Whistleblower: NSA Has All of Your Email

mspohr writes with this excerpt from Democracy Now!: "National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion 'transactions' — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander's assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens." The parts about National Security Letters in particular are chilling, even though the issue is not new.

Comments

anyone surprised?

[stoolpigeon]

if someone is - that would be shocking.

Re:anyone surprised?

[stoolpigeon]

I think the whole Bush/Obama thing is a total distraction - and it works for too many people. It's unfortunate it is in the summary because as I see it what is happening is the that the government is travelling further down the same path - regardless of which party controls which branch. The idea that Obama is better or worse is meaningless, by and large they are exactly the same. And if somehow Romney were to beat Obama in the next election, the largest difference would be the switch in which group was defending and which was attacking the administration -- over the very same actions.

Re:anyone surprised?

[stoolpigeon]

Answer this honestly - has the operational tempo of the United States military changed significantly?

I would say no. Sure, we've drawn down troops in one country, and increased the number in others. We've also radically increased the number of assassinations we are carrying out.

Re:anyone surprised?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

The mission was over. Saddam is dead.

The Iraq war goal was filled. We're still in Afghanistan. Why?

The truth is, our country has its own "business" that is seperate of who is in office. The puppet in office maintains the gov's business and rarely changes course. Obama said he would close Gitmo. It's still open.

Obama said he would give us a public option... he lied.

Republicans play to the religious crazy people. Democrats play to the sane people... the result is the same. Corporations and power rule all, and the policies created have nothing to do with the voters.

Re:anyone surprised?

[Alomex]

Obama is a disaster.

You have a rather curious definition of a disaster. Obama inherited a country at war (make that two wars) and in the worst depression since 1929, yet he has seemingly safely delivered us to the other side: the economy is picking up, we are out of Iraq and bin Laden is dead, all while battling a congress hell bent in destroying any and every action he wished to take.

If that is a disaster, then Bush must be the apocalypse.

Re:anyone surprised?

[Alan R Light]

Um, Obama only got out because the government of Iraq insisted we get out, and seeing as the US ostensibly invaded Iraq to give the Iraqis self-government, Obama couldn't very well dispute the wishes of that government. I don't give a whole lot of credit to Bush or Obama on that count.

Re:anyone surprised?

[NeverSuchBefore]

NDAA, continued surveillance, complete disregard for the constitution... hm, nope. Not much difference there. Seems like he just pulled out when it was convenient to do so.

Re:anyone surprised?

[Alomex]

If you cannot see the flaw in Ron Paul's simplistic solutions I don't know what to say.

"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. ---Henry Louis Mencken

Re:anyone surprised?

[anagama]

Bush went to war against Iraq, Obama got us out. Can you see the wee-bit of difference there? I can and I'm voting for Obama.

This notion you have is so misinformed it's appalling.

Obama did not leave, Obama got booted. Dec. 2011 marked the end of the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by GWB. SOFA prevented the Iraqi government from local prosecution of US troops for crimes committed in Iraq. Prior to the expiration of SOFA, Obama tried to get it extended so that the troops could stay longer and avoid any risk of prosecution. Obama failed in those negotiations, in large part because the war crimes confirmed in the WikiLeaks cache, made it politically impossible for Iraqi politicians to extend SOFA.

In other words, you are giving Obama credit for ending the war in Iraq when he tried to EXTEND it. To put this in Slashdot car analogy form, that's like giving a drunk driver accolades for not killing anyone while driving home, despite being blitzed and despite intentionally swerving at oncoming traffic. That's not laudable, it's despicable even if the drunk accidentally missed everyone.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/obama-iraq_n_1032507.html

Finally, if Bradley Manning was the source behind the wikileaks cache, rather than the torture and persecution he is receiving under Obama, he should get a fucking Nobel because it is HE who got us out of Iraq.

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/

If you're going to vote for Obama, and you really believe he's some sort of peace loving socialist, consider some of the issues here: http://nothingchanged.org/

Re:anyone surprised?

[Rob the Bold]

I think the whole Bush/Obama thing is a total distraction - and it works for too many people. It's unfortunate it is in the summary because as I see it what is happening is the that the government is travelling further down the same path - regardless of which party controls which branch. The idea that Obama is better or worse is meaningless, by and large they are exactly the same. And if somehow Romney were to beat Obama in the next election, the largest difference would be the switch in which group was defending and which was attacking the administration -- over the very same actions.

