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Eavesdropping Didn't Help Uncover Terrorist Plot
crymeph0 writes "Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell asserted that the 'Protect America Act,' which frees the intelligence community from pesky things like judicial oversight while they eavesdrop on international conversations, was used to good effect in exposing the recently foiled terrorist plot to bomb US military facilities in Germany. Not so, according to other, anonymous, intelligence community officials. McConnell was forced to admit his errors in a phone call to Sen. Joe Lieberman. Turns out the military got wise to the bad guys months before the law was passed, simply due to alert military guards noticing odd behavior by some passers-by, a.k.a. good old fashioned police work."
If you honestly believe that McConnell didn't know he was full of shit when he made that statement, I have several bridges to sell you.
Your user name is very appropriate.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I said "yeah, suuure" the first time I read his statement that eavesdropping foiled a terrorist plot. Did any news outlets actually regurgitate his message without checking out the facts? Are those same news outlets now conveying the truth?
This seems like as good a time as any to remind ourselves about EFF's http://stopthespying.org/ web site. McConnell did not just lie to the press. He had to call Senator Lieberman to "clarify" his testimony because he lied to Congress. It hardly needs to be restated to this audience that we can tell when these guys are lying because their lips are moving, but it is worth remembering that there's something that we can and should be doing right now, which is backing up the EFF efforts.
This government (and not just this administration) has gotten very good at gaming the news cycle to mislead the citizenry into supporting some pretty vile stuff. The frustrating thing is that none of the things we have been led to do (warrantless wiretapping, waterboarding and Guantanamo) have been the least bit effective at actually solving crimes, preventing terrorist attacks or bringing the a guilty to justice. Every expert knows this, anybody who reads the experts knows this and a large segment of the population, the majority of the GOP presidential candidates, as well as Congressmen of both parties and 10% of the Slashdot community, won't believe the truth. The most effective solutions to the problem were already in place before 9-11. The failures were HUMAN failures, we already knew all the parts, we didn't connect the dots. Keeping a man in sensory deprivation for a month will break a man - it won't connect the dots. Filtering the internet traffic for keywords makes more dots, but it doesn't connect any. Over the last 6 years we haven't made ourselves any safer - only more depraved.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
I'd actually rather have them watching the bad guys' every move.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
You're right. In fact, this just proves it hasn't gone far enough. What we need is a police officer in every household, whose board and food is paid for by the residents, who are under constant supervision with cameras, hidden microphones, and bugs on every line. That should keep those pesky terrorists at bay, and after all, if you have nothing to hide, why are you worrying?
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
"which frees the intelligence community from pesky things like judicial oversight while they eavesdrop on international conversations,"
The core of the Patriot act is not intelligence gathering but sharing. This was prompted because different agencies had information about 9/11 which, had they been able to share that information, they would have been far more likely to prevent the attack. There were situations where one person down the corridor from another couldn't share their notes.
Lacking hard evidence to go by, let's give privacy advocates the benefit of the doubt and say that in principle Patriot overreaches. The fact remains that the core of it is reform of our intelligence operations that was prompted by a very real attack and any reforms need to preserve the codification of that hard won lesson.
"McConnell was forced to admit his errors in a phone call to Sen. Joe Lieberman."
Thus say anonymous intelligence community sources who were eavesdropping on the phone conversation. It has been confirmed that eavesdropping doesn't work.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Exactly. This is a case of open mouth, insert foot. McConnell was lying deliberately because TPTB want this law badly, and they'd like it to permanent, thank-you-very-much. McConnell lied in his statement towards that end, without knowing that public statements had already been made, according to TFA, by American and German intelligence working the case. Once he was told, "uhhh, sir, but they already said they used old-fashioned police work!" he had to back-pedal.
They'll say anything to try to garner the support of Congress and the American people to have unwarranted spying going on this country. Pay attention people, this is your Constitional rights that they are messing with here. Write your Congresscritter. Write the newspapers. E-mail Robin Meade. Do whatever it takes to let them know that you don't want your Constitutionally-protected rights taken away from you.
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However why is it assumed that when I use someone else's network that my conversation is secure?
