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Eavesdropping Helpful Against Terrorist Plot [UPDATED]
AcidPenguin9873 writes "The New York Times reports that the U.S. government's ability to eavesdrop on personal communications helped break up a terrorist plot in Germany. The intercepted phone calls and emails revealed a connection between the plotters and a breakaway cell of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad Union. What does this mean for the future of privacy in personal communications? From the article: '[Director of national intelligence Mike McConnell's] remarks also represent part of intensifying effort by Bush administration officials to make permanent a law that is scheduled to expire in about five months. Without the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Mr. McConnell said the nation would lose "50 percent of our ability to track, understand and know about these terrorists, what they're doing to train, what they're doing to recruit and what they're doing to try to get into this country.'" Update: 09/13 12:59 GMT by J : See followup story.
Chaining everybody up in their homes in straightjackets all day probably helps against terrorist plots too, but that doesn't make it right.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Whole country's on house arrest And everyone's a suspect...
Also, it broke up a GERMAN attack... How does dropping in on AMERICAN communication help?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Eavesdropping helps stop terror plots? WOW! What a surprise!
You know what also helps stop terror plots? Turning a country into a giant maximum security prison. Maybe we could have a study that tests that out.
Yes, violating privacy can help law enforcement. No ****. People oppose any given measure because they don't consider that tradeoff justifiable, NOT because they are unsure if it's useful. (Though in fairness, I guess a lot of people feel compelled to go all the way and think they have to consider a method *ineffective* before they'll oppose it, even where they can't rationally justify that...)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Obviously even more anti-privacy laws will make the US even safer, and do more to reduce the number of terrorist attacks to even less than the...erm...none over the last 6 years.....
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
--Benjamin Franklin
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'd rather give terrorists the same freedom of speech I want for myself rather than give up my ability to make private phone calls.
We've simply got to find ways to stop terrorism without giving up our own liberties. It's the whole giving-up-freedom-for-security-have-neither thing.
While clearly foiling plots outside US borders is desirable, it should be much to the chagrin of it's critics. It'd be interesting to come out with a statement like, "TERROR PLOT FOILED IN federal building x ON date AT time. The following people's lives were saved: list of names."
Also, it's probably no surprise this story had to be posted by Zonk since Kdawson certainly wouldn't have touched a story that might actually cast favorable light on anything non-liberal.
Well he would say that wouldn't he.
Showed the importance of eavesdropping in stopping some terrorists from blowing up a supermarket
You can watch the whole thing here -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/6476207.stm
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
And of course, this assertion is made about the effectiveness of the "surveillance" without supplying any evidence for the claim.
That is "classified information, and releasing the details will help the terrorists, and result in dead Americans."
In other words "We could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you."
More Americans will die like Mrs. Buttle's husband, than will ever be exposed to "terrorists".
Live free or die, you little worms. "I'm from the Government, I'm here to help you."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Just like eavesdropping on conversations helped the KGB find and arrest dissidents in the (former) Soviet Union.
Which we appear to be heading towards faster and faster with each passing day!
No matter where you go... there you are.
...is to emulate the creature that will never be attacked by a terrorist. The baby veal calf. We should spend our entire lives in a secured little box with one air vent locked in a basement. It is the only way to be sure.
My humor is probably your flamebait
The amount of disinformation is staggering. I have yet to meet a single person who says you can't eavesdrop legally. I'm not surprised why the powers that be lie to us, I am surprised how may people accept it. I don't get it.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
When did what happens in Germany effect us in the States?
Oh yeah, Germany is one of the 135 countries that we currently occupy. Here is the list:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan
Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Chile
China, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Cote D'lvoire, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic
Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador
Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana
Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia
Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia
Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique
Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway
Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania
Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, Singapore
Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden
Switzerland, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia
Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom
Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe
source
We never asked them to give up FISA. We only asked them to actually obey THAT law.
Now, of course they found it convenient to change that law so it has no teeth, so yeah they want the new FISA. The one that takes away all accountability.
And the worst thing that will happen to these people is that they might not get re-elected. We are screwed.
[*] That is Pashtun for, "Don't call me in my cell phone, the Satanists are on to it. just send emails using 2048 bit encryption."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Did the Germans find the plot BEFORE we got involved?
Did we find the plot BEFORE the Germans got involved?
Was this plot uncovered through basic German police work?
or
Was this plot uncovered through our massive surveillance program of all communications that we can get into?
I'm a little bit suspicious as to the TIMING of this announcement, too.
The smart ones use cyphers, encryption, cell organization and mouth to ear communication. One only has to watch a movie or read a book to learn that. Snooping phone calls and email will not help.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
why anyone talking on a cellular phone across the public airwaves or on a wired phone using the
public switched telephone network would have any expectation of privacy?
The problem here is that the article doesn't produce any evidence that US systems or servers were used (which is possible that they were...hence the need for the recent FISA change). Keep in mind, FISA was written before the popular use of internet and cell phones. Should our government be able to listen in on us at a whim? No.
Do they? Probably not so much as conspiracists like to believe, and probably more than those of us who support surveillance with and among known - or reasonably suspected - foreign terrorists - even when US systems and citizens are involved.
I don't buy the ZOMG BUSH LISTENS TO ALL UR PHONE CALLS mantra, and I rarely see a proper solution from that crowd anyway - just more whining and complaining.
I've had Slashdot as my home page for years and I love the technology stories. But I've had it up to here with the vitriolic, irrational, anti-American crap that readers post for stories like these.
This issue has been distorted from the beginning and so many Slashdot readers bought it hook line and sinker. My disgust for these posts have finally exceeded my desire to read about technology.
TTFN. Good luck with forming that Utopia that you are looking for... I'm going to find where the adults are going these days.
P.S. Go ahead and mod me down. I don't care.
I'd rather risk the 1:1000000000000 chance I'd be killed in a terror attack by some fuckface than let some other dickhead listen to all of my fucking phonecalls. Fuck them.
It seems that the Bush administration released this information to bolster their case that the newly gutted FISA (Federal Intelligence Service Act, the legislation that banned domestic spying and requires a warrant from a special FISA court to conduct evesdropping on US citizens). They claim that the intelligence gathering that lead to the arrest of the terrorism suspects in Germany happend only because of their new powers. I've seen nothing about whether they could have done the same evesdropping under the older (and some would argue, much better) FISA law. In particular, the NY Times article on the subject references intercepting email and phone traffic between non-US citizens who were not on US soil. I'm not sure that the restrictions of FISA would even apply in this case. Once again, this story may be just a bunch of smoke an mirrors from the Bush administration (though it is heartening to hear that the US intelligence agencies have managed to do one thing right in the "war on civil liber^D^D^D terror").
it's not difficult to grasp. if anybody starts shooting anywhere near our babies, all that turn the other cheek stuff is over.
it's probably difficult for yOUR 'enemies' to understand why we tolerate the whoreabull life0cide being committed by yOUR fearful 'leaders', & their corepirate nazi bosses.
you call this weather?
