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More Details Emerge On Domestic Spying Programs
The feed brings us this NYTimes story giving new details on the telecom carriers' cooperation with secret NSA (and other) domestic spying programs. One revelation is that the Drug Enforcement Agency has been running a program since the 1990s to collect the phone records of calls from US citizens to Latin America in order to catch narcotics traffickers. Another revelation is what exactly the NSA asked for in 2001 that Qwest balked at supplying. According to the article, it was access to the company's most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls.
100's of pounds of reefer madness just entered the US from Canada while you wrote your message.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
A democracy does not ideally follow the will of the majority. Ideally, it follows the law. The Constitution of the United States is set up to protect the rights of the minority, as are the rules of the American gov't. Don't conflate the will of the people with what you hear from the speaker on your television.
Well, "neo" means "like or similar to" and I don't see these neocons being anything like actual conservatives. Maybe we should call them uncons instead, since they're unlike real conservatives and like unconstitutional things, and they've certainly conned us.
Personally, I think more of them should just be "cons", as in convicts. Probably, when Bush is out of office and all the dust settles, a few of them will be. A few, just enough to make us think that some kind of justice was done. Still, I don't know how many life sentences one should receive for throwing away some thousands of lives, some few civil liberties, and a few trillion dollars of public funds, but whatever.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
While it's very likely that you mentioned Oklahoma simply for its redneck stereotype, I just wanted to point out that there actually is a sizable air force base in Midwest City. Nobody really thinks that Jenks or Kellyville are "potential targets".
That's not a democracy you're describing.. it's a constitutional republic. Which, ya know, is probably a heck of a lot better than a pure democracy, but seeing as the majority of Americans don't even know the difference between the two, what hope is there?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Actually "neo" does not mean that. Neo means new or modern ie "neoconservative" means new conservative. Neo is good for neologisms or new words.
FalconShould there be a Law?
As far as the war on drugs comment goes, it may not have affected you in a negative way, but I doubt it benefited you either (or anybody). Something like $500 billion spent and has there been any serious improvement?
Gotta call bullshit on this one; political protesters aren't exactly difficult to find. There's a couple of guys who post up outside my base every morning with signs, for example. The point of protest is (usually) to make your position known in as public a manner as possible.
There's a difference between simply seeing protesters and keeping track of them. In the early 1800s the US Supreme Court went so far as to say anonymity was an important part of the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech clause. If a person could not reasonably expect to remain anonymous then they didn't really have freedom of speech, if a person thought what they said could be used against them then they may not speak freely. I think that applies more today than it did then. Both Hitler and Stalin would have loved to have the power to track people the US has today to track protesters.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Considering that America is both a democracy *and* a constitutional republic, evidently neither do you. A democracy is any system in which the population at large controls (in theory, is) the government. A constitutional system is one in which a specific set of rules, known as the "constitution", limits the authority of the government. A republic is any system of government where (a) there is no monarchy and (b) government officials are supposed to represent some subset of the population.
Nineteenth-century America is an example of an undemocratic republic--only male landowners could vote originally, though by the current day all adult citizens can vote. Current-day Britain is an example of a democratic, constitutional monarchy--while it is not a republic, there is still an (unwritten) constitution limiting the monarchy (otherwise it would be an absolute monarchy), and democracy exists.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
While violent crime *did* fall during the Clinton Administration, the propaganda-myth that cocaine use plummeted (except for extremely short term periods) was refuted recently on the Washington Post's factchecker, with the relevant time period in this graph.
What have you been smoking? The US government has never, Listen to me, Never needed a warrant to spy on a foreign country. It doesn't even need one to spy on foreigners. That is why the FISA laws was passed.
I have to ask seeing how you describe the threats to the constitution and advocate impeachment. Do you even understand the constitution? You sound both young and brainwashed which probably means your going to attempt to argue some meaning less point about wording that you don't know how ti interpret. Don't argue with me on this, argue with the supreme court. It has already been ruled on and guess what, no warrant necessary.
This is different. The DEA was tracking the phone numbers of international calls, not the conversations of local, domestic calls, and local, domestic internet traffic. This is *different*. Please don't mistake the current situation for the status que.
That's a good interpretation, and a valid one, but not *quite* what I meant. Gangmembers sometimes have jobs. Those jobs may be in corporate buildings, even if the job is only minimum wage slinging burgers while they're on probation: that's one of many excuses for wanting unfettered and unmonitored access to the telephone switching system at every level.
The second part is quite right: any excuse for invading civil liberties is enough for someone, like the NSA or CIA or FBI or the DEA or any of a variety of federal offices (and state and local offices!) who've demonstrated their corrupt willingness to violate civil rights, local wiretapping laws, and common sense to gather whatever they consider important. Watergate was merely a prize example of this history of abuse. The McCarthy era hunt for Communists, previous hunts for Nazi sympathizers, Civil War era hunts for pro and anti slave trade activists, the Martin Luther King files at the FBI, the political investigations against protesters of major airport expansion projects cloaked as "anti-terror" operations, and other incidents throughout history demonstrate such abuses. Every government big enough and long-lasting enough has had such abuses.
...after the senate votes and possibly grants them retroactive immunity. Might be a good idea to contact your representatives and remind them that it's not in the best interests of remaining a functional country to encourage people or corporations to break the law. :)
The EFF has this nifty form to submit e-mails to your senators, but I think phoning or faxing might be more effective at the last minute.