutionalize it. They are both zealous and incompetent leading to evil in deed if not in character. At a certain point it's hard to tell the difference. Evil is as evil does, to paraphrase an old truism. A little evil mixed with a lot of incompetence, shaken, not stirred, makes a disastrous cocktail regardless of intent.
But it's convenient to have a one-dimensional bucket to dump anyone disagreeing. A label and put down all rolled into one. Like labeling any exit strategy for Iraq as "cut and run" when most people are smart enough to realize no one is really suggesting that.
If Bush supporters represent the brightest and best this country has to offer, or even the biggest fraction of the whole, we're really fucked.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They already knew Iraq had sarin and other ancient pre-1991 WMD's because the US gave Saddam these weapons. A certain photograph of Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands comes to mind. There was a concerted effort a couple of weeks ago by Republicans in Congress to promote these ancient and non-functional weapons as "OMG the WMD's! Take that liberals!!"
It is an important but often overlooked fact that the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were planned before 9/11.
s p?recno=10ctg=policy
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http://www.indiareacts.com/archivefeatures/nat2.a
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/15503
http://www.sundayherald.com/39221
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
It certainly is not constitutional by "all accounts", unless you dismiss contradictory accounts out of hand, or have very peculiar ideas about what "constitutional" means.
Advovates of expanded executive power like to talk about the President as "Commander in Chief", as if this were somehow a superior and broader function than the Presidency; and they like to talk about the President's "inherent powers". Some countries do have a system in which they elect dictators with practically unlimited powers, but not us.
The president's "inherent" powers are very few. It's a queer term in any case; no president I can think of ever used it before the present one, although Nixon did unsuccessfullly use the grounds of "Executive Privilege" to try to hide evidence of his wrongdoing in the Watergate affair. It would be more correct to describe most of the president's powers, not as "inherent" but "contingent". "Contingent Power" seems like a contradition in terms to some, but even the classic paradigm of power invested in the president can be seen as contingent: the power to take extraordinary actions while defending the country against invasion.
For example, the executive branch might comandeer property in the heat of battle. But it cannot raise taxes to support the defense. In both cases we're talking about siezing private property; the difference is that it's a practical impossibilty to vote on what goes on in battle, but a system of taxation necessarily inolves so much coordination that clearly Congress can be consulted.
And that's the rub. It's possible for the same action (siezing property in our example) to be constiutional or unconstitutional depending on specific circumstances. It also follows that by changing circumstances, we can change the scope of the president's "inherent" powers.
And thus, we have FISA.
Many of the things convered by FISA would fall into what we'd think of the president's "inherent" powers of defense. However, FISA does two things. First, it regulates the scope and manner in which the President exercises those powers. The president is not above the law; in the heat of battle he may stretch it or even break it with some excuse, but he certainly has no power to allocate funds to a program which flies in the face of it. Secondly, it provides mechanisms of accountability which are practical for the President to use in cases where it was impractical before. And this bears on the theory of "inherent powers". In cases where the President once could simply decide to intercept a private person's communications, he must now get a FISA warrant. The existence of the FISA mechanism, particularly the ability to get retroactive warrants, means it's no longer enough to brief congress in the time and manner you see fit. Nor is it in the power of the Congressional leadership to bless this as "legal" without changing the law.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you're referring to the cache Hoekstra and Santorum have been parading in front of the news services, they were known about and listed on intelligence reports back in 2003. They were degraded beyond the possibility of use even back then.
rawstory
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
I think that one of the main facts that has been changed in the re-write of history (read propoganda) is that Iraq was our ally up until GWI. I was working on an important military project for Iraq and they were a well thought of customer. The reason that their air force was useless was not just because it was small but because all the ground crew were British and American, they could not operate without us. Saddam is such a bad guy now but he was our friend then? Now we sell nuclear technology to Pakistan and they are our friends. You know, the country that uses gang rape as a punishment for crimes like insulting someone more important than you... The country that keeps attacking its neighbour, India... Oooh sorry, we are also selling nuclear technology to the Indians so that is OK. As long as those nasty Iranians don't get it we'll be perfectly safe.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
And no, you cannot argue that old, non-functioning weapons are the same as functional weapons. That is just inane. Did you even read the linked article?
The naturally occuring "false positives" would eat up the budget for the program (under any sane spending plan).