That question is irrelevant. The question should be, "However why is it assumed that when I use someone else's network that my conversation isn't monitored by the government without a warrent?". And the answer to that question is: the Constitution.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Tell me something. How would they be able to know who the "bad guys" were in the first place?
They have beards, goatees or moustaches. For examples see Roger Delgado as Dr Who's The Master, Ming the Merciless or Spock in the alternate universe. Continually stroking the beard is a dead giveaway.
How would they be able to decide that you or I am not worth monitoring because we don't pose a threat, but that Ahmed and Yasir and their connections are worth investigating?
Ahmed & Yasir aren't bad guys. ok, so they sold some bad meat one time... but their deli is the best value in town.
"Leftists"? At one time the right stood for a smaller, less intrusive government. Funny how things change, isn't it?
Rather than watch everyone and keep adding names to the "people we don't think are terrorists today", they'd look for specific activities. "Follow the money."
In your scenario, what happens when the bad guy isn't doing anything bad during the time that he is being monitored?
We have over 300 million people here. The number of false positives in your plan would mean that we couldn't track any of the bad guys. We'd have spent all the money on following innocent people.
Now I want to know why, though the NY Times knew McConnell was lying, it didn't report that in that important original story.
And what will Lieberman, the Republican pretending to be a Democrat, do to a lying spook like McConnell? There's got to be a punishment for being a bad liar, even if we expect spooks like McConnell to lie. We expect them to do it competently. This clown is just another Bush chump who can't even lie straight.
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make install -not war
No he is saying the the system as it stands actually works. It does not need draconian powers.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
I doubt this will get much media coverage. Not just because of the government ties with media, but unfortunately "Security staff doing their job" doesn't get viewers as much as "New law catches terrorists does". People would rather believe a lie that makes them feel a tiny bit safer than the truth that all the security in the world will not end terrorism.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Had you not invaded Iraq,and it is plan now that the rest of the world was right and there was no reason to, you would not be fighting terorists there now.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
In Germany, Schäuble and his accompanying professional paranoiacs saw this as the clear reason that implementing the total surveillance system he has in mind for the net is the key to foiling terrorist plots.
One reporter dared to be so indiscreet to ask the question whether the fact that that attack was avoided isn't proof that the current ways of dealing with the threat are adequate.
And there was silence. Next question please?
It's funny that this avoided terrorist attack proves both, that the (questionable) systems implemented are good for us, and that the (questionable) systems they want to implement are critical because current systems are just not enough. Now, which one is it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I hope you realize that by selling bridges, you authorize buyers to destroy them (they can destroy their property, right)?
Therefore, offering bridges that you do not own is supporting terrorism.
Which is why Benjamin Frankin's statement about those who value security over freedom end will end up having neither is so prescient.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
So if I understand you correctly, you're saying the USA PATRIOT act isn't all bad, that there are some babies in it that shouldn't be thrown out with the collective bathwater?
If that's the case, then I agree with you in principle. Information sharing in this case is most likely a good thing, provided that the information was gathered ethically and legally in the first place. Sadly, while the current gang of idiots is running things, that cannot be assured, and therefore IMHO the whole thing should be scrapped in favor of a new act that explicitly defines what kinds of information can be shared and how said information should be acquired.
What needs to be remembered here is that with every erosion of our civil rights, those who would seek to destroy our way of life through acts of terror realize a victory without ever 'firing a shot', so to speak. Privacy, while perhaps not explicitly laid out in the Constitution (and that's debatable under some interpretations of the Fourth Amendment) should be protected in the name of Americans who have fought, bled, and died to ensure our rights (not to mention the civilians caught in the crossfire, both domestically and abroad).
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
His mouth is moving...
No, really. This is why there is ZERO point listening to what these people say about anything. When they talk, I just think:
Get out of here! Go on! I don't believe it. You don't say! Really?! Get out of here! Go on. I don't believe it. You don't say? Get out of here! I told you that bitch crazy!!!
What lie??
According to the dictionary "A lie is a statement made by someone who believes or suspects it to be false, in the expectation that the hearers may believe it." This is not the progessive definition where a lie is saying something and then later it proves to be wrong.