I think if Romney were elected the unaccountable spying and intrusion would get worse. However, if Obama were re-elected, the unaccountable spying and intrusion would get worse. I suppose you're right that the partisan thing is a mere distraction. The problem is that Congress -- whether of the same or different party of the president in power -- absolutely refuses to reign in the White House. Are they lazy? Do they see the trend as a good thing? Do they not care? Has someone got the dirt on them all?

Re:anyone surprised?

[anagama]

That's unmitigated bullshit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/ny-times-reporter-confirm_b_500999.html

This should be big news. Even while President Obama was saying that he thought a public option was a good idea and encouraging supporters to believe his healthcare plan would include one, he had promised for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in the final bill.

As for Gitmo -- he's the commander in chief. That leaves two options: he's too weak to be president, or he lied in his campaign. Neither option is really all that awesome.

Re:anyone surprised?

[stoolpigeon]

I'm having trouble tracking down good numbers on over all 'troops on the ground' numbers - but it looks like you are right that over all numbers are dropping, especially in the last year to two years.

I still have concerns about our activity that extends well beyond the number of troops deployed. I wonder to what extent this reflects the ability to automate warfare and leave key actions to elite units. Our drone attack activity is way up - but of course this can't be compared to the past as the ability itself has been growing.

I hope you are correct that this points to a substantial difference in long term US policy but I (as is obvious) am very skeptical. I think it's unfair to say that under McCain that the same reductions could not have happened. And it's difficult to judge this based on politicians reactions to what Obama has done- and this strikes to the heart of my concern. Republicans attack Obama no matter what he does - not because of the action itself but because they want to try and see their party gain advantage. Democrats do the same. If a Republican President were dropping hell-fires all over the middle east, there would be some Dems plenty wound up.

They can't argue over substance because there isn't enough there. They are beholden to the same limited set of money brokers. So it's all flash and theater with personal profit as the ultimate goal.

Right now I don't live in the US. I've had the opportunity the last year to get a closer view of politics in another country. It pretty much looks the same. I see this as a part of the human condition. And so I don't think we can say it's the recent crop that are the problem, we need to look at building and improving systems to reign in this natural tendency towards corruption.

Right now I'd probably vote for Obama too - but only in the sense that it feels like a slightly lesser of the evils.

Re:anyone surprised?

[Zibodiz]

The thing that always bothers me is how people defend BO by comparing him to Bush. You're absolutely right, Bush was an apocalyptic failure. And so is Obama. And so will every president be, who is more concerned with politics or favors than he is with rights (personal, state, foreign international, and any other.)

Just my $.02 as a Libertarian.

Re:anyone surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now I'd probably vote for Obama too - but only in the sense that it feels like a slightly lesser of the evils.

Vote for a third party or bust. Anything else is in itself evil.

Re:anyone surprised?

[JamesTRexx]

they've got every email message that entered or exited the country

Excellent. I lost an email I sent. I'll just give them a call and have them retreive it.
Very handy, government backed backup solution...

Re:anyone surprised?

[Waffle Iron]

You can spin it all you want. You can wave you hands around as much as you want.

But it doesn't change the simple fact that GWB's Iraq war was the biggest clusterfuck this country has undertaken in the last 40 years.

End of story.

Re:anyone surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or third option: he did try to close it but Congress vetoed the plan to close Gitmo without letting the terrorist loose.

There are three branches in our government and one can often estop the other, Commander-in-Chief or not.

Re:anyone surprised?

[binarylarry]

looks like we're at 150k total as of december 2011 (why didn't you mention that?)

Re:anyone surprised?

[dkleinsc]

Obama tried to close Gitmo, and congress wouldn't let him.

Sure he could have:
"I swore a solemn oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. The Sixth Amendment specifically requires that all persons receive a speedy and public trial for any crimes they may have committed. Therefor, while I would have preferred to try the prisoners currently held in Guantanamo Bay for their crimes, with Congress preventing my from doing so in any court I am required by law to release them without charges."