+1 to the first 10 posts, and evidence that society at large isn't as insane as the current crop of politically powerful idiots running my country, that will, god willing, live in shame in the history books, as the ones who nearly led america down the road to fascism, in its most vulnerable age of technological upheaval.
Keep up the eternal vigilance friends. Somehow the god-damn fascist cowards never seem to get as tired as I get of them...
If you add up all of the spying and wars that we are performing to
"Fight Terrorism".
Now look at the number of "terrorist events" that have happened "successfully".
If the number of terrorist events is not declining, then one cannot conclude that the billions we throw at this (and lives lost and rights that we throw away), are "helpful".
The NY Times reported that the Director of National Intelligence, Gen. Mike McConnell, *claimed* that the law helped. It's a claim by an official with a vested interest.
That doesn't make it false (or true), but it's much different than a statement of fact.
Very few people are against court sanctioned and oversought eavesdropping. What people are upset about is eavesdropping without warrants, on US citizens. As far as I can tell from the very brief article, this isn't a case where warrantless wiretapping, or data mining occoured.
AccountKiller
Islamic Jihad Union? We're the Jihad Union of Islam! Islamic Jihad Union? Cawk.
Wankers.
Checks and balances in government power to prevent abuses? This idea that the government should be allowed unfettered access to private communications just goes completely against what the Constitutional Framers had in mind. It would be best that these creeps be made to go through the paces of getting a warrant and *then* conducting a perfectly legal wiretap. The unfortunate part is that these clowns couldn't come up with believable grounds to get the warrant in the first place.
They will only find out what potential terrorists want on their pizza tapping public airwaves.
SECRET: If they get EXTRA anchovies they are terrorists. The pepperoni-pineapple-extra cheese orders means there will be a terrorist meeting (stay away Government!).
What is anti-American about protecting our rights? That's what this country was FOUNDED on, so I would think that protecting those liberties would be as American as it gets!
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Future of privacy? Your privacy is already completely gone. You gave it up to find the terrorists, remember?
Sure, there's no such thing as a 'terrorist' - but at least you're getting cheap oil out of Afghanistan. I mean Iraq. I mean more expensive.
Ace
Eavesdropping on potential terrorists -- assuming "potential" means "suspected" not just "hypothetically possible" -- is all well and good. That's exactly the kind of thing government law enforcement should be doing. That's how law enforcement succeeds in catching real criminals.
If they're claiming this was part of a Carnivore/Echelon style dragnet, then hurray for catching the one tuna in a net bursting with dolphins.
The article mentions listening in on the members of a specific terrorist group, so I'm taking that to mean they already had suspects, and surveilling these suspects allowed them to discover the plot. I.e. the targeted search that is good.
However you can tell in articles like this that they want you to believe that this justifies extended surveillance powers, in particular the we-should-be-able-to-spy-on-anyone-any-time kind.
The article also mentions FISA and how Bush is trying to extend the law that will expire. It is very important to remember that the whole problem with Bush's program was that he couldn't even be bothered to go to the FISA court to get back-dated warrants. The best explanation for why that I've heard so far being that the program was spying on so many people that it was infeasible to actually get a warrant for each one. If they can't take the time to get a warrant for each one, then they certainly couldn't have taken the time to establish probably cause that any of these people were terrorists, and ergo they wouldn't have been granted by FISA anyway.
So look at this how it is -- a success for law enforcement, of the traditional pre-USAPATRIOT and pre-NSA-wiretapping kind. Don't see it how they want you too -- as justification for removing what few of our privacy protections remain, and justification for allowing the Executive branch and law enforcement to operate outside the 4th Ammendment.
The enemies of Democracy are
So many of us don't have to waste time wading through this non-story. Domestic spying is bad. Except this is some kind of bizarre propaganda because domestic (U.S.) spying is patting itself on the back for the whole episode in Germany.
./'ers would even consider this much less do it?
It's okay to complain, but don't do anything like say, write a letter to your representatives demanding more information about the programs. (No doubt there are many) In fact, write it by hand and sign it. Now, how many
It's a democracy, you are supposed to participate. Except they probably don't teach that any more.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
Those who would give up non-essential liberty to purchase permanent safety will have both essential liberty and safety.
--Workindev
Hahah good riddance you piece of shit. Die.
An organization reports positively on something that makes them more powerful and influential. Doesn't EVERY organization do that? I think Enron's capability to sell energy futures was touted as a terrific thing by Enron.
There failure here is who we're taking as an authority. It seems intelligence organizations insulate themselves so the only analysis that can be done is self-analysis. The only way we can infer if they're doing a good job or not is if nothing bad happens, and even then we don't know.
A lot of the terrorist cells in European countries were recent immigrants from the mid-eas t or children of such. The latest German arrests were bland-hair-blue-eyes that could have come a Hitler youth camp. Theres always been a strong anti-establishment youth culture in Deutchland, now expressing itself through the Al-Caida brand.
remarks also represent part of intensifying effort by Bush administration officials to make permanent a law that is scheduled to expire in about five months.
They have no credibility left. Why should anybody listen to their slogany arguments?
Table-ized A.I.
Hows is this news? OMFG! NSA taps bad guy.
Oh...right...ye I guess that is quite newsworthy. At least the US government seem to think so, as they've rolled out their Director of National Intelligence (no less) to tell everyone about it. Am I the only one who finds that a little disturbing?
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
the above is not flamebait. It's a statment of fact. Nothing like some right wing mod not getting the picture...
What is more odd is that more than half of the countries we occupied were occupied under a Democrat-leaning Executive and Congress.
Many of those countries listed are permanent occupations, with actual military bases installed. Some of the countries are odd to see there (Spain? Australia? Austria? Poland?)
There is no surprise when I travel Europe or Asia and actually feel the hatred by the common citizens towards the U.S. It takes a lot of time, but I've explained to many people that the U.S. government has no connection to U.S. citizens: they've moved beyond common ideals such as "by the People", and it is both parties' faults.
Not very many Americans are killed by nuclear bombs.
Some Americans are killed by terrorists. But the number is just slightly higher than the number of Americans killed by nuclear bombs.
Far, FAR, FAR more likely, you'll die of something related to eating too much junk food.
Well DUH! Our military being in Iraq might have been a subtle clue, eh?
The question is: SHOULD we be at war?
No. We should treat terrorism the same as we treat any other organized criminal enterprise.
Yes and yes. Otherwise you people wouldn't still be crying about the "threat" from "terrorists".
Are you sure it wasn't the Jihad Islamic Union or the Union of Islamic Jihads? SPLITTERS!