Actually reading the full report, requires multiple source since the MSNBC does not contain it, shows he said it, he was then corrected, he then informed Congress and the press(since the comment was made in a public forum) that he had made a mistake and what the correct response should of been. All in a timly manner without any method of tring to hide it.
You don't know who the bad guys are when it comes to potential terrorists, any more than you know who is a wife-beater, a tax cheat, a rapist, or any other malfeasant character. When I walk down the street, how do I know the next person I meet isn't going to pull out a knife and stab me? Either you have to be paranoid, assume that everyone is guilty, then start exonerating/condemning people, or you have to assume everyone is decent, and start looking for overt signs that they are not. I say overt, because the 9/11 hijackers did a pretty good job blending in to their surroundings, and only certain aspects of their behavior (e.g. riding in a jumbo jet flight simulator and telling an instructor they only wanted to learn how to fly it, not land it) marked them as suspect. Whould surveillance have tipped anyone off? Sure... if anyone had actually known where they were.
Look, you have to pick your poison. I don't want to live in a police state. I don't like the idea that people I do not know and have no idea if I can trust are watching me, listening to me, judging me. I'm not the world's best person -- I do bad things. Does that make me a potential terrorist? No. But while someone in the government is busy wasting time watching me, the guy five cities away with a bomb-making factory in his garage is getting busy. The Oklahoma City Bombing should have taught us that ultimately it's futile to think you can see things like this coming. If someone is determined enough, fanatical enough, and smart enough, they will get past any kind of spying/surveillance you can think of.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Oh, come on. You're telling me that you believe that the Director of National Intelligence, who has been on record has vehemently defending the unwarranted wire taps, didn't know how a long-term intelligence operation conducted in Germany with the help of the German government went down?
I live in Florida. I've got acres and acres of swamp land down South of me that I'd like to sell you.
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There's left wing media? Where?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"New law catches terrorists does"
In his old age, Yoda's grammar worse and worse has gotten.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
WARNING: Trick question.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
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Don't write to your congresscritter Put down that pen! Close that word processing program! Forget all that happy crap you learned in civics class about sharing your views with your "representative." You don't have a representative any more. You merely have someone who thinks he or she is your "leader," unfettered by either your opinions or the Constitution.
Marx was wrong: religion isn't the opiate of the masses, in modern America, the drug that keeps us numb, dumb and well-behaved is a belief that we can still make a difference by politely voicing our views to our would-be rulers and owners.
Other quotes from the book, here.
Assuming he wasn't lying about being the 20th hijacker because he was feeding his own ego. I have never seen or read anything that indicates the Government had phone records indicating that the 9/11 group communicated with each other by phone on a regular basis. If they did, they might have done it through pay phones. Even if you know who the bad guys are, it doesn't mean you're going to learn anything by listening to them.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
When your government says "bend over", stop asking "how deep?"! Seriously, you're arguing AGAINST your own rights! What the hell is wrong with you?
You can't take the sky from me...
Mr Dean worked for Nixon and was part of the watergate consperacy. He is a tried and true conservative. Yet, he believes that most of today's "republicans" have more in common with Nazi's than they do with republican ideals. Considering that even Nazi's could balance the budget, I would say that they have more in common with the Soviets. Even the gulag, the deficits, the invasions because of resources, the lies, the spying, etc. is much more soviet than Nazis.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They believed that *before* they got in power.
IOW it was a standard campaign promise.
In my honest opinion, it'll come to killing, probably a civil war, before we see a smaller government, and that would depend on which side wins.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Those who employ overused quotations from intelligent men to support their own nebulous point have neither intelligence nor a point.
--Mr. Underbridge
Actually the FBI and the CIA had a pretty good idea who the suspected terrorists were (this was part of the investigation of the Cole bombing). The CIA had bugged some of their conversations while they were in the Philippines (I think). Unfortunately the CIA did not tell the FBI that some of those suspected terrorists were in the US. If they did FBI would have no problems obtaining proper warrants.
This is all described in the book "The Looming Tower" - I strongly recomend it. Even though the end is heartbreaking.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Not really. His nickname isn't too long by /. standards.