That's the leverage that President Obama never used. If he had threatened to do so, Congressional Republicans would almost definitely have changed their tune about trying those prisoners. Ergo, he decided that there are prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that will under no circumstances be either released or tried in an open and fair court, but that the best way to avoid flak from loyal Democrats was to blame it on Congressional Republicans (who wanted to appear tough on terrorism to their constituents). The claim that Congress wouldn't let him, therefor, is a lie, albeit a very believable one.

He tried to include the public option, and congress wouldn't let him.

The health care act passed with absolutely no Republican support, including using budget reconciliation to get around Republican filibuster attempts in the Senate. If Obama had had a deal that the Republicans reneged on, he could have vetoed the bill and told his party allies in Congress to send him the bill he really wanted. Since he didn't, the only possibilities are (A) he got exactly the bill he wanted, and/or (B) he was not negotiating with congressional Republicans but congressional Democrats. As the sibling post alludes, it seems that the answer was that he got exactly the bill he wanted.

From my point of view as an independent, the battle in Washington is not Republicans versus Democrats or conservative versus liberal, but the 'bipartisan consensus' (forged in lobbying dollars) versus the people's real interests. And the people's real interests don't stand a chance.

Re:anyone surprised?

[chill]

(we might sill be there a hundred years from now--John McCain)

We're still in Germany, Japan and Italy and it has been almost 70 years. We're still in Korea and that has been about 50 years.

What McCain was referring to was not combat operations, but the possibility of long-term joint military bases. To imply he was talking about combat operations or hostilities is dishonest and/or naive.

Re:anyone surprised?

[IonOtter]

"At the same time Obama was campaigning on the promise of leaving Iraq."

Maybe that's the whole problem with our strategy? We treat war and occupations like it was a trip to McDonalds. Drive up, place your order, drive out. Maybe sit in the parking lot for a bit to eat, but everyone can see you're not going to stay there for very long.

The British were very different. They moved in conquered the place, and the very first thing they would build was a central government. You didn't have a pot to piss in, but by God, there was a place where you could go to complain about it! And things would expand out from there. People would see you building these huge, government buildings, building homes, paving streets, raising families, and they would understand that hey, these folks are SERIOUS about reconstruction!

Granted, the British treated the locals little better than slaves, but that's not the point? The point is, they were in it for the LONG TERM. As in lifetime.

We really could rebuild Afghanistan, but it would mean acting just like the British. But Americans-and indeed, most of the first world-no longer has any sort of stomach for that sort of long-term brutality and imperiousness.

Re:anyone surprised?

[Beelzebud]

Wake up and smell the coffee. The press didn't give a shit when Bush was doing it, they don't give a shit now that Obama is doing it, and they won't give a shit if Romney does it. They have their orders from their parent companies who all also own defense contractors.

Re:anyone surprised?

[flappinbooger]

THIS

Sure, I have political viewpoints that would probably agree more with the candidate than the incumbent, however deep down inside I know that it truly doesn't matter. There is so much blatantly open evidence that the POTUS is a figurehead for whichever power base installs them in WDC.

I was once talking with someone who was ridiculously spazzing about the current president and it set me off. I said essentially that it doesn't really matter who the POTUS is and they might as well put Nancy Pelosi in there for all the difference it would make, just the color and speed of the handbasket, not the destination. He about had a stroke.

I think the only candidate this time around who would be worth a hill of beans is Ron Paul.

No, I'm not a rabid RP supporter or shill (check my posts and how long I've been on here) I'm just sayin. And notice how he gets no coverage and ridiculously low votes in spite of his actual real popularity with those sick of the BS from WDC.

Anyway. Long story short I agree. The right/left foxnews/cnn rivalry is a distraction away from the actual important issues that get buried underneath the scandal of the week.

Re:anyone surprised?

[SteveFoerster]

I've never understood this mentality. Your vote is mind-bogglingly unlikely to make the difference either way. What exactly do you have to lose by actually voting for the candidate you like the best?

i hope...

[ks9208661]

... they got all the spam as well.

Encrypt

[betterunixthanunix]

This is a problem whose solution has been known and available for over two decades, yet deployment is stagnant.

Re:Encrypt

[betterunixthanunix]

But no guarantee that at the NSA level encryption makes any significant difference

No, but there are pretty good reasons to think that it does. It is possible that the NSA has some proof that P=NP, and that they can reduce NP complete problems to some problem in P in cubic time (any higher and I suspect that it would be impractical to do on a mass scale, even with the NSA's resources). Yet all the work on these problems suggests otherwise, the NP is a strict superset of P and that NP complete problems are disjoint from P. There are enough reasons to think this is the case that people usually just assume it (like the fact that the polynomial hierarchy collapses if P=NP).

