Slashdot Mirror
Senator Bernie Sanders Asks NSA If Agency Is Spying On Congress
cold fjord writes with this excerpt from Fox News: "A U.S. senator on Friday pressed the National Security Agency on whether its controversial spying practices extend to monitoring members of Congress. 'Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?' Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asked in a letter to NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander released from the senator's office. Sanders, a self-described 'democratic socialist,' defines spying as monitoring the phone calls, emails and internet traffic of elected officials."
The NSA has already shown a willingness to lie to Congress, what does he expect? They're an equal opportunity usurper.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It's for their protection. Don't the congressmen need to be safe like the rest of us?
I mean if they are "exempt" from being spied on it seems logical the "terrorists" would become members of congress and avoid being spied on.
NSA: No
Reality: "censored" (reducted) due to harming security
People's thoughts: 50% true, 50% BS
Result: Nothing happens, business as usual
I've debated many 'True Patriots' before. The type of mindset that the NSA probably attracts. A common mode of thought for them is that the US must be protected from all enemies, forign and domestic - and that 'domestic' includes members of congress who support 'un-American' ideas. Democracy is too important to be entrusted to a democratic process.
Sorry bud but you don't know who Bernie Sanders is if you make a comment like that.
And if so I hope they either:
a. Admit it.
b. Deny it then get caught lying about it.
Either way the fallout would be both spectacular and likely productive from a citizen standpoint. If either a or b happens and it gets swept under the rug, then at least we can be certain that the United States is no longer run by the United States government. Sometimes I wonder if I will one day be answering the question, "Where were you when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were permanently suspended?"
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
At the very least, blanket metadata capture means the answer is absolutely, positively, unrepentantly YES.
"Oh no... he found the
now that HE might be being spied on he suddenly cares?
Congress has constitutional protection from the executive branch, so spying on them would likely be a major problem, even if spying on the rest of us is "legal". Also, lying to Congress is frowned upon. I think this puts Alexander in a real bind if he has to sign a letter to Congress.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
One of the things Bernie did worth noting is clearly stating what he means as spying:
Part of me thinks he has evidence of them engaging in something like that, much like Wyden asking Clapper about the wholesale collection effort. But with the clarification, and coming in written form, it makes a 'Not Wittingly' answer less liely (granted, Wyden did forewarm Clapper of the question, and did give his office time to change their answer afterwards).
If you're going to give this idiotic organization an unlimited budget with zero oversight you reap what you sow.
In an ideal system, the NSA would be by law required to wiretap all public officials and directly publish their communications to the Library of Congress with a daily transcript of "dirty conversations" sent to the FBI and appropriate OIG for human analysis. Given how Congress operates these days, and how successful they've been at pushing back on FBI attempts (post ABSCAM) to reign in congressional corruption, part of me while deeply opposed to what the NSA has been caught doing wants to see the NSA ordered to go Stasi on them.
It seems that this answer to this is a resounding "yes".
The internal logic seems to go something like this-
We are the NSA (true).
We are essential to the defense of this nation (true).
We are the subject matter experts on what it takes to perform this necessary function (true).
People who don't know what we know and who lack our accumulated organizational knowledge as a consequence can't understand the world as it needs to be understood in order for us to be effective.(true)
Any decision we've made with respect to how we should conduct ourselves and any action we've taken is because we think it will best serve the needs of this national security needs of this nation (true).
Conclusion- we would do no wrong and have done no wrong no matter what we've done and any oversight by an entity outside ourselves, including (and especially) politicians or any event which,if made public, would diminish our stature, decrease our funding or increase oversight is a mortal threat (is there any other kind!!?) to the national security of this nation and deserves to be dealt with accordingly by us, without exception (false!)
This is the logic of the computer Hal 9000 in Kubrik's 2001, A Space Odyssey .
The sad thing about congressional corruption is that most of the information about it is public. Being corrupt behind closed doors is one thing, but doing it openly is a mark of true contempt.
Multiple questions never work when you deal with spooks. If the answer to any part of the question is no, then they will simply answer no.
It can be very annoying when you work with spooks. They will look you carefully in the eyes, consider what you asked and and after a few seconds answer with a one liner, that never actually tells you anything.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
More importantly, why is a member of Congress more important that I am? So it is bad to spy on me but REALLY BAD to spy on someone just because they are elected? Fucking elitism at its finest.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
> so spying on them would likely be a major problem
With the current NSA guidelines, as revealed by Edward Snowden's revelations, any communications with foreign nationals would automatically be susceptible to monitoring. So it's certainly a common practice with the pervasive, wholesale telephone and email monitoring currently in place: Congress is _expected_ to speak with foreign governments as part of diplomacy, trade agreements, investigating treaties. and on behalf of foreign families of their constituents.
Whether more targeted monitoring of Congress is done by the NSA is another matter. The NSA's charter specifically forbids them from domestic intelligence, that's the role of the FBI. And for human assets in foreign intelligence, not direct communications monitoring, that's the CIA. But of course, with the new "Homeland Security" overseeing all the group's efforts, the lines have become not only blurred but deliberately concealed. When the responsibilities are deliberately overlapped and merged "to aid communication", it puts the tools of one group for specific uses in the hands of their supervisors who may have quite different agendas or guidelines. I'd look very, very carefully look at "Homeland Security", at the people who are expecte merge and organize the data and precisely what they are ordering or being allowed access to.
