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Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On
Advocatus Diaboli (1627651) writes The National Security Agency and FBI have covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans — including a political candidate and several civil rights activists, academics, and lawyers — under secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies.
From the article: "The individuals appear on an NSA spreadsheet in the Snowden archives called 'FISA recap.' Under that law, the Justice Department must convince a judge with the top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that there is probable cause to believe that American targets are not only agents of an international terrorist organization or other foreign power, but also 'are or may be' engaged in or abetting espionage, sabotage, or terrorism. The authorizations must be renewed by the court, usually every 90 days for U.S. citizens. ... The five Americans whose email accounts were monitored by the NSA and FBI have all led highly public, outwardly exemplary lives. All five vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, and none advocates violent jihad or is known to have been implicated in any crime, despite years of intense scrutiny by the government and the press. Some have even climbed the ranks of the U.S. national security and foreign policy establishments."
Apparently being Muslim is good enough for probable cause. So much for freedom of religion.
Yeah, it's a good thing they are monitoring civil rights activists because the last thing we want in America is civil liberties and rights. Civil rights and freedoms are unAmerican and have no business here.
Why yes, I do watch Fox News. why do you ask?
Until they incorporate they're not entitled to free speech or religious exemptions.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Back in the 50s and 60s, when the Civil Rights Movement was starting to pick up, the FBI had files on most of the major civil rights leaders, even those that advocated purely peaceful resistance. I recall reading an interview with a high-ranking FBI official at the time who said that J. Edgar Hoover was particularly proud of the file he had on Martin Luther King. They tracked relationships between civil rights groups, and tried to watch them all. I'm fairly certain that there were also secret wiretaps done on some of the people they were tracking, though I don't remember if that was the case with MLK or not.
If you look on the list, the agency responsible for maintaining the surveillance against the Muslim-Americans targeted in this case is the FBI. They haven't changed much since 1960, and it shows.
Under the heading “Nationality,” the list designates 202 email addresses as belonging to “U.S. persons,” 1,782 as belonging to “non-U.S. persons,” and 5,501 as “unknown” or simply blank. The Intercept identified the five Americans placed under surveillance from their email addresses.
It is unclear whether the government obtained any legal permission to monitor the Americans on the list. The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment for this story. During the course of multiple conversations with The Intercept, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence urged against publication of any surveillance targets. “Except in exceptional circumstances,” they argued, surveillance directly targeting Americans is conducted only with court-approved warrants. Last week, anonymous officials told another news outlet that the government did not have a FISA warrant against at least one of the individuals named here during the timeframe covered by the spreadsheet.
So, for all the idiots arguing that we have FISA to make sure mass surveillance isn't abused: it looks like they've decided to skip that step entirely.
That's just pre-9/11 thinking.
Everything's different now - we got the National Security State we always dreamed of. Better, even!
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
Every American should incorporate themselves. It's the only way to guarantee you have rights. If you are a closely held corporation, your religious rights cannot be infringed, your property cannot be confiscated, you can commit heinous crimes and only face a fine (no jail time for CEOs); and furthermore, NSA "spying" can be sued over as industrial espionage or as copyright violations under intellectual property rights laws.
Basically you have way more rights as a corporation. If you're an individual or "citizen", you're screwed.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Every American should incorporate themselves. It's the only way to guarantee you have rights. If you are a closely held corporation, your religious rights cannot be infringed, your property cannot be confiscated, you can commit heinous crimes and only face a fine (no jail time for CEOs); and furthermore, NSA "spying" can be sued over as industrial espionage or as copyright violations under intellectual property rights laws.
Basically you have way more rights as a corporation. If you're an individual or "citizen", you're screwed.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're someone who hates the recent hobby lobby decision; nonetheless, the opinion delivered by Alito directly addresses this 'corporations are treated like people and it's wrong!!!' outrage perpetuated by the left.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Many of the comments on First Look and even here are disturbing, both in their rancor and in their bigotry. These kind of haters represent a tiny but vocal minority of the US population but they seem seem to swarm to the comments sections of any story that touches on one of their hot button issues. This is especially true at "mainstream" media sites like Yahoo News, CNN, etc. Clearly their intent is to disguise their minority status and make it appear as if their radical opinions are mainstream.
Do they have RSS feeds or Twitter Bots or something that tell them "Muslim story on First Look - Troll Force GO!" or something? It's fkn amazing.
And it does real damage to our society by promoting the kind of racism and abuse depicted in TFA, both institutional and cultural, even when the majority of the people hold no such opinions...
I can see the fnords!
Yes, the moment model railroading is a Constitutionally-protected right.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The traditional understanding of the faith is that it is a military organisation, committed to the conquest of the world to establish the kingdom of Allah by force. Many Muslims have abandoned this belief - but there is an important element in Islam which allows a Muslim to lie if it will advance the cause of Islam. Therefore it is impossible to trust what Muslims say about their beliefs - because they are free to lie. In this context being a muslim could be argued to be 'probable cause' for surveillance. Harsh but true. http://www.thereligionofpeace.... offers Quaranic reference that enable this behaviour.
Naw, he's still an a-rab, and terreristy trumps republican.
This is, however, part of what I've been waiting for for a year. I've always wanted Snowden through Greenwald to name names. They say they pick up everything but it's only the targets who get their emails read and their phone calls listened to. Okay, who are the targets? Names.
So first they told us it wasn't Americans, it was only foreign terrorists. Now we find out they were targeting Americans. Now the Fox News crowd is going to say "yeah but it was just scary mooslems!" and the NSA will lie and say that this was the extent of their targeting operations.
The next article, then, I expect to show that no, they were also targeting Americans completely unrelated to Islam, like Occupy organizers or Tea Partiers. Or even political candidates. That is when the shit will really hit the fan.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Clearly indicates that a Muslim is not bound by an oath to an 'idolater'. This provides plenty of space to justify lying in court, let alone in day to day discourse...