With almost 300 million people
1% false positives mean 3 million people investigated (and the people they know)
0.1% means 300,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
0.01% means 30,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
Now, even if you limit each investigation to just that person and the 5 closest people to him/her
Spying does not work randomly.
Rather, it is about two types of intel: that which helps in stealing elections, and business intel. All this infinite talk of incompetence of the Bushies seems to ignore all the money that has been made ($50 billion in war profiteering and another estimated $50 billion or so in humanitarian disaster profiteering and graft and fraud regarding "homeland security" dating back to the profit from the destruction of the WTC).
So they had monitoring before 9/11, too? Wow it was really effective. Let's put some more time and energy into wiretapping and monitoring of the American people because it's provent to be so effective up to this point. Not to mention 100% legal.
Like shielding his son and friends from investigations concerning fraud and corruption? That kind of moral authority? Like downplaying UN peacekeepers (notably French) who rape and use children? That kind of moral authority? Like refusing to label Dafur for what it is -- genocide. That kind of authority?
Kofi Annan ... In some parts of the world, leaders lead from a position of moral authority
And it's exactly Kofi Annan's willingness to treat despots and terrorists with the same deference that he reserves for the elected governments of democracies that strips him of any moral authority. It's his completely luke-warm, moreally rudderless handling of stunning UN-facilitated corruption in things like the Iraq oil-for-food program that indicate what a moral relativist he is. It's not "moral authority," it's classic, ineffectual political correctness writ larger than any warm-and-fuzzy campus activist could ever hope.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Treason is only a captial offence in time of war.
As far as I can tell, despite being as execution-happy as we are, Bush isn't eligible for the death penalty under US law. Can the Hague pass down death sentences?
Fascinating. You have a blanket label for anyone who thinks Bush is evil.
"X is a MIHOP person -> X starts from the presumption that Bush is evil" -/-> "X believes Bush is evil -> X is a MIHOP person."
As further evidenced by that hey!'s reply.
This almost isn't a logical fallacy because the clause "X believes Bush is evil" is made up out of whole cloth, existing only in your criticism and not appearing at all in what you criticized.
You're in no position to be making implicit accusations about the intelligence of Bush supporters.
And to point out what you really ought to already be able to tell, this post simply points out that your argument is bad; it implies nothing about my own beliefs. I actually put them here but it just complicated things, and besides, they are irrelevant to my point. Suffice it to say they are neither black nor white on this issue.
Bush is "trying to protect us from mass murderers", when he responds to the Presidential Daily Briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" with the words "All right, you've covered your ass, now" and went fishing on his Texas estate?
No, he's attacking us while leaving us undefended, while Bush worshippers like you cover his ass.
Like when you lie about FISA, the law that prohibits Bush from wiretapping any call including a US person without a court order. Which he did, which he continues to do, which he has publicly insisted he will do - all in violation of the law. The law, BTW, that was passed after Rumsfeld, Cheney and their cronies spied on us in their first attack, during the Nixon administration, then made stronger by Clinton in the 1990s, to cover physical searches as well as wiretaps.
I've been watching this gang since the early 1970s. I watched them wage covert war in Iran/Contra in the 1980s. And I've watched them move from the fringes of the government to a takeover of all the branches. And I've watched people like you hurl lies to cover their attacks on our country. But I don't watch silently, and I don't think it's a joke. Because it's not funny.
--
make install -not war
Nay.
As it was the congress who signed in to the geneva convention, approved it, and made neccessary connections with your own law, invading iraq was illegal according to u.s.'s own laws too.
Read radical news here
us, they want to control us. They are trying very hard to speed up this totaltarianism. They want all the power and control over the people. George Bush's fair voting act is putting in place electronic voting machines in every state, its now illegal to whistleblow that a Diebold voting machine is hackable and could be used to fix an election. Haliburton got a $400 million contract to build Federal "Detention Centers" right after the 2000 election. Hundreds of thousands new federal beds that are currently setting empty while the prison system is overflowing. Couple that with things like spying on the polulace, it is starting to paint a very scary picture. WAKE UP. ITS NOT A BAD DREAM
With Slashdot's new tagging system, you can finally add moderation to stories you have always dreamed of!
Regardless of your feelings on NSA wiretaps, both domestic and international - you already know what all of the commennnts on this story will look like. Why even bother? An article like this one simply meant to stir up feelings and add nothing new to the discussion would ina comment be marked "flamebait", so why not tag it as such?