They've managed to keep out of most of this NSA exposure. But as an "organizing" agency for all the other departments, they're in a very dangerous position to weave those threads together into a much tighter cocoon of monitoring at every level.
A member of Congress or the Senate on a day to day basis will deal with 100x the sensitive material you will. Furthermore there's the question of who gets access to the records & can they abuse it to blackmail govt. officials or otherwise effect policy decisions.
So yes you are not a special snowflake.
The NSA isn't spying on them to get that information. My point still stands, the NSA shouldn't be spying on anyone without a valid warrant signed by a judge, just as the constitution clearly states. That they are elected doesn't make them better than you or I, and their outrage should be the same regardless of who is being spied upon without a warrant.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
He might want to ask Edward Snowden. If he really wants to know.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Still, keep believing you can score political points by pretending that the R's are better defenders of the 4th Amendment than the D's.
Which is why we need to take as much power as possible away from ALL of them. Call the Conservative's bluff: radically trim away the power of Federal Government. We can start by heavily trimming the budgets of the acronym agencies (DOD, EPA, OSHA, FDA, CIA, NSA, etc.)
So yes, spying on anyone without a warrant is bad, but spying on government officials is worse.
As the British journalist Claud Cockburn famously put it, "Believe nothing until it has been officially denied." We need those responsible to testify under oath on public record. We need their exact words. We need to hear how they deliberately mislead the public and congress with semantic games and outright lies... caught it the act, as it were.
But then our political leaders do the exact same thing all the time and usually get away with it too. So much for exemplary leadership and governance. I think Armando Iannucci "gets it" better than any comedian at the moment. Check out "The Thick of It" (UK TV show), "In The Loop" (film), and "Veep" (US TV show).
Senator, I am sorry, your question doesn't make sense. The NSA doesn't do any spying on Americans, we just collect meta-data about your computer, phone, and US mail. We also control the worlds largest bot-net that screws with peoples computers to allow us to collect even more meta-data. As we have stated previously, meta-data is NOT data and all of our hacking is done from outside the US so it is perfectly legal. Thank you Senator for ill framed question.
According to the FISA courts, all warrants are valid by virtue of having been issued by the government for an alleged national security purpose.
I assume this is clear- he's trying ot entrap them, as when Wyden forced Clapper to lie. Wyden KNEW the truthful answer to his question already, he was just forcing Clapper to lie before Congress.\
Same thing here, for sure . We can take from this that the NSA spies on Congress. Snowden has a story about it spying on Obama when he was a senator. Maybe a leak is coming about this and the Senators are preparing the ground ...
The NSA isn't spying on them to get that information.
And you know that how? As Daemonik noted, even if they get important information by accident rather than intent, it doesn't mean that they can't use that to influence legislation for the benefit of themselves and clients.
If this turns out to be a set up question for another Snowden release (like when German Chancellor Merkel called President Obama to ask whether the NSA had been spying on her only to have Snowden release that very information within a couple of days), it won't look good for the NSA.
Why is the drug trade still booming, and insider trading, organised crime still operating? You would think if this universal monitoring is happening and is effective the police would be far more effective than they actually are.
People with power in the government need to be considered differently...
That's right. Every one of them should have a Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. If we have a right to spy on anyone, it would be those in positions of power. Authority should always be treated in an adversarial manner.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What, no love for the USPS?
Are you not up to date?
The USPS is spying on you.
They photograph and archive the metadata (i.e. envelope info) of every single piece of mail.
For example a corrupted or coerced judge could easily keep a serious terrorist from being convicted.
You're living in fantasy land.
To a first approximation there are no terrorists.
A corrupt judge that the NSA has the drop on could be used to convict anyone they want to convict.
...isn't congress (supposed to be) made up of regular ordinary US citizens? Hasn't a federal judge ruled that the NSA's spying techniques are legal? So what's the news here?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
It is spying if it's "secret" data. I moved. I didn't make it a secret to the USPS. The IRS had an issue with a deduction and tried to reach me by sending me a letter. It bounced. After the legal minimum time, they made a summary judgment against me. The collections arm of the IRS asked for my current address, and was given it. The IRS could have reached me at any time, but the "secret" data was withheld from the disputes division so they had plausible deniability when I got the default judgment against me. But readily given to the collections arm when they asked. Who else knows or can get to the "secret" data? How can I find or edit the information about me? I've moved since then, and to another address not served by the USPS (as was the previous not served by the USPS, who still collected it, probably from friends and family who still correspond through postal email.
Learn to love Alaska
What is the president's clearance? If the president walked into the NSA and said "open all your files" would they? Could they? Since that's likely more than any one person could make it through, what about presidential aids? At this point, the only peaceful solution I see is if we elect a complete outsider, like Jesse Ventura, who then goes through agencies one at a time and pulls out their darkest secrets.
Learn to love Alaska
The next Snowden release will probably show proof of NSA spying on congress. Mainly if the NSA says, "No, we don't spy on congress"
Be seeing you...
It does not assume that. It reflects the fact that this is the case, and tries to use that elitism to gather some support among the political elite to overthrow the NSA ("how dare you monitor MY phone, rabble???").