Based on the false dichotomy presented in your analogy, however, I'd say he has a point about yours.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
the point is, if he didnt know how the operation went, how could he comment on its details?
..inconvenient at the trial
he either:
1. lied about knowing the operation specifics
2. lied knowing the operation specifics
3. thought he knew the specifics but misinterpreted the report (which in his job may be the worst)
4. didnt lie, but the wiretaps are illegal in germany and would be
Duh, they have middle-eastern names. Hasn't Fox News managed to convince us all by now that middle-eastern Muslims are the ones who we should be scared of because they blow things up? Like the Oklahoma federal building?
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Yeah, but we shut down all subsequent threats from those groups by arresting and holding without trial at Gitmo all of those ex-military Christian guys with crewcuts. Remember?
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
According to the dictionary "A lie is a statement made by someone who believes or suspects it to be false, in the expectation that the hearers may believe it."
Yes, and since the actual information regarding the case is clear that unwarranted surveillance had nothing to do with it, this means that either:
1) he was aware of the actual circumstances of the case, yet still claimed surveillance was the key or
2) he was (inexplicably for a man in his position) completely ignorant of the circumstances of the case, and just plain made up the fact that surveillance was involved.
If you make something up on the spot that supports your political agenda, do you usually suspect that what you made up is false? Yes, of course you do. And so does he. So he was lying.
The only thing he was merely wrong as opposed to lying about was whether the truth had already been made public. It had been made public, and that, and only that, is why he retracted his statement. He either knew what he said was wrong, or he knew it was not based in fact. Either way, that's a fucking lie.
I swear, the way people try to weasel out of being caught lying is as sad and reprehensible as the lies themselves.
The enemies of Democracy are
And that, ultimately, is what our wealthy, coddled society has produced; a couple of generations of people with no sense of proportion, who love to watch vicarously through entertainment and the weekly news the real and imagined sufferings of others, but are utterly incapable of accepting that the world can be a dangerous place, and no amount of supposed government protection or vigilance will ever produce the results that they want.
Previous generations, spanning thousands of years, lived a life much closer to the edge. Diseases, famines and wars were ever present. Life was frequently short and happiness was largely measured in getting some of your offspring beyond childhood. I'm not saying that's the way we should live, but we are a spoiled, detached civilization that has expectations beyond all reality. There are always going to be enemies inside and outside the gates, there are always going to be self-righteous lunatics ready to sacrifice innocent lives in the name of whatever cause strokes their egos and madness.
That's not to say that government and society as a whole doesn't have a role to play in trying to catch bad guys, and if possible, prior to some attack. But the failures of 9-11 and other terrorist attacks appear to be more about failures and ineffeciencies in the intelligence community rather than because previous legislation was to weak. But I think it is beholden on all politicians and bureaucrats to tell the truth; we cannot absolutely guarantee your safety from killers, toxic toys, storms and just plain old bad luck.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Howzat? Are you seriously dismissing the Director of National Intelligence as "one guy who works for the intelligence agency?" That's not even understatement. It's plain misrepresentation of the person who (according to IRTPA 2004 which created the position) is "the principal adviser to the President, to the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security" and "serve[s] as head of the intelligence community."
I mean, did you not RTFA, or did you just decide to comment on it without knowing such as basic piece of information as the position of DNI Mike McConnell?
Really? Really? McConnell is a political appointee of the Bush administration, while the individuals who flagged his factually incorrect statement are career intelligence personnel. McConnell is the only person in this affair who falls under the "Bush Administration."
Did you just copy/paste your post from FreeRepublic, or did you come up with such an obtuse and uninformed comment on your own?
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
What about the converse of your question? If even one person is arrested, shipped to some secret CIA prison, where he/she is waterboarded over and over again, but is ultimately determined to be totally completely freaking innocent, and you were the one that allowed the government to tap the phone call that lead to their arrest, could you live with that? I couldn't.
"It is better that a hundred guilty men should go free than that even one righteous man should suffer unjustly." --Plato (and yes, I do truly believe that).
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
That's because Yoda is German, and we're getting the Babelfish translation of what he says.
