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White House Wants Phone Records Without Oversight
An anonymous reader writes "The Obama administration's Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the US without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy."
LOL, all of your presidents and their administrations are the same.
They told me if I voted for McCain the president would want "illegal" wiretapping privileges! And they were right!
The Supreme Court has long held (since the 1800s) that searches at international borders don't require a warrant.
This is nothing new.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's been a pretty publicly known for many, many years now that the US has tapped international telephone cables. Histories of submarine espionage like Blind Man's Bluff go into some detail. There was no uproar then about listening in on people's private calls -- and some of these lines had US traffic going through them. The American public is pretty forgiving as long as the administration claims that it's happening off of US soil and is for a good cause.
So according to TFA, the FBI is claiming "a section of a 1978 federal wiretapping law" gives them the power to ask about phone records. TFA does not actually say what section that might be. TFA then goes on to speculate on the (il)legality of phone companies handing over records, again without any further information or even consideration for any revisions since 1978. Apparently, "experts" say that these laws are being misinterpreted by the FBI. There's no mention of a lawsuit, no mention of anything more than speculation.
That's great, guys. Please keep up the good work, fight the good fight, et cetera, but wait until you have something concrete and informative before you publish.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
You got it!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Can we now dispense with the myth of the 2-party system?
There is one party -- the party of you're going to get fucked and you're going to like it.
The two faces of this party manufacture differences to keep Americans at each other's throats. There probably are ideological differences somewhere buried, and they certainly talk differently during campaign time.
But they are remarkably similar in how they actually behave: scratch the backs that scratched them, put the screws to the companies that don't play ball, put the screws to the vanishingly small subset of "normal Americans", who don't have some other group-identifying prefix or suffix.
Add to that, cooperate with or live in ignorance of the fact that the money printers and bankers really run the show, and don't forget: expand federal government power and run ripshod over the core principles and civil liberties that set this nation apart at its founding (who reads history, anyway?) , and finally, almost all politicians of any flavor agree that the answer to every problem is to say YES to EVERYBODY, thereby having the best shot of re-election.
I didn't and don't like Obama's professed worldview: I think he's much too redistributionist for my tastes, but then, I'm more individualist than Ayn Rand. But enough about me.
Obama was supposed to FIX at least _some_ of the shit that GWB did badly. He was supposed to draw down troop deployments, he was supposed to get rid of our "parallel" justice system where torture and kidnapping and indefinite incarceration and no trials are all fine and dandy. He was supposed to give back some of the 4th amendment.
He has done none of those things, and infact, on all fronts, has made them worse.
Nearly everything that GWB was doign wrong, Obama has continued or made worse.
I hope the Obama administration thus far has been a wake-up call for people who were looking for 180 degree turn.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I think it's time to retire the "In Soviet Russia..." comments and replace them with "In Democratic America..." No, really...
So now what? You give up?
What you should have learned is that you can't pin your hopes on a superstar to fix a systemic problem.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
the same era's supreme court also upheld slavery and later provided us with Dredd Scott. So tradition is no defense against a facial violation of the Constitution. If we want unwarranted searches in certain conditions, we ought to do this thing called "amend" the constitution to allow it and enact laws in accordance with those amendments. that is what we call the "rule of law". We certainly shouldn't want to drift further away from being a nation of laws. Look at Zimbabwe for an example of our eventual destiny should we continue down the cult of personality road.
Moreover, while the old precedent was bad, it is notably made worse by other, more recent encroachments that the supreme court is trying desperately not to hear because they clearly like having a king-like president but don't want to admit it.
We used to, as a society, value the idea of improving our country and its governance to more closely resemble our ideals. Sure there were setbacks, but Americans in 1990 were notably more free than in 1950. 1950s Americans were notably freer than 1900s Americans. 1900s Americans were notably freer than 1850s ones. I think it's pretty obvious that 2010s Americans are notably less free than we were in 1990. I want us to return to the positive trend. I don't want a president encouraging dictators (*cough* Egypt *cough*) because they're our toadies and are more predictable and require less work and upkeep. I want freedom and self determination for all.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Yeah, it worked. You are afraid. Step one of becoming a model citizen is done.
Being afraid is good. Sorry that we had to focus from communism to drugs to terrorism. Uh, I mean, we have always been at war with terrorism.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
When she calls me in Europe from the US?
Mom: "Are you getting enough to eat?"
Me: "Yes, mom, I live Western Europe, not the Western Sahara."
Mom: "How's the weather over there?"
Me: "It's fine, mom."
Mom: "Are you getting enough to eat?"
Me: "You already asked me that, mom."
The scene switches to the NSA headquarters, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland.
NSA Chief Analyst: "There must be some kind of code there. She keeps asking him, "Are you getting enough to eat?" What does that mean? Assign a team to crack this code. And the reference to the Western Sahara? Call the CIA and get their agents in the Western Sahara to snoop around, there must be something going on there . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So how stupid is this? If the person calling is a criminal this isn't needed at all. And what if I call Osama every other day? I land on a no-fly list? (even though calling Osama is not a crime...) Great to have a free country with democracy and fair trial for criminals so the people can live without fear...
Clinton didn't get any special powers after the terrorist attacks occurred on his watch, but Bush did. Clinton was bashed, Bush was praised and given more power. Obama was bashed too.
Blar.