My objection is not that the government eavesdrops. It is that they do it without court orders. I guarantee that if the government went to a judge and asked for a warrant to eavesdrop on particular suspects that it would be granted. The secretive dragnet approach is the problem. What is the problem with requesting warrants anyway? Do they really think the judge is going to spill the beans and the suspect will be alerted. I doubt it.
There's no need for a study, it has been done plenty of times. The problem is that we need to remember why we're trying to prevent terror plots in the first place. We want to prevent them to guarantee the public's freedoms. Turning the country into a giant police state does not help meet this goal.
Your points would carry a lot more weight without the hyperbole. Having a military base in some country, with their permission, isn't "occupying" them.
The term 'occupation' indicates control over territory. We don't 'occupy' Cuba. We have a naval base there, but we don't control the rest of the country. (Unless you think that Castro is just a U.S. puppet. Or something.) To be honest, the world would probably be a significantly safer place if the U.S. did have significant control over several of the countries on that list, but we don't.
You undermine your own point through exaggeration and inflated rhetoric.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
We're occupying Russia and China? That's cool.
Very nice job identifying the subtle misuse of grammar.
The story is easily identified as propaganda anyway. Headline needs to be edited according to the parent post.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
Statement: "A statement of fact can be irrelevant in determining a mod to a post; It is often based on relevance to the topic as well as apparent tone."
Thoughtful Speculation: "I suspect his post seemed only marginally applicable to the current discussion and mods saw a high-falutin' tone, resulting in a flamebait mod."
Sardonic Proposition: "Misplaced Tone is a serious problem on the internet. From now on, I suggest all meatbags be required to place stage direction before any change in tone, until there soft, squishy brains can come up with a better means of communicating a full range of tone and emotion."
Demented But Determined.
I don't believe a single damned thing these guys say anymore.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
No rational person would disagree that these eavesdropping methods don't work. But the proponents of this legislation have been focusing the conversation on a "no eavesdropping = potential danger" argument.
... but they also required a court order (to allow for oversight and transparency, a key element to a free democracy). The only cogent argument against this oversight -- that sometimes there isn't enough time to get a court order -- was shown to be patently incorrect, as the prior laws allowed for immediate eavesdropping (as long as a court order was eventually filed).
However, the discussion by opponents has not been against eavesdropping, but that with current law, there is no OVERSIGHT by any governmental agency of the eavesdropping. Prior laws always allowed eavesdropping
I'm too lazy to provide links, but it has been documented both that a) during the time of the court-order requirement, almost no court order requests were denied (something like 2 in 17,000); and b) during the non-court order law there were some thousands of eavesdropping events that were shown to have no connection to terrorism.
The reason, plain and simple, for articles like this is that the US administration is fearmongering to push the strategy that they do not want oversight into what they are doing. This is a bad thing. Democracy dies behind closed doors. Don't be fooled. Keep the focus where it should be!
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
I've had it up to here with the vitriolic, irrational, anti-American crap... I'm going to find where the adults are going these days.
If I were you, I'd look for forums where thinking is less likely to be accurate and where new social, scientific, or religious ideas are scorned upon.
If you believe that you probably believe steel buildings melt and implode due to fire as if they were taken down in a CONTROLLED DEMOLITION.
http://stj911.org/
Based on reports of what type of explosive they were trying to make. The police saved their lives.
Peroxide based explosives are very very tricky things that can even blow up by being exposed to light. In most countries you are not even alowed to transport them.
Like the binary explosives before them, yes it can be done in theroy but not in practice. Does anyone else see a pattern here...
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
As long as key phone lines in Redmond, WA are wiretapped. Or maybe important lines in fancy buildings, maybe in Hollywood, maybe in NY. What about lines in some corporate HQs? Or maybe lines in certain offices, in Washington DC.
how long until
How would a SMART terrorist get around that?
Then, how would that SMART terrorist implement it? And disseminate the information?
Spies have been doing it for years. Radios, encrypted transmissions, letter drops, etc.
Wouldn't the FIRST less of terrorist school be: "Americans listen to everything. Do NOT use your cell phone or email."
Not only all that, but the issue of oversight is not addressed.
Lets assume for the moment that wiretapping is very helpful. Why
do we have to get rid of the court oversight? I don't think we
should hand this much power to anyone.
emt 377 emt 4
Oh fuck! I didn't know the USA is occupying us (Finland), I didn't even know there were US soldiers here since Finland does not belong to NATO. Boy, Am I glad that you revealed the true nature of things. Thank you o'wise one!
Word to type: congress...
Quote ....That ability to listen in on the plotters' conversations "allowed us to see and understand all the connections" ........ said the official, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence.
.........
"Because we could understand it, we could help our partners through a long process of monitoring and observation,
Mr. McConnell's disclosure to the Senate Homeland
Unquote
Notice that Mr. McConnell notes this was a "LONG" process. This means that normal eavesdropping Laws would have allowed Federal Agencies to have gone through the usual Court system to grant access to these communications. i.e. there is nothing here that shows that the exisiting process needed to be sidestepped in any way. The existing systems allows for eavesdropping followed by by a court approval.
Or am I missing something?
It really makes me wonder why "officials" try to highlight their needs by quoting cases which don't seem to need the application of new laws....
Again: What am I missing here?
He has a more recent update:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance103.html
According to Vance, US forces occupy (most recently): "159 regions of the world: 144 countries and 15 territories."
There are now 192 countries in the world.
The DOD spends approximately $200 Million dollars a *day* maintaining this empire.
With numbers like these, one begins to understand the complaint of other people in the world who express angry at the US for being on thier soil.
Nobody with even an ounce of sense is arguing that eavesdropping as a whole is wrong or useless. To make a long point short, eavesdrop all you want, just get a goddamn warrant for it. If you can't turn up the minuscule evidence required for that, you have no business eavesdropping, and no business keeping the process a secret from your own people. A democracy that keeps secrets from its constituents is no democracy at all.
This is a case of the boy crying wolf here, folks. Even if you've got the frickin' fenris wolf in teh paddock eatinz ur sheep, you're sure as hell not going to believe the little boy again. Bush has politically manipulated the whole terror thing as a game so long, I think the country is in serious danger because nobody is going to take this sort of thing seriously anymore. Ok, we had homeless people plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, we have idiots dubbing off tapes at the local video store where they brag they're going to knock off an army base, we've had alerts going up one side and down the other. Not a single case has turned out to be a credible terror threat. In fact, many of these cases appear to be entrapment where undercover agents created the very conspiracy they sought to defeat. The people they're rounding up are morons. These are the kind of people that a ringleader wouldn't even trust sending into a market with a suicide vest for fear of screwing it up. And yet we're told to fear them, FEAR THEM!