...but:
The issue at hand, which is commonly misunderstood, is that:
- Monitoring for foreign communications does not require, should not require, and will never require, a warrant, which brings us to:
- Monitoring of foreign communications where both ends are outside of the United States, but where the passage of the traffic through equipment within the United States is incidental should not require a warrant;
- Monitoring of communications where the target of said monitoring is (reasonably* believed to be) outside of the United States should not require a warrant, regardless of where the other end of the communication is (even if within the United States);
- Monitoring of US citizens as targets within the United States requires a warrant, and always has.
These capabilities should absolutely exist under the next administration as well. The United States has always had the ability to collect foreign intelligence without a warrant, and that should always be so. Whether one end of the conversation is within the United States, or neither end is but the traffic incidentally travels through equipment physically within the United States, is - and should be - irrelevant.
That is not to say that the so-called Protect America Act of 2007, the six-month temporary legislation which allows this, is perfect, or isn't overly broad. But the capability to continue collecting foreign intelligence without being encumbered by FISA is crucial. Then you might ask, "Well, where are the checks and balances, then?!" Indeed, where are the checks and balances for any foreign signals intelligence collection? Should all foreign SIGINT now go through a court and warrant process, just to "make sure" it's "really" foreign SIGINT? If you believe so, you're woefully misguided.
For a very brief and overly simple overview of the issues this addresses, see this Newsweek article.
* "Reasonable" has a standard here - it's not just someone making an arbitrary assertion. Since in today's electronic world it is virtually impossible to guarantee beyond a shadow of any doubt that a particular target may be outside of the United States, it must be reasonable to believe that they are. I know people like to think that the attorney general can just "declare" someone as being outside of the US, and commence monitoring. No. They must, by all appearances, actually appear and be believed to be outside of the United States by any reasonable assessment. And again, let me guess: "But where are the checks and balances?" To repeat, where are any such "checks" any any other foreign intelligence gathering? The difference here is that sometimes, traffic may be increasingly traveling through the United States. Instead of choosing to be hamstrung in foreign SIGINT collection just because major communication trunks happen to pass through the US, I'd choose the option of using that to our advantage. It's flat out foolish not to.
Disclaimer: much of this is culled from a previous post of mine in a previous article, but this is precisely on-point. Foreign SIGINT should not require a warrant if the target of the monitoring is already outside the United States, and especially if both endpoints of the communication are outside of the United States, regardless of the path the traffic takes. I guess I can keep going in circles with the inevitable, "Yes, but how do we really know that the situation is as you described it without the oversight of a court?" How do we know that for ANY intelligence gathering? Should all intelligence gathering of all types now go through a warrant process? Ridiculous. And on top of all of this, if you just think that administration officials are going to lie and ignore any and all laws anyway, then what difference does any wording of any law really make?
Try to at least imagine the opposing viewpoint to your own.
If somebody had invaded the US and overthrown its government and installed an even more repressive regime, wouldn't you expect more terrorism as a result?
Or were the Iraqis just supposed to smile and say, "Thank you for bringing more torture, death and paranoia to my front door. Why, yes, you can have all this oil for free"?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
"Imagine" the opposing viewpoint to my own? I've been watching it ravage my liberties, and my neighbors', for at least 6 long years. Don't try to pretend that you're starting out this conflict of rights vs liberty in you long attempts to frame the debate the way you'd like everyone to see it.
There are two issues here, not just the one you'd like to compartmentalize into.
One is indeed whether the government can wiretap people. There is a very clear law, that has been regularly updated to keep pace with both technology and threats, the FISA. It is already an exception to the Constitutional requirement for any wiretap to be allowed by a warrant after evaluation by a judge under Congress' laws, to ensure the Executive doesn't just wiretap whoever it wants. Any wiretap without a warrant is by definition not reasonable. The FISA makes an exception to the usual requirement that the evidence on which the warrant is based be subject to argument, making the court hearing it and the proceedings secret.Then it makes another exception, a really extraordinary one, that allows warrants to be obtained even after the wiretap, for 72 hours. In other words, legalizing warrantless wiretaps to accommodate emergencies, after which the wiretappers can get a warrant on evidence they already had, or, if they really took a gamble without evidence but on a "hunch" that proved correct, with the contents of the 72 hours of the tap. The Executive even gets to assign the secret members of the FISA court, and its chief judge.