To tag, simply click on that small triangle next to exiting tags. Below is a text entry box for your tag (flamebait), after entering simply press the "Tag" button next to it and your tag is added. If enough people use the same tag it makes the front page and helps people understand just what they are going to see in the comments inside.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It is funny that you're saying that, given that Al Qaeda as an organization DOES NOT EXIST. I would recommend the eye opener The Power of Nightmares, a BBC documentary about the issue. I'd like to stress the importance that Al Qaeda never existed, it was made up by a guy escaping from Bin Laden because he stole his money, so while on the run the Feds stumbled upon him and the whole Al Qaeda name was born in 2001 January in a court in Massachussets. While there are terrorists (I'd rather to label them resistance movement inside Iraq), they a.) use the Al Qaeda name as a publicity tool b.) are fighting a national issue. International terrorism is extremely rare and negligible.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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.
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make install -not war
For those non-Brits who don't know who Tony Benn is:
He is a raving nutter and extreme leftie who was a minister under one of the most left wing government this country ever had and is best known for his support of Sinn Feinn, a mouthpiece organisation for Irish Republican terrorists and organised crime.
Tony Benn carries no weight with any political organisation or individual of any consequence, although he occasionally manages to get himself on television because producers can rely on him to say something provocative and/or stupid.
He may be old but he is certainly not wise and if he said "good morning" to me I'd check my watch. The man is widely regarded as an object of ridicule in the UK.
Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along
Of course. This was created to satisfy the extension of traditional telephone wiretapping requirements. You remember Carnivore and the related laws, right? No large Internet provider can cost-effectively satisfy a wiretapping subpoena for -only- the data requested. That filtering requires equipment vastly more powerful than the routers they use. I looks to me like AT&T cut a deal: We'll give you access to the total data stream but in return you agree that filtering for the lawfully authorized data is solely and permanantly the Federal government's problem and expense.
From the perspective of fiscal responsibility to the shareholders, its the right choice.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
That is a very good question.
Some weird stuff has happened in this country over the last 10 years, the strangest of them all is that the Republican Party now is entirely controlled by a gang of socialist thugs. I don't know how that happened, but the Republican party is now the party that stands for big government spending:
I don't have any other way to describe this than good old, Soviet-style, socialism and cronyism. If this had been the current administration only, I would have been able to understand it as a fluke, but it is not. It is almost every single republican senator and representative. They have all joined the party, and they are all behaving like good, old socialist thugs. How on earth did the Repulican party become a socialist institution? Someone needs to write a book about this transformation.
What can we do about it? I am not sure. We have the right to vote. It seems every non-republican politician today, even lunatics like Howard Dean, are more capitalists and more "Republican" than any current RINO in DC. I guess the answer is that we have to vote non-republican in the future. At least until normality has been restored in the Republican party.
It seems that if you are someone who likes lower taxes, smaller government, less socialism, you have no choice but to vote non-Republican. It is just plain weird. Even a vote for the Democrats would be a vote for lower taxes and smaller government. Utterly strange.
So, yeah, vote. And only vote for the republicans if you think that Stalin was a good idea.
"International Law" only exists because nation-states permit it jurisdiction. If I-L negatively impacts national interests, nation-states will no longer grant it such permission. End of discussion.
Also end of international cooperation on economics, law enforcement and military matters.
What you say applies to individuals. Any individual who sets himself outside the law is able to act with perfect freedom. However he is not shielded from the actions of others. Certainly, we have police and courts and such. But this in the public sphere is just like having carpenters and plumbers. You could do the work yourself, but it's more efficient to hire specialists. In the end its the wrath of your neighbors you must consider, even if it administered through a professional police force instead of a mob. Likewise the lack of an international police force doesn't mean there is no international law; only that it is enforced with a kind of hysteresis. You can get away things for a while, because other nations still see greater benefit in cooperation than confrontation. But eventually the state flips to open hostility, and you're cooked. You can't get back by small measures either, you have to give back far more to restore a favorable equillibrium than ever you needed to maintain it.
There is one nation in the world which subscribes to your theory of international law: North Korea. They may "win" the current nuclear affair, but the victory would, in US or European eyes, be worse than almost any scenario we could imagine for defeat. They're still a failed, pariah state, sustaining itself by handouts grudgingly given because it's less trouble than crushing them. We could follow the same policies and end up moving in the same direction.
