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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
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
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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
"New law catches terrorists does"
In his old age, Yoda's grammar worse and worse has gotten.
My blog
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.
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
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.
"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