In IT security, the rule of thumb is you never grant a user greater permissions than he needs to fulfill his job. Violate that rule and you're going to end up scrambling to fix a mistake. When it comes to law enforcement, the same rule should apply: grant the LEO's no more authority than strictly necessary to keep the peace. Understand that they are clever bastards and will seek to exploit any new powers to the limit of the wording of the law, bugger the spirit of the law. That's why you see copyright infringement prosecuted under the PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security working with the RIAA or going after pedos.
You know what I resent? I resent that I can never take anything a government official tells me at face value. I mean, I know there should always be a sense of skepticism but now we can't even trust nonpolitical agencies because they have fucking zampolits, political officers, installed to preapprove all information disclosures. "Good news! Government scientists says global warming is a hoax!" Great! What did their report say before the zampolit edited it? Betcha it said something different.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
If I divide 9/11 fatalities by the U.S. population I get a 1:100,000 chance, not a 1:1,000,000,000,000 chance. To adjust your overall risk of death back down to pre-9/11 levels, you'd still have to telecommute for a few days to eliminate the risk of a car accident on the way to work for one week.
Although they read your emails now so you're probably better off just driving in.
Quote (Craig Murray, British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004):
...
There are some peculiar points about it: why are the German authorities connecting a Turk and two ethnic Germans, who allegedly trained in Pakistan, to an obscure and possibly non-existent Uzbek group?"
"In fact there was no evidence of the existence of this organisation other than that given by the Uzbek Security Services. There are, for example, no communications intercepts between senior terrorists referring to themselves as the Islamic Jihad Union.
If you look further into the matter, it seems the whole thing is staged.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
FISA is a mechanism to provide judicial oversight of foreign intelligence gathering operations. IMHO not having something like this gives the executive branch a lot more freedom to conduct these activities 'in the dark' so to speak, without the restrictions and checks and balances (however weak) we have today.
A lot of the Bush's administration's recent problems with wiretapping have come from ignoring FISA. If it goes away golly gee who knows WTF will happen.
FISA should be re-enabled, and strengthened so that ignoring it becomes a third rail.
The alternative to constant surveillance is a few more dead people.
I can live with that.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
TFA does not ask the right question, and McConnell does not answer it:
"Was the surveillance covered by the relatively uncontroversial provisions for surveillance conducted overseas, was it covered by the relatively uncontroversial provisions where the surveillance is reviewed by the appropriate court, or was it done under the provisions for warrantless wiretaps and data mining that are very controversial?"
Are McConnell and the Bush administration trying to run a public relations gambit by association again? Are they trying to use the fact that electronic surveillance of some sort, possibly based on relatively uncontroversial provisions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, led to the arrests to get the controversial provisions of the FISA extended as well? I recognize that this may be classified information that should not be publicly disseminated. However, our elected representatives should be asking these questions and have a right to get truthful, complete, and non-evasive answers from the executve branch. If they do receive evasive answers, then the assumption should be that these programs are not necessary and should not be renewed.
--Paul
Oh fuck! I didn't know the USA is occupying us (Finland), I didn't even know there were US soldiers here since Finland does not belong to NATO.
I believe the initial troops were deployed after Finland disassociated itself with the Nazis per Roosevelt's command to them to do so. I also believe that there was/is a small troop deployment in regards to the Global War on Prostitution that the U.S. was/is involved in during the 80s and 90s, and probably is still involved in today.
According to my Finland troop information, as of 2005 the United States has about 170 troops installed in Finland since 2000. The numbers have grown from about 17 on average in 1950 to about ten times that now. Not sure what their primary purpose is, though.
All this means is that terrorists will adapt to the new environment. Most likley heavily encrypted email. And to confuse the governments they could randomly send outs millions of heavily encrypted "spam" emails as decoys. And as usual they could always "go retro" and use short-wave radio with encrypted messages.
This "electronic vacuum" method will catch a few fish while also trampling on our rights. But these groups will always evolve. If all the $$$ used in technology - manpower - analysis were steered to creating an effective network of agents (feet on the ground) I believe the results would be more effective without trampling our basic freedoms.
We do need the capabilities to intercept messages - decode etc. --- but this shotgun method is really just a lazy-mans way to go about it.
Its not the years, its the mileage
You know what also helps stop terror plots? Turning a country into a giant maximum security prison.
Precisely. Totalitarian and fascist dictators don't subjugate their populations because it's fun, after all. They do it because it is (or they believe it to be) effective in achieving their goals.
Effectiveness alone is insufficient argument for a policy - that leads directly to the kind of "leadership" and policy that, say, Saddam Hussein employed. And IIRC, we generally thought of him as a bad guy.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
ENABLING ACT
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Wow occupying Canada too?? So my Canadian military buddies who are training in the US for the next 6 months must be occupying the US then too?? ...someone needs to look up the def of occupation because I'm pretty sure there's military troops protecting embassies in foreign countries. Yes the US is imperialistic but don't distort the facts like the media.
It is nice to see that those vetoes on the security council are nothing but showmanship and they really follow the orders of our dear leader.
They can even do it retroactively, that is to say, if it is imminent, they can tap first and then up to 3 days later, go get the FISA clearance!!!
I feel that this is a DOA argument that the US Americans need to wake up to, and such as, not being distracted by dumb blondes and such as or the Iraq.
While the U.S. does have a few too many bases around the world, I bet the only "occupiers" in many of these countries are the Marines guarding the embassies.
once the terrors learn that doing things like this is bad they won't continue to do it, then only non terrorists will have their privacy invaded.
Who cares about Germany? Besides how does that get Americans socialized health care by taxing the rich? Everybody knows that what ever George Bush does, its always wrong. He should be impeached for preventing terrorism in Germany!
A reasonable attitude, but even that has problems if you also support peoples' right (and that's the question: is it a right?) to encrypt. The only reason some people are getting caught by intercepts, is that they haven't decided to protect themselves from intercepts.
We know that networks are unsafe (though most of us choose to pretend we don't know that), and governments (which theoretically play by the rules) are only one of the threats. As this knowledge continues to creep into the popular consciousness, there is going to be an urge to protect ourselves from governments, criminals, market-research miners, private investigators, etc. Once we take that step, tapping without (or even with!) a warrant won't be possible. What then?
Eavesdropping isn't going to remain a practical technique. Law enforcement, "security", or whatever you want to call it, is going to need to deal with that.that
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Thanks for saving me the trouble.
Really, I'm getting to the point where I'd like to buy a plane ticket to fly out and personally dope-slap the jingoistic twits who assume that objecting unaccountable, unauthorized wiretaps is the same as wanting to ban all wiretaps. "Ooooh, oooh, you want to leave us defenseless!" Twits!
I'm in favor of email tracking, wiretaps, and all that . . . IF and ONLY IF there are safeguards, tracking, and accountability. The Bush administration -- hell, ANY administration -- will find ways to use and abuse the system, including for financial and political gain, if they don't have to ask permission and log every attempt. And they, the agencies who arrange the surveillance, and the companies whose infrastructure was hacked to allow it, should be held accountable if they break the rules.