Mature and successful people don't manage their affairs by trowing tantrums and threatening to turn their back on everyone else whenever they don't get their way in every small detail. They work with others, giving up a little here and there and finding ways to get back more than they give up -- sometimes finding ways for everyone to get more than they give up. Dealing with other people is a process of creative compromise.
The same process, when applied to nations, is called by the adminsitration's conservative supporters "international government". Which goes to show there is such a thing as unintentional perspicacity.
When the European countries were world powers, they understood this...
And then times changed, and not only their world power status evaaporated, but the very assumptions by which they exercised powers as well.
Case in point. Our recent governemnts have pursued a policy of economic globalization. This was a case of the conservatives of an economic bent deceiving the conservatives of a nationalistic bent. Once you integrate your economy with the rest of the world, you strengthen the tendency towards world government tremendously. You can no more run your affairs idependently of what the rest of the world thinks and expects, than you could chop your own legs off.
We are locked with China now in a relationship of mutual economic interdependence. We can no longer pursue a foreign policy of "national self-interest" independent of this fact. Oh, you can still call it pursuing your "self-interest", but only in the sense that it is self-interest not to get into a fight with somebody you detest when you're both sitting in a small and unstable boat.
The music in the terms "national sovereignty" and "national self interest" comes with the assumed obligato of "national independence". Which now exists less than at any other point in history since the emergence of the nation state.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So with this information and the Downing Street Memo that clearly showed the war was already planned when the president was publicly claiming it was the last option, what they heck is this guy going for? Why? And who stands to benefit from all this stuff?
Perhaps it's :
The Masons
Illuminati
Skulls & Bones
Trilateral Commission
Bilderberg Group
Neocons
Opus Dei (Heheh)
NSA
But seriously... who or what do people think Bush is working for and what evidence do they actually have?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Actually & technically, you're wrong.
One is not assumed innocent until proven guilty
One is presumed innocent until proven guilty
It's more than just semantics, as the words have two very different meanings.
Assumed: Taken for granted; accepted as real or true without proof
Presumed: Taken for granted as being true in the absence of proof to the contrary
It's that "in the absence of proof to the contrary" bit that drives the police & the prosecution to do more than just make wild claims. They actually have to provide proof.
Also, that presumption of innocence is why a court will find you "not guilty" instead of "innocent." Just because the prosecutors can't prove you broke the law, doesn't mean a Judge can declare that you didn't. There is a seperate legal process involved in being declared "innocent" of a crime and you have to prove (with a preponderance of the evidence) that you are innocent.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I guess you do not get out much, do you?
Assuming the cause is what we are being told, the appropriate reaction would have been:
As it stands, we still have some liberties left. We can still indulge in public protest (as long as we do it in "free speech zones" and nowhere near a funeral and have a permit), we still have our homes (well, unless the state wants them for higher taxes), we still have free speech (unless we want to broadcast it, in which case we have free speech minus seven words, if we're rich.) And we still have the right to regulate intrastate commerce on a state-by-state basis. Of course, the USSC has defined "interstate commerce" to be "anything that *could* be interstate commerce if you took it over the state borders", so this is mostly an exercise in "hope the feds don't have a different opinion", but states can at least try to make state law on goods and services.
As for the perjorative "MIHOP"... Even though it really does look like the twin tower buildings were dropped using standard demolition techniques, and even though building seven fell, hours later, without ever being hit by an aircraft and also looked like it was dropped in exactly the same manner as the two towers, and even though there are no signs that the Pentagon was hit by anything as large as an airliner, and even though airline fuel doesn't burn hot enough to soften steel enough to cause a collapse... I see that the idea that we might have some kind of problem other than what we're being told is still treated as a kook idea. I find this even more fascinating (and worrying) than I do the events themselves, which after all, have killed far fewer people than the administration's incursion into Iraq.
Was this something other than it appeared to be? We have some very troublesome evidence that doesn't fit the "a plane hit it, so it fell" scenario. We have a lot of missing gold from the vaults of the buildings. We have the removal of a single jet engine (which appears not to be an airliner engine anyway) from a hole in the Pentagon that was far too small for any of the wing materials of the putative airliner to have entered, and no holes (or even any damage) out where the wings would have caused the engines to impact; We have a knee-jerk war reaction against two countries that were not the majority source of the people we were told were the hijackers. The actual source of most of them, Saudi Arabia, remains untouched and a firm business partner. I'm not really on the "MIHOP" bus, but then again, I'm not really on the "it was just a hijacking with intent to fly into buildings" bus, either. I'm jusst mostly on the "my fellow citizens sure are an uninformed and spoon-fed bunch of people" bus.