That court issued something like 18,000 authorizations, and rejected something like 20, in the year before Bush started ignoring it. But there weren't really 18,000 emergency terrorist threats, or anywhere near the number of wiretaps the FISA court has issued in its 30 years of operation. It's easy to convince that court. Too easy already, given that its procedures are unconstitutional, but there are emergencies and we tend to err on the side of caution when "national security" is invoked. At least the FISA is a way to track the circumventions of the Constitution - and therefore, the abuse of our rights by our government we create to protect them. So we can try for overall oversight down the road, even if "a few eggs are broken to make the omlet" along the way.
Of course, there's a bigger issue: these rights are inalienable, not given by the Constitution or any other feature of being American (or just living here). So violating those rights abroad, for US citizens or foreigners, also violates the rights that are America's basic ideology. But we make the exception to protect ourselves more easily, quickly and cheaply, rationalized on the grounds that we create our government here to protect our rights; foreigners can create their own governments to protect their rights if they want. But of course the accumulated rights abuses abroad have made it that much easier for our enemies to recruit allies and attack us. The tradeoff is probably a losing one, when our greatest threats are terrorists, and we're alienating even our allies.
The undeniable issue here is that Bush has ignored even the easy FISA court. So there's no oversight. Instead, there's lawbreaking by the Executive, as has been found even after due process in binding Federal court with proper jurisdiction. Violating the Constitution, and then breaking the FISA. Even the 4th Amendment that's being broken is itself an extra statement of what's already implicit in the Constitution, just like the rest of the Bill of Rights. That's how important our right to privacy is. And how likely is an abusive ruler to violate it.
The other issue is that Bush cannot be trusted with this power. The FBI, for example, lied to Congress when reporting that there were no reported examples of their abusing the Patriot Acts, but there were indeed hundreds. The guy running these wiretaps, Alberto Gonzales, led a career of lying to Congress, hounded out j
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make install -not war
...and don't automatically dismiss anything that disagrees with my own personal opinion or points of view as "lies".
But it's humorous that you seem to.
One is indeed whether the government can wiretap people.
Replace "people" with "American citizens, permanent residents, and/or persons with a legal status within the United States", because they're two very, very different things, and you seem to conflate the two.
There is a very clear law, that has been regularly updated to keep pace with both technology and threats, the FISA. It is already an exception to the Constitutional requirement for any wiretap to be allowed by a warrant after evaluation by a judge under Congress' laws, to ensure the Executive doesn't just wiretap whoever it wants. Any wiretap without a warrant is by definition not reasonable. The FISA makes an exception to the usual requirement that the evidence on which the warrant is based be subject to argument, making the court hearing it and the proceedings secret.Then it makes another exception, a really extraordinary one, that allows warrants to be obtained even after the wiretap, for 72 hours. In other words, legalizing warrantless wiretaps to accommodate emergencies, after which the wiretappers can get a warrant on evidence they already had, or, if they really took a gamble without evidence but on a "hunch" that proved correct, with the contents of the 72 hours of the tap. The Executive even gets to assign the secret members of the FISA court, and its chief judge.
The main purpose of FISA is to govern the collection of foreign intelligence within the United States, and explicitly restrict and control application of surveillance of US citizens within the United States.
Foreign intelligence collection where the target, and sometimes indeed both endpoints of a communication, are outside of the United States should not require a warrant.
Of course, there's a bigger issue: these rights are inalienable, not given by the Constitution or any other feature of being American (or just living here). So violating those rights abroad, for US citizens or foreigners, also violates the rights that are America's basic ideology. But we make the exception to protect ourselves more easily, quickly and cheaply, rationalized on the grounds that we create our government here to protect our rights; foreigners can create their own governments to protect their rights if they want. But of course the accumulated rights abuses abroad have made it that much easier for our enemies to recruit allies and attack us. The tradeoff is probably a losing one, when our greatest threats are terrorists, and we're alienating even our allies.