I'll leave aside the obvious WWI and II references, even though those events in Germany definitely effected people in the States.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
What people don't seem to get in this day and age is that there is no such thing as zero risk.
Absolutely there is not such thing as Zero Risk. What that does not mean, is that just because you cannot reduce risk to zero you should never do anything to try and reduce risk substantially when you can.
Being able to monitor overseas calls is a common-sense approach to risk reduction, that in this case actually worked.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Commence the "In Soviet Russia" remarks.
Have gnu, will travel.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
These people are liars, and I wouldn't trust them to take out the trash. Only a fool would trust anything they say about national security.
Soviet East Germany had practically no terrorist activities. It did have about a third of its people spying on everyone else. Universal wiretaps, keeping political order by terrorizing them.
Spying on our own people without even a warrant is terrorism. It's political control by fear and threat of force.
Under Bush, the terrorists have won everything, because Bush is a terrorist. Even in Germany, people aren't safe from Bush's terrorism. Bush is indeed the greatest terrorist of them all. By any measure, including by body count (the way terrorists terrorize) and by how much liberty he's destroyed.
--
make install -not war
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Those who would misunderstand essential liberty, will end up with neither Liberty nor Saftey regardless of what they feel they deserve.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As night-fall does not come at once, neither does oppression...It is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become victims of the darkness. --William O. Douglas
I'm not scared of terrists and you shouldn't be either. These guys were GERMANS in GERMANY NOT PLANNING TO COME TO THE US, but rather attack Americans IN GERMANY. DUH. Why should i give up my rights again?
I'm as worried about my security as the rest of you folks, but I also realize something from my 10 years of military service: there are people out there who don't give a sh*t about our laws, don't give a sh*t about us, still think of Europeans as "invaders" and "occupiers" (think: Crusades), and don't have anything to look forward to in their own lives. In their minds, being a martyr to a cause isn't any worse than their current circumstances, so it's easy to talk them into strapping on a bomb and taking out someone who has committed some kind of offense against their belief system.
We're complaining about a mostly impotent government trying to track conversations over telecommunication systems.
Every time we find out about something that this government is trying to do to track the baddies (like following banking transactions, checking library checkout records, looking for patterns in web requests, etc.), we publicize it as loudly as possible. We wring our hands and "tsk tsk" about some imagined violation of our privacy and then ask "how come they didn't know" when we hear about another bombing plot.
And, by "imagined violation", I mean that you haven't been smacked in the head with a club, the FBI hasn't broken into your dorm room and violently arrested you for smoking a little pot, and you haven't been chained against a wall and had your head cut off with a dull saw. No, the violation here is that someone may have heard you talking about going out for pizza, or might have heard you talking about whether you got laid last night, or whether you are gonna go out and score a little pot.
This isn't the '60s. J. Edgar Hoover isn't running the FBI as his own private cabal of spies, trying to defeat the American Communist Party or stop Martin Luther King from marching against civil injustice. This is 2007. The folks we're looking for would be happiest if they could set off a nerve gas cloud in a subway (Tokyo - Om Shin Rinkyo), or bomb a train (Spain - Basque Separatists), or bomb a subway (England - Al Qaeda).
Or, maybe, fly planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City.
Let's get real. Although complaints may reveal problems, they don't solve problems. If, indeed, the government is impotent to stop these nuts from planning and carrying out another attack, then it's up to *us* to figure out methods to find and stop them.
So, I say again: make a suggestion that is implementable now. Something that can be done immediately, and would be effective.
\burt
There is no such thing as bad weather - only inappropriate clothing.
and they turn out to be a bad guy, does that make it OK to shoot and kill people at random?
I'd like Mr. McConnell to explain how eavesdropping on American citizens in America lead to the break up of a plot by Arabs living in Germany who were plotting to blow up things in Germany. Because the first thing I do when I'm planning on committing a crime is to call up somebody in another country and spill the beans.
That "essential liberty" quote has become a bit like "In Soviet $country, $noun $verbs you". It's something of a cliche, much like referring to things as "Orwellian", or mentioning "1984". Congratulations for finding a way to use it without being modded down!
I, for one, welcome our Orwellian overlords who would give up our essential liberty in Soviet America, where phone taps you. It's exactly like 1984.
The ends do NOT justify the means. End of line.
The law bans election related communications within a certain time frame before an election is held - with an exception for media outlets (the press). Well who is "the Press"? The answer boils down to "whoever the government recognizes". That's the problem in a nutshell.
The last I heard (I'm not up to date) the NRA was seeking a legal declaration that they qualify as a media outlet. They have published magazines and books for about 100 years, so they have something of a case. Should they be allowed to discuss candidates when their opponents can't? How about labor unions? Or churches? Or the Electronic Frontier Foundation? So far the rules are pretty much "publish at your own peril". The government will decide later whether your organization qualified to speak about the candidates.
So far the major media outlets don't mind because they seem to be "obviously" exempt. But if campaign finance reform sticks long term, expect more "media outlets" to pop up, and existing established ones to become even more valuable targets for corruption. At that point, there will have to be some sifting out of who is the legitimate "press" and allowed to speak, and who isn't. Who do you suppose will decide that?
But let's looks at the tradeoffs:
- less government monitoring my actions
- when they do, there is accountability since they have to go through courts again
- one more thing taken away from the gov't that someone can abuse for personal/political gain.
Fair trade to me. I feel more unsafe now than before the attacks, but now I am more afraid of my government than the
"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
Do you think they would admit if they didn't need it. No. When one of the tools they like works they flog it. In the cases where it isn't used they don't mention it at all because it isn't good PR for their worldview.
A rational assessment of the impact of this kind of law is not based upon headlines which are largely spin but a real accounting of the number of times such data has been requested and the number of times it has been instrumental in convictions.
Keep in mind that they claimed success in breaking up a huge terrorist plot to plant dirty bombs which "proved the need for the PATRIOT act" with Jose Padija and a few years later ultimately convicted him of conspracy to hel Al Queda overseas (no dirty bomb involved).
Most of the "War on Terrer" has been conducted and discussed without a rational accounting of the data. For example Bush and Cheney repeatedly insisted that Guantanamo Bay, the Secret Prisons, and the NSA Wiretapping were all instrumental in securing the nation. As proof they cited the lack of attacks. Opponents (including those in the CIA) cited the risks of such strategies and their illegality. In all three cases the actual relevant details (e.g. number of prisoners caught, interrorgated, number of phones tapped, amount of data identified, arrests made, oversight process (none) etc.) have all been kept secret from everyone else panopticon-style.
As such the argument quickly devolves to "Trust us if you knew what we knew you'd endorse it too but we can't tell you." and "We can;'t review it or check it for acceptability so we cannot accept it."