Spend some time looking through the MIHOP sites on the net. I'm not saying you'll be convinced by any one site, but you sure will be entertained — and there are some startling facts worth thinking about.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Is there any evidence from TFA that the Bush Administration ordered the NSA to do this?
How about the fact that Adm. Poindexter was appointed to do this? How about the Total Infromation Awareness Requests for Proposal under US DARPA, NSA, CIA etc? I read the proposals at the time.
Such evidence may appear in the future, but as of now, I don't think we can honestly assert that Bush ordered the NSA to monitor all domestic traffic.
The only shred of evidence to deny that Bush ordered this is the "Plausable Deniability" screen they constructed in the Whitehouse with Adm. Poindexter at the helm of the program. Honestly it was their highest priority. They had the Patriot Act full text written prior to 911. They had all of the RFP's out before 911! They were well on the way. To deny any of this is the height of ignorance. I know! I read the RFP's at the time! By the way, they were not secret! They may still be somewhere out there on the net.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
And, of course, Osama still lurks in the shadows untouched, the perfect foil to our "strong" leader.
Not at all. The US Constitution grants to Congress exclusively the power to declare war. It does not give them any option to delegate that authority, or shirk that responsibility. The *resolution* you refer to, to the extent it purports to delegate inalienable authority, is simply null and void under the Constitution.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
On the morning of 9/11 on CNN one of the reports/anchor people said "NSA is reviewing the cellphone calls" of the people from flight 93.
My head spun at that moment. Apparently CNN didn't think it that odd that the NSA would have those records.
Ascii artist &
Although I'm on your side I've got to say that the illegal war did not cause this level of denial in 'the people'. It was there before waiting to be used to someone's advantage. It could be said it's the negative symptom of prosperity and being too comfortable to care: complacency.
A similar thing happened with the assassination of JFK, MLK, RFK - denial and discrediting of facts that make people uncomfortable.
OR,
How did the 2000 'election' go unquestioned by the majority?
Why do the facts surrounding the unabomber attack not add up?
Why does the official story of 9/11 not make scientific or practical sense?
There are many other examples but I'm sure you get the idea.
The other day I heard a woman in the street being asked by her colleague if she wanted to read the newspaper he had. Her reply was "No thanks, I never read anything with bad news in it" and was proud of herself for her 'clever' approach. And I thought, "and that's why things are the way they are".
There's a passage in 1984 that explains how BB continued. It says 85% of the people didn't care or question - they were too busy with the sports games and the lottery. And, I think, that's where we're at now.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
"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
So you say. Even if true, it hardly changes the point. Your "points" are incredibly dishonest and biased.
I blame Bush for what he has done. Seems pretty simple and straight forward. You want to give him a pass, and your reasoning for that is absolutely nonsense, based on blaming Clinton or some such.
Since you apparently can't read, I'll re-post part of my last replay: "If there was any evidence they were ever spying inside the country (insane crackpots need not apply)..."
I didn't say anything about it being okay or not. It is, however, LEGAL for them to do so. Meanwhile, spying inside the US is strictly illegal, and Bush has broken the law by doing so.
I realize you don't like facts, but you can't make up nonsense or rant on some other topic to refute them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Just as a little clarification. The act of war was committed by the nation that harbored Al-Quaida, and allowed it to use it as a base for their actions. Al-Quaida itself was and is a loose organization of troublemakers that need (and can) be put down by regular police action. Terrorists are not, in any way, a danger for a nation: they are a mere nuisance. They only become a real threat when they have a safe piece of land to use for training an plotting. Terrorists cannot commit acts of war, only nations can. Nations harboring terrorists can, by proxy, be condemned for the actions of the terrorists they protect.
Thus, for all practical purposes, the war on terror ended the moment that the US seized control in Afghanistan. This has been recognized by all (former) allies of the US as an important step to take. All the other stuff is simply a power-grab and the settling of old scores. Really nothing to do with any war on terror.