In terms of cryptography, there is a bit more to the story. Crypto requires more than just P != NP, it also requires the existence of trapdoor one-way functions (e.g. the RSA problem) and other stronger assumptions. Many commonly used cryptography systems base their security on problems that are not even known to be NP-hard, like the RSA problem. However, these problems have been studied for a long time, and there are good reasons to think they are hard, just like the P vs. NP problem (a proof would be nice though).

If PGP/GPG keys are based upon the product of two very large primes, then I'd expect the NSA to generate a list of these products. Yes, there would be umpteen bazillion to compute. Once compiled, however, the list remains static and can be accessed to crack any cryptographic session (even 128-bit) effectively in real time.

Two problems here:

1. RSA is not the only cryptosystem in use. PGP also supports ElGamal, which is based on the discrete logarithm problem and does not involve multiplying two primes. Other cryptosystems based on problems involving lattices also exist, although they are not yet part of commonly used standards.
2. RSA keys do not have a fixed size, so even if you did assemble a large list of RSA numbers and their factors, it would become obsolete once people moved to larger key sizes. To illustrate this, consider this list: (3,5,15), (3,7,21), (5,7,35). This list will not help you, since RSA keys are much larger than the numbers in that list; for any size, though, I could pick a larger key. The point here is about the growth rate of algorithms that attack the RSA problem; that growth rate is believed to be super-polynomial, which is considered to be computationally infeasible.

Re:Encrypt

[wvmarle]

Http is more and more replaced by https (even Facebook and Google do it now). Ssh is commonplace, encrypted VPN too, torrent traffic can be encrypted, etc. At a transport level encryption is making steady inroads, and is far from stagnant.

On the other hand, for e-mails, it's not that easy. This is end-user level, and there is a good reason why it's stagnant. It's too technical for the general public to do properly, especially the key exchange with the other parties. And you have to do that over and over again, for every single e-mail contact you have. And in my case, that's easily a couple hundred. That's a bother.

If we want encryption in e-mail, then we need a major e-mail client to implement its use transparently, and by default urge users to create a PGP key for their mail. Then the mail client needs a protocol to exchange keys securely with new contacts, to collect all the keys you may need to send encrypted mail to those contacts.

And now the real fun thing: how to keep your secret key, secret? It's not a one-time key (like ssh uses). It's a permanent key; and you will have to cherish it to be able to decrypt old e-mails unless you store them decrypted on your computer. Have your secret key compromised and you're SOL.

If you can solve all that, you could become rich. Or at least help us all have encrypted e-mail.

Re:Encrypt

[Anonymous Coward]

I always saddened when I see people still recommending GPG/PGP. That system is a total hack and not a standard.

Use S/MIME. It's standardized and exists in every good client software.

Re:Encrypt

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

+1 insightful.

I like to tell people that crypto doesn't solve a problem, but instead changes the problem into one that you hope is easier.

Crypto replaces the problem of securing your communications channel with a problem of key management.

Since the first problem is usually insoluble, this is usually a good thing, but good luck doing key management when the client machines are zombies controlled by an attacker, like so many personal computers are.

Good...

[CrazyDuke]

Then they should have all those missing White House emails. ...oh, wait...

Fort Meade

[Spy Handler]

has 18 acres of mainframe computers underground. You're talking to your wife on the phone and you use the word "bomb", "president", "Allah", any of a hundred keywords, the computer recognizes it, automatically records it, red-flags it for analysis. That was 20 years ago.

Re:Fort Meade

[AthanasiusKircher]

"+4 informative"??

Hey paranoid mods -- just so you know, this is a quote from the paranoid thriller "Enemy of the State." It's meant to be funny... or at least ironic, given TFA.

Just BCC customercare@nsa.gov on all emails

[trout007]

Save the taxpayers' money.