Personally, as a lover of Democracy I support the latter.
With this case, I'll wait until there's some convictions and some hard data before swallowing this argument. Mike McConnell saying his favorite toy was useful doesn't count.
There's too much absolutism in your thinking. The fact that we are inconveniencing ourselves in order to prevent deaths of our citizens and significantly worse damage to our economic infrastructure is not the same as a terrorist "WIN".
Think of it this way... Now that the terrorists have provoked an increase in security measures, do you think they're happy with a job well done? Are they just going to go home now to their caves, pop open six-packs, and retire contentedly?
No, from their perspective a WIN is nothing short of complete eradication of any civilization or governmental structure that is not under their particular brand of fascist Islamist control. No, what they want is either:
THAT's what an Islamist "win" is.
Our goal is to remove this twisted cancer from human society. But to do that we have to fight the war. We are all part of the war because we are all targets. Their venom is non-discriminating, their scruples non-existent. We can't just sit back in our posh couches watching this one go by on the TV. We have to be willing to accept some inconvenience as a practical matter I think. Because the terrorists have chosen techniques of infiltration, we need to counter this with less inhibited wide-ranging information gathering. That's not a win for them, it's simply us defending ourselves in a sensible and cost-effective manner.
There are lots of long term measures we need to take as well... Encouraging standards of political freedom to rise elsewhere (yes, I see the irony), promoting high standards of education that encourage critical thinking, protecting free access to information, and ensuring economic opportunity world-wide are critical long term measures for inhibiting this kind of perversity from infecting our civilization in the future.
But people need to realize and accept that right now this is a war. We're all involved. And defensive effort is sometimes going to be inconvenient.
Frankly, I'm sorry that McConnell felt he had to come out and tell the terrorists just how to avoid one of our best ways of detecting them.
Privacy Statement: We value your privacy! It is very valuable. That's why we try to sell it whenever we can.
You know what would really help fight terrorism? Repealing the 4th & 6th Amendments. Search whoever you want and detain them as long as you want. Nobody denies that would help the war on terror. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Don't you love sunset clauses? They keep the administration off the streets, encourage refactoring, and a bad law with a sunset clause can be revoked more easily than one without.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Even if the law in question expires in about 5 months, FISA will continue to exist and be utilizes (or, rather in this administration, circumvented).
Good luck in China. I hear they need basketball players.
Not to be confused with the Union for Islamic Jihad. Or the Islamic Union for Jihad.
Completely different organizations.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
Either way, how has this affected your life? What rights have been violated?
Let's make this a more general request to all the "progressives" out there:
Which civil liberties have you personally lost as a result of Bush's regime? Be specific.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I don't think Canada is being occupied. Rather, we allow the US soldiers to stay here, so ya'll can have some advance warning next time we get a little rowdy and feel like going down to burn down the White House and Library of Congress. We're nice that way, after all, eh?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
According to my Finland troop information, as of 2005 the United States has about 170 troops installed in Finland since 2000. The numbers have grown from about 17 on average in 1950 to about ten times that now. Not sure what their primary purpose is, though.
That's a bit hard to believe, though I guess nothing is impossible. I don't think that even
the embassy here is that big so some sources for these figures would be fun to see ?
Not very many Americans are killed by nuclear bombs.
Yet.
The mujahedin are much more patient than you. It's not a secret that watching a major US city go up in nuclear hellfire would bring joy to their hearts. They pine for it.
(Maybe you would regard such a thing as "chickens coming home to roost"?)
The question is: SHOULD we be at war?
"It takes two to make peace, but it only takes one to make war."
I can't remember who said that, but it is obviously true. If we stop fighting the mujahedin, do you think they'll choose to stop fighting us? Perhaps a more thorough study of the Koran and the Sunnah (do you even know what that is?) would be helpful to you.
We should treat terrorism the same as we treat any other organized criminal enterprise.
Why do you keep calling jihad "terrorism"? Do you even know the history of jihad? Do you know what Al-Andlalus is? Do you know who Muhammad Al-Durah was? Do you know who Sayid Qutb was? Do you know what Sura 9:29 says?
This issue isn't just about you being ignorant of Islam. I think this is about you wanting to be ignorant about Islam. In other words, it's a character flaw, not just an issue of you being uninformed. Case in point:
Otherwise you people wouldn't still be crying about the "threat" from "terrorists".
Riiiight. There is no threat, and those mujahedin are merely freedom fighters for a noble cause. Now we can get back to the real bad guy, George W. Bush, who blew up the World Trade Center!
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I am from India and there are no US armed forces in India...but only diplomatic missions. Its true with many other countries in this list.
Lew Rockwell has its share of loonies. You don't need misinformation to bolster the US liking for behaving like an empire.
Here I read much hystrical commentary about "losing our rights." What rights are violated by surveilling foreign terrorists or reading pen registries?
Society is nothing but collaboration.
In any society, not only the US, not even only democracies, the people get the government that the majority believes in. Even an absolute monarch has his power for the exact same reason that the US Constitution has its power: because enough people believe him to be the supreme law of the land. If people, as was often an issue in medieval Europe, believe the preaching of the Church to be the supreme law of the land, then the monarch's power is no longer absolute, and the Pope becomes the new high ruler (well, God does, with the Pope as his mouthpiece on Earth). Likewise, if enough people believe, or at least do not dispute, that the President may act beyond or even against the principles laid out in the Constitution, then the constitution loses power, and the President becomes our new King, regardless of what any words on paper may say.
Of course, none of this is to say that the majority is always RIGHT. In fact I'd suspect that they are most often wrong.* But right or wrong, the majority always wins: the government will have the powers that the majority believe it should have, and it will get away with whatever the majority will tolerate, and this will happen regardless of the official story society tells itself about what sort of government it has.
* (Rousseau had an interesting [and mathematically valid, though perhaps not sound] statistical argument that, assuming that the average person is at least slightly more likely to be right on an issue than wrong, then the larger the group you involve in the decision on that issue, the more likely it is that the group's decision will be correct. I'm fond of the observation that if you reverse that assumption**, and hold that the average person is even slightly less than 50% likely to be right, then the larger the group you ask, the higher the odds of that group being wrong, i.e. large groups of people are collectively stupider than any individual member).
** (Of course, which assumption you run with probably depends on whether or not you usually agree or disagree with the average person, i.e. whether or not you're a member of the majority yourself. If you are, you'll think the average person is more likely to be right than wrong, and this line of reasoning will simply confirm your opinion that the popular opinion is usually the right opinion; and if you're not a member of the majority, you'll probably hold the average person to be more likely wrong than right, so this argument will merely confirm for you that the ignorant masses are a bunch of dumbfucks).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The Left never professed any credibility. Before he was even sworn in, the Left made a Blood Vow to be the never ending antagonist no matter what the Bush Administration did. Their reactions are so knee jerk I'm surprised they aren't all in wheel chairs with two blown out knees.