First of all, russia is the other power, still. It has ever been. Yes it might have 20 million less men/women ready for service, but over and over again in the course of history they have mobilized innumerable masses to meet the foe. The last being 2nd ww, which they started with great disadvantage, both in experience, technology and numbers, and they have stormed all the way to berlin, and half of europe.
This is because their concept is 'durable, fast, many'. And it has proven to be the most effective for concept of war.
A Grumman f14 tomcat, in its abundant version, can track 12 enemies, and can direct 6 missiles to 6 of them at any given time.
However a grumman f14 tomcat is expensive and difficult to manufacture, operate, maintain. Any loss is a big loss. On the other hand, whatever is in russian hands is expendable, and replacable by around 10 in short time. this is what they did in ww2, this is what they were gonna do in ww3, and this is what they can do now.
As for electronics, simulations, battle tests, deployment en masse against technologically inferior enemies (iraq, vietnam) is one thing, meeting a foe in match is another.
The match of a-10 in russian air force can use anything from cologne to a multidude of petroleum distillates for fuel. It can fly with severe punishment.
And in the deployments against vietnam, afghanistan and iraq, we have seen that, even ragtag guerillas with negligible weapons can deal good damage to their foes. A galaxy was almost shot down in iraq. How many galaxies are there in strategic airlift command ? 12 ? How many awacs are there in sac ? What if russians spend 12 flankers apiece and get 10-15 existing awacs one by one ?
An analogy from history : germans had excellent technology, experience and perfect training to go with it, they favored extreme quality against quantity. Russians, favoring acceptable quality to go with enormous quantity had set them right. Same was the concept of u.s. in ww2, and this concept proved right. But from 45 to today, u.s. uk and west allies took to the mistake of germans "they have high numbers, we can match them in quality" - no you cant.
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They're only building permanent bases depending on your definition of "permanent."
100% certain? Hardly. Take off your tinfoil hat and quit accepting blogs as bible truth.
Some weird stuff has happened in this country over the last 10 years, the strangest of them all is that the Republican Party now is entirely controlled by a gang of socialist thugs. I don't know how that happened, but the Republican party is now the party that stands for big government spending:
How on earth did the Repulican party become a socialist institution?
Well, in the first place, it's not socialism, it's fascism.
It's been longer than 10 years. It really started going into overdrive with Reagan, but the roots go back to WW2. Most people forget that the wealthy elite, industrialists and the like (i.e. the Republican base) were tremendous supporters of the european fascists. It was only the American left (when we had one) that supported going to war against them. Most Americans were isolationist and didn't want to get involved either way. Heck, our current president's grandfather actively supported Germany against his own country. He narrowly avoided treason prosecution. It's nice to have friends in high places.
After WW2, an unholy alliance was created between Christians and Republicans for the first time in history due to the threat of the "godless communists". The rural Christians have continually voted against theior own stated "moral values" since this time. That's why you see them frothing at the mouth about sex on TV and gays being presented in a positive light even though those are inevitable consequences of hyper capitalism which is what they keep voting for. Tie that in with the fact that rural America has never dealt with the negative effects of capitalism until recently as they have lived under a form of socialism for a hundred years where the people in the cities are forced to subsidise their way of life.
Since Reagan with all the crimes of his administration including arming terrorists, creating torture schools and aiding the international cocaine trade, it's gone into high gear.
Someone needs to write a book about this transformation.
Not a book, but a couple of long, well researched articles are right here:
First a primer on what fascism is and how it came about in Europe
Then an analysis of the rise of fascism in America.
There are a lot of other very well reearched articles on that site as well ranging over a variety of topics.
The Darkside http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/v iew/
Rumsfields War http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pent agon/view/
War Behind Closed Doors http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq /view/
Pretty much sums it up. These People saw Nixons spanking as a terrible stripping of presidential manhood, and set themselves about to "RESTORE" it. Complete with wiretaps and torture on demand. Dick and Don are in it for the long haul. I don't think they realize what lies at the end of the road they are building. (We would be lucky if it is another good ole fashioned presidential spanking. Can you impeach an entire cabinet?.)
They haven't changed much in the last 20 years. I expect them to act with the same lack of integrity and political chickanery they always have. This is your fathers Nixon administration.
The only good thing to come from any of this is Jon Stewart's Dead-On single syllable impressions. Waaaaunnnggh! Waaaaunnnggh! Heh,Heh,Heh!
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