Protest, Send your Rep Everything

[arthurpaliden]

Protest like they did in Canada. Send the Ministers and your government representatives including the White House everything. For days they CCed them on every email, posted what they are doing to their members twitter accounts. After several days of having the Parliamentary mail and web servers taken to their knees the bill they were trying to introduce was 'sent to committee' (killed). People can make a difference

Think Big

[anorlunda]

Consider the criticism on government for having failed to head off 9/11. Next consider the fact that the younger government employees will want to operate it in a 21st century way. Then, I think the logical extrapolation is to expect NSA to introduce the requirement that they can track communications retroactively.

Suppose some person X becomes suspicious. Then there will be an instant demand to examine all X's communications in recent years, together with those of X's contacts, and their contacts, N levels deep. NSA can't know in advance who X is, so they only way to meet that requirement is to intercept and archive everyone's communications all the time.

Consider the alternative. If they don't archive that stuff, and they could have, and if another 9/11 occurs, then the criticism will be wilting. They will be blamed for not doing everything possible to prevent it, They must do it as a matter of political self defense.

I posted something similar once before. Another slashdotter thought I was writing science fiction. I don't think so. I calculate that it could be done for 300 million Americans with only a dozen or so exabytes. Heck, pull out your Visa card and order an exabyte server from Oracle today. It is hardly beyond the capability of NSA.

I also believe that we privacy advocates also have to get our heads into the 21st century. It is time to shift focus from restricting government gathering of information to restricting government use of information already in their possession.

Re:Think Big

[wvmarle]

Intercepting and storing all this communication is the really easy part.

Making sense of it; finding interesting connections; that's the really hard part.

Now the probable justification would be "for the terrorists" which means you almost instantly have to branch out of the US, and intercept far more than just internal communication. And both possible and actual connections increase exponentially with the volume.

I very much remember a Dutch supermarket introducing their discount card some 20 years ago. They openly stated that they wanted to track what people bought (linking separate purchases through this discount card), in order to put products that were often bought in tandem closer together in the shelves. Better for sales, convenient for customers.

A few years later the card was cancelled. It didn't have the desired result. Sure they got a huge database of linked purchases, but they did not manage to get any useful connections out of it. And that was a relatively limited scope (just the products they sold and maybe a few million cards issued), well defined and easily parsable data (product bar code numbers; no fuzzy communication), and looking for specific connections only (products bought together frequently). Yet they didn't manage to do it.

Sure computing has advanced, US government has possibly more resources, but also the problem is so much more complex in both size and scope. It uses fuzzy human communication, not even necessarily in English, can be any language. Looking for connections - but not knowing in advance what kind of connections. In an immense database: hundreds of millions of e-mail accounts, hundreds of millions of telephone subscriptions, each producing many data points every single day. Trigger by keywords? Well good luck making them general enough to catch who you want, and specific enough to not be drowned in noise.

Only retroactively it may have some use. See who a suspect talked to, and when, can be valuable for investigations. But there surely are other and possibly easier ways to do the same: call up telephone records from their telco, analyse contents on their computer, etc.

Is the story true or not? Can't say. It's unbelievable enough to be true.

Is such a database, if it exists, useful? Probably; but I doubt it's worth the effort.

Re:Think Big

[davegravy]

I would rather live in a world where occasional acts of terrorism succeed due to missed opportunities to gather intelligence, than live in a world where there is even the REMOTE possibility that said intelligence will be used against me and my family by those we entrust to collect and manage it.

It is time to shift focus from restricting government gathering of information to restricting government use of information already in their possession.

Today's rules for how that information can justifiably be used will be different from tomorrow's. Most likely, the trend will continue towards more liberal use of the information by the authorities as time goes on. When the information exists in storage and the tyrant of the day has sufficient power to gain access to that information, and the right political / social situation presents itself, the information WILL be abused.

When - not IF - but WHEN the next "Hitler" comes to power, we need to have a system of government that limits the damage he can cause. If Hitler had access to a database of all German communications and the resources to process that information, do you think that would have made things better or worse for the Jews?

What mechanism of restricting the use of collected intelligence do you propose that would be effective against a talented and devoted psychopathic world leader?