So it doesn't matter what Bush says, the Left, self professed open minded, had made up their minds even before day one that he was a (insert endless string of mindless, over the top, crude invectives here).
There's only one important question concerning the attacks, did the US gov't allow/participate in 9/11?
The answer to that query would explain the illegal wire-taps, suspension of habeas corpus, banning of books like "America Deceived" from Amazon, detaining of dissenters in fences miles away from events, and multiple wars based on lies.
How can the gov't be innocent in 9/11 when we have caught it lying so many times (WACO, Ruby Ridge, no WMDs, USS Liberty, Operation Northwoods, Gulf of Tonkin, Pearl Harbor, ETC.)?
In law, if you determine a person lies ONCE during his testimony, it can be assumed that he lied in the remainder of his testimony. How come we do not hold the gov't to the same standard as it holds us to?
The gov't lied to us about Iraq and more Americans have died there than in 9/11. If the gov't lied about Iraq then why is everyone so reluctant to believe that the gov't lied about 9/11?
Final link (before Google Books bends to pressure and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
FISA, pre-Shrub, allowed 72 hours of surveilance to be done while the agents awaited a warrant to SPY ON AN AMERICAN CITIZEN.
Put FISA back to the way it was, and much of my complaints go away.
Blar.
There's no question that warrantless surveillance is helpful against terrorists.
Unfortunately, it's even more helpful for presidents wanting to blackmail political opponents and establishing an autocracy. Even if Bush is too dopey for this sort of takeover, future presidents won't be.
It is intrinsically impossible to guarantee perfect safety in a democracy. If we want to have freedoms, we have to accept a certain risk that some nut will blow us up.
Perhaps the right wingers will understand it by analogy with an often-made economic point: "Just like an efficient market requires a natural level of unemployment, a functioning democracy requires a natural level of deaths from crime and terrorism."
That is quite an impressive list, although I found a few of the countries on there surprising and had never heard about US forces currently in residence. I checked the source to see how many are listed for countries like Fiji, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Lebanon, and Venezuela. Here's those troop counts
Fiji: 2
Ethiopia: 30
Eritrea: 4
Lebanon: 6
Venezuela 32
Most of the countries on that list have less than 50 American "occupiers"
The countries that have more than 100 US military personnel are:
Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Spain, Turkey, UK, Australia, China and HK, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Diego Garcia, Egypt, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Djibouti, Canada, Colombia, Cuba (Guantanamo), and Honduras.
These are 2006 figures taken from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/2006/hst0606.pdf
Since I still have the .pdf open, it looks like the current US military strength in Finland is 18.
d'oh...actually cut those in half and take off a few of those countries. I added them up without noticing that the first column is the total (which doesn't equal the sum of Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines listed for some reason).
Hmm. Grenada isn't on the list. Guess I know where I'm retiring to...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Oh wow, big whoop. They foiled one plot... and it hasn't been proven to have REQUIRED breaking the law to do so.
But you know what we DON'T hear about? How many times has this confidential information been abused? How many US Citizens are being held in the Republican's secret prisons? Has any of the information been sold, to either foreign countries or to private corporations (private or domestic)?
This is a HUGE breach of the public trust, and no amount of spin is going to remove that. In three months, nobody is going to remember this so-called plot which was supposedly foiled. But in thirty years, everyone is going to remember how Conservatives flagrantly ignored the law. And that, once again, just like Watergate, Iran-Contra, the S&L Scandal, the 2000 and 2004 (s)elections... they got away with doing it).
We can only pray people never forget this, and never again trust conservatives. Especially those who, just like the Bush family, have multi-billion dollar ties to terrorist organizations.
The internet/POTS network is a public medium.
If someone overhears someone else talking about terrorist activity and reports them is that considered an 'invasion' of privacy? Of course not!
Likewise, 'talking' on the phone/e-mail occurs over a 'public' infrastructure which is subject to anyone 'overhearing'.
Bottom line, 'communication' in general is ALWAYS subject to 'eavesdropping', otherwise there would be no... well, communication!
"Change name of organization from Islamic Jihad Union to Kittens For Peace."
Breakfast served all day!
...even in Germany, people aren't safe from Bush's terrorism...Yeah, whatever. I believe you may be suffering from BDS, or Bush Derangement Syndrome.
An American liberal (and likely /. poster) is arrested simply for being liberal and owning an axe.
If the government would just watch the borders and ports better, not to mention supporting their own border agents, they would pick up on alot more illegal and potentially dangerous activity than this eavesdropping effort. It has been said that perfectly good aliens from central and south america are getting bumped from their transportation across the border in favour of rich Iraqis and citizens of other middle eastern nations.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
The fight over FISA is not about wiretapping - it's about judicial oversight. You can tap all the god damn lines you want; just get a warrant! FISA even provides secret courts for that, for crying out loud!
So is McConnell arguing that judicial oversight would kill 50% of the executive branch's surveillance capabilities? If so, we have an excellent argument that there's a good reason for that.
If foiling the German plot was a legitimate success, why would you argue that it would be impossible to persuade a judge in a secret court to approve a warrant for it?
The reason why people let the government get away with what it does is because this thing called dream-chasing. The following is what transpires in the minds of the vast majority of Americans when confronted with the 'liberty vs. security' issue:
"I know that all what is befalling us is evil, but I have so much to lose if I were to stand against this tyranny, I could lose my job, my house, my wife and kids, my SUVs my vacations, my 401Ks, my status... All for which I worked so hard... [Pauses for a moment] You know, I like my gilded cage."
So much for "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor".
Thus nothing is done about the status quo. Anyone running for public office that has the potential for change, well, they have this to look forward to: car crash, airplane crash, recreational accident, poisoning (dioxin, polonium-210, food from +86, etc.), LHO, JWB, etc.
[Smacking self in face multiple times] Stupid, stupid, ST(o)(o)PID! I almost forgot! gov't investigations!
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
Yeah, I know, Bush and Cheney remote-controlled the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And they blew up the levy in New Orleans. And they sodomize ten year old boys and whack the heads off kittens with golf clubs in their spare time. And they framed O.J. Simpson. Blah, blah, blah.
Seriously, I don't expect everyone to sing the praises of Dubya (I am not completely crazy about all his policies), but statements like "not even the Germans are safe from his terrorism" (paraphrasing, is that okay?) reveal a pathology that goes beyond simple dislike for the man. If George W. Bush had molested you as a child (maybe you think he did? I don't know...) then perhaps said pathology might be healthy.
What flavor was the kool aide ?
Canada - Where is there a US military presents in Canada?
Question: Would "requiring a warrant" prevent the authorities from doing their job?
No sig today...
I believe the govt was unable to show ANY cases where, when presented with even the flimsiest of evidence, the "Spy Court" denied law enforcement the warrants it needed. They can even apply retroactively !