That's a philosophical and ideological issue. If you believe we need court oversight and a warrant process for foreign intelligence collection, that's fine. It just runs counter to the very purposes and functions of intelligence, and would put the United States at a distinct disadvantage with respect to how other nations, including adversaries, collect intelligence. Our Constitution and the beliefs within it applies, by definition, to our own citizens and by extension to other persons with a valid legal status within the United States. To argue that it should apply to everyone on earth flies in the face of the current state of affairs of the world and the very notion of nation-states.
The undeniable issue here is that Bush has ignored even the easy FISA court. So there's no oversight. Instead, there's lawbreaking by the Executive, as has been found even after due process in binding Federal court with proper jurisdiction. Violating the Constitution, and then breaking the FISA. Even the 4th Amendment that's being broken is itself an extra statement of what's already implicit in the Constitution, just like the rest of the Bill of Rights. That's how important our right to privacy is. And how likely is an abusive ruler to violate it.
Foreign signals intelligence collection should, fundamentally, never require a warra
Looks like I misunderstood you, then. I completely agree with your point about people getting to know their neighbours. Living in a city is no excuse not to know the people who live around you. What's really killing us is total anonymity. We're afraid to talk to each other. We're afraid to even acknowledge others around us. That leads to people being afraid to act out to help someone in danger. Thing is there's no easy way to profile a criminal before he acts. Relying too much on that just brings out prejudices that people aren't always aware are there. I'm saying we should take a better look at why people are acting out in criminal ways. It's easy to label people off as 'sick fucks' and lock them up. I think if you look closer at these 'sick fucks' you'll find out they often started out as normal as me and you. There's a lot to be said for the power of the situation. Child abusers are often abused as children themselves. Criminals often resort to crime out of desperation and a lack of options, not because of some innate 'badness.' Not saying everyone's a saint, just that maybe there are bigger things to look at in terms of improving social welfare.
1. Poor punctuation - Periods where question marks should be, and nothing where commas should be, resulting in run-on sentences. Run-on sentences and absent question marks both encourage you to keep reading without stopping to think, which is important when a conservative is trying to get their point across.
2. Poor spelling - Spelling errors are a fact of life, nobody's perfect. But strategic use of syntax errors can distract you from logical problems in the post.
3. An Ultimatum - A choice between the idea the conservative doesn't like and something unthinkable, or socially unacceptable. Would you like (premise A) or would you like people to die/the communists/terrorists to win!?!?!?
3. Blame-shifting - Shift the blame for a problem to a liberal group, again a distraction tactic. People will be caught up in the ensuing correctional argument instead of criticizing the original post. No factual basis is needed, but an easy way to confuse the reader is to shift the blame to the past actions of a liberal group. This also increases the amount of research needed to make an informed rebuttal and therefore reduces the chance of such a reply being made.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...richie - It is a good day to code.
This is bit of 20/20 hindsight.
Hardly; it's more like a bit of a lazy, incompetent president. Taking Bush to task for not doing anything in the face of point-blank warnings is no more "20/20 hindsight" than asking him why he decided to keep reading My Pet Goat rather than getting on the phone when planes started hitting buildings. This wasn't a fluke: the exact same thing happened four years later, when he received point-blank warnings on Katrina and ignored those as well. Bush doesn't care about what he doesn't know about. And he doesn't know about much. At least Reagan could delegate.
The particulars of the attack were not known (I know there was speculation).
Insofar as alerting the FBI, the FAA, and NORAD, yes they were: Bin Laddin determined to strike the U.S., and that he might use planes to do so. It would have taken minutes for an FAA official to write a memo telling staff to report suspicious activity, and a few minutes for a NORAD commander to prepare a plan to force down planes over probable target cities, which would certainly include DC and NYC. The morning of 911, the FAA notices that three large planes are missing, which certainly counts as "suspicous", and calls the SOD, who calls NORAD, who starts tracking planes and scrambles a few fighter jets. We might not have been able to prevent the hijackings, but we certainally could have prevented them from hitting the WTC and the Pentagon.