What about Non-Americans? (Legality)

[dryriver]

So if those of us who live outside the U.S. use an American service - any American service - like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Messenger or perhaps mobile kit like an iPhone, are our messages thrown into the NSA Ueber-Surveillance-Database as well? If this is the case, the U.S. is breaking dozens and dozens of national/regional laws. Let me get this straight... You advertise a "free", supposedly "reliable" and also supposedly "private" service like say Gmail, and when I use it to communicate with my friends, acquaintances or business clients, all of my confidential messages get intercepted and funnelled into some huge NSA datacenter in Utah, or wherever it is that these spooks keep their pile of intercept-data. How can this be legal under any definition of any law? If my emails include confidential business documents - like confidential business strategy documents lets say - then "intercepting" and "evaluating" these messages is nothing short of "illicit industrial espionage". That's a serious crime that carries a prison-sentence in many countries. ------- More brave people need to come forward with what they know about clandestine "surveillance centers" being built by various governments, because if they don't, there will be no public outcry, and all these "regional efforts" will eventually be combined into one huge, powerful, global "surveillance grid" that nobody can escape from anymore.----- There is also International Law to consider. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, quoted in my signature, makes it very clear that it is illegal to arbitrarily invade someone's privacy. So these large-scale efforts to gather as many emails or phone conversations as possible, are actually a super-violation not just of regional or country laws, but of human rights treaties most countries signed years ago, and with that, a serious and eggregious violation of internation law. ----- Somebody needs to put a stop to all this nonsense. Not only do these snooping systems not contribute to a safer world in any serious capactiy, but they also threaten to create a future where everyone is watching by someone or some system in everything they do. What precisely are we supposed to tell future generations about this, for example? Are we supposed to tell them "We are sorry, but you will have to grow up and live in a world where everything you do is being watched and evaluated. We could have protested against this stuff when it first appeared on the world scene, but we were daft enough not to do that. Again, sorry for having to live in a f_cked future! Have a nice life..."

Re:At what point. . .

[turgid]

The difference is that with the government, if you trip one of their triggers, they really will have you personally identified and tracked. For practical purposes though, you are very, very likely not to be one of those people.

As the megalomaniacs in charge (politicians, secret service chiefs, police chiefs, defence etc.) become more paranoid, their desire for power and control increases and they realise they can automate much of it, things will get much worse.

However, this is an ideal time to invest in storage, server, network and database companies.

Then, we just need to write some scripts to generate thousands of pretty pointless emails a day to each other containing semi-random "trigger" text and sit back as the share prices sky rocket and the security people buy more and more kit...

Everyone's a winner.

Re:honestly...

[wvmarle]

I am not a criminal, but yes I do this on a daily basis. And I strongly suspect most people do. Not everything that's sensitive, is criminal in nature.

It's commonplace to communicate about business dealings by e-mail; also the sensitive ones. E-mail is just too convenient to stop using the moment something may be sensitive; actually that's a reason to not stop using it, as e-mail at least leaves a written record, allowing you to look back in discussions to see what was agreed upon (or not).

He hasn't worked for the NSA for 11 years

[Fred Ferrigno]

Let's be clear that this guy doesn't have access to any secret information. He's analyzing publicly available information and coming up with his own conclusions about the probable extent of the surveillance. He may well be right, but the summary makes it sound like he's the new Bradley Manning. Quoting:

AMY GOODMAN: Where do you get the number 20 trillion?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Just by the numbers of telecoms, it appears to me, from the questions that CNET posed to them in 2006, and they published the names and how—what the responses were. I looked at that and said that anybody that equivocated was participating, and then estimated from that the numbers of transactions. That, by the way, estimate only was involving phone calls and emails. It didn’t involve any queries on the net or any assembles—other—any financial transactions or credit card stuff, if they’re assembling that. I do not know that, OK.

Simply an excuse.

[pigwiggle]

The president has the power to veto any law congress has passed to limit his ability to deal with prisoners in Guantanamo. And he doesn't need congress' approval to move the 150+ detainees from Guantanamo to another facility - say Bagram, something he has already done to circumvent habeas - or give them due process or just *let them go*. The excuse, apparently, is that congress wont authorise special funds to deal with the prison and prisoners in the exact manner the president would like. But that is a far ways from keeping him from closing the camp. He could do so today.

Re:No

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

If you believe abortion is murder, you may pick Republicans as the lesser of two evils because in the event of a Court Appointee, you save a lot of lives. If you believe a woman's right to control her body is sacrosanct, you may pick Democrats as the lesser of two evils because otherwise you prevent a lot of intolerance.

Either way, you're voting for a government that kills people without trials, in terms of drone targeting. But that doesn't mean there's no difference.