I think the problem is that the judiciary is only giving law enforcement handjobs, and not using enough lotion. They want a little more service, you know?
Just like there is a time to kill, there is a time to sacrifice your freedoms; in this case, some freedom of privacy. Not saying that time is now (i actually think its not), but for sake of argument, there may well come a time where lockdown, marshall law, govt wire-tapping, or something more serious is the best course of action to correct a bigger problem. A lesser of two evils. Right now, the chances of you getting killed from terrorist activity on US soil is somewhere between slim and none. But, its not too far-fetched to imagine a scenario where bomb attacks or whatever on US soil actually start happening with alarming frequency. Maybe thats even up for debate in this scenario, but still... it would be a terrible lack of judgment to insist of preserving every one of your freedoms in the face of actual danger. Some people are actually implying that here. Its been said before, 'how many times do you have to get hit in the face before you defend yourself?'. Some problems just don't go away.
"50 percent of our ability to track, understand and know about these terrorists, what they're doing to train, what they're doing to recruit and what they're doing to try to get into this country.'"
That's funny.. I was pretty sure we used spies to find out what people are doing outside of the country, and I wasn't aware that a warrant was required for spying. And honestly, I think NBC could do a better job at domestic surveillance.
Car pulls up to the house. Man steps out of the car. The camera crew can be heard gasping, "Oh my God, he brought his son."
The decoy greets the man warmly at the door. "I'm just going to go slip into something more bulletproof. Be right back!"
In walks Chris Hansen... Hilarity ensues.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Of course the marines guarding the embassy are not in fact in the country as the embassy is US soil. So they probably should not count.
(thinking of a suitable cold war banner headline: "Soviet troops occupy Washington and New York". Of course the fine print would reveal that they were the guards at the embassy and UN delegation....)
If you count 6 marines guarding an embassy as occupation, then yes. Only about 40 of those actually have military bases. That remains a problem but silly exaggerations don't help.
Anything these people say is a lie.
They could just as easily have captured these guys without listening in to any US citizens' phone calls.
Their goal is to be able to listen in on anybody's calls for their own purposes. It has ZERO to do with "terrorism".
Period.
End of story.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Those German wiretaps didn't need to go around the FISA law that protected us from them without warrants. They didn't need the FISA law weakened last month by Congress the way Bush wanted. McConnel is lying, and the NY Times knows it, though it didn't report that.
--
make install -not war
posted article like this.
This country was founded on civil liberties. Without them, you can expect another violent and bloody revolution, although, with pharmaceuticals, they can probably postpone the inevitable for some time. Welcome to 1984, eh? Better keep taking your pills, our you might become one of us terrorists. I caught myself and my room mate acting the part of Mildred, and we got a gym membership, and quit all drugs and now we do things like go out and protest. It's amazing what you can do by removing yourself from the corporate America statistics.
I'll take encryption, freedom, and having my own guns for any asshole who wants to come into my house unannounced. Trust me, there are many logical premises that bear this philosophy out. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, et al were much smarter than I am, and certainly much smarter than you are. Don't drink the kool aid, and don't let YOUR government tell YOU that they need to spy on YOU. It's all bullshit that our corporate media masters use to up production, limit competition, and control YOU, their employees and market share. You really want a free market? Go burn down a Starbucks and grow some fucking balls. Otherwise you're just another mindless idiot parroting the bullshit they are feeding you on TV.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Bush and Company associate themselves with this rah-rah story simply as a justification for their warrantless wiretapping program. They have been able to demonstrate no positive outcome for all the invasive (and illegal) activities they have been up to -- and use the German success story to justify what they are doing.
How could anyone be so naive as to not see through it?
Once ALL your freedom and privacy have been given up -- you'll have a ZERO percent crime rate -- just like under Stalin and Hitler. Is that how you want to live? (And don't even think about telling us how much you "trust" your government. We all know what kind of monkey business they've been up to since 9/11.) See: "extraordinary rendition", "aman arar", "waterboarding"...
Who gives a fuzzy rat's a__ about how much freedom YOU are willing to give up -- FREEDOM isn't YOURS to give. It was hard won, but very easily lost if left unprotected.
Seems like good timing to me.
The eavesdropping was performed after a court in Germany granted the equivalent of the search warrant.
The Bush administration is using the success of eavesdropping to justify their illegal interception...without a court approval.
Your home is your private property.
Any police entry into your home requires a search warrant issued by a court.
Your communications is your privacy.
Any government intrusions require an eavesdropping warrant issued by a court.
In Germany, the courts will only allow limited eavesdropping...both parties to the conversation must be identified as suspects in documents presented to the court. Also they limit the time period granted for lawful interception.
They normally only record mail messages send between the terrorists. That's also what has to be done in the whole EU. Now the funny part - these terrorists just shared a GMX account and saved the messages as drafts instead of sending them. You can't eavesdrop a communication that never happens.
about "liberals" not wanting the govt to be able to surveil terrorists, the real (in fact the only) issue at question was oversight. No leftie (or rightie) was saying that the government should have no wiretapping powers, or that terrorists should get a free pass. The only question was whether or not a warrant should be needed, which by the 4th amendment it clearly should.
If I had to guess, any armed and uniformed US troops in Finland are either on US embassy grounds (which is legally US soil, a common enough arrangement for embassies) or on Finnish military installations as visiting allies, surrounded (and outnumbered) by Finnish troops.
Please state your source for the 170 number (the PDF linked to by the article you linked no longer exists).
WTF? Sweden has no US troops its soil.
I didn't even mention torture.
To my mind, the best thing a leader could do when someone blows up a bomb is go on tv and say "ok, whatever, have your bombs".
It's amusing they claim to be Christain but never turn the other cheek.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Which civil liberties have you personally lost?
You, not some website.
Talk about what you, personally, lost and how it made your life worse.
Give concrete examples.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
The war on prostitution thing seems doubtful. Prostitution is legal here. I can imagine some international cooperation on countering human trafficking, but don't see why US troops would have been here for that.
They likely have a handful of troops as embassy guards. The 170 figure seems far overblown. Alternatively, your troop information contains something we're not supposed to know about, which, all things considered, is quite possible.
Here's a thought that'll make you feel warm and fuzzy in your sleep tonight. Hold all these 'malcontents' in this fenced area, then at the conclusion of the media event, when all the tv cameras and crews are long gone, why not load thes same 'malcontents' up for a nice long vacation in Gitmo as 'enemy combatants', since they're obviously enemies of the regime, thus, by extension, enemies of the state?
Indeed, why not do that?
That's not rhetorical. Tell me why the Bush regime should NOT do precisely what you dreamed about.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Twelve. Probably "occupying" you from a nice comfy embassy.
I don't mean to be self centered at all but in this case, I'll pass.