Slashdot Mirror
Intelligence Chairman Accuses Obama Aids of Hundreds of Unmasking Requests (thehill.com)
mi writes: When American spies capture our communications with foreigners, the identities of Americans on the other side of the conversation are generally protected -- if not by bona-fide laws, then certainly by rules and regulations. A transcript of the conversation should have their name replaced with labels like "U.S. person 1". The citizen involved can only be "unmasked" with a good reason. In 2011, Obama relaxed these rules, making it much simpler even for officials without any intelligence role to obtain the identities. Predictably, certain top officials of the Obama Administration abused their access to get this information: "The [House Intelligence] committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration," [Intelligence Chairman Devin] Nunes wrote. "Of those requests, only one offered a justification that was not boilerplate."
The O administrative was probably the most manipulative administration ever.
This is the story you should follow, Americans. Not any of that other fake news.
Read the article. Who gives a shit about the messenger, if the message is true?
This is potentially massive corruption and a gross violation of the Constitution. It doesn't matter what administration did it or who is bringing it to light... It's fucking criminal.
Unmasking private citizens who have not been accused of a crime should be a crime.
Unmasking a public or political official who is trying to sell out the country should earn you a $3 fine and a gift certificate to Chili's.
By the way, did the members of the Trump administration and his campaign team speak to anyone who wasn't Russian? And why do they seem to have such awful memories when it comes to these meetings when they're filling out (or amending) their security clearance forms? I mean, the Russians I know tend to be pretty memorable people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This unmasking was for political purposes which makes it far worse. The sitting administration was running an intelligence op against the candidate of the opposition party. All the The Russians! bullshit is just a continuation of that op against the electorate.
It's also worth noting that the "Intelligence Chairman" in question is Devin Nunes. He was part of the Trump campaign, and had to recuse himself from the Russia probe because he was providing more information to the White House about the investigation than he was providing to the investigation.
I'm not saying that these accusations couldn't possibly be true. I'm saying the accuser isn't remotely credible. This is clearly yet another attempted smoke screen to help Trump cover his crimes.
I think it's fair to disregard the accusation until someone credible steps forward with real information.
In a story about Obama administration illegally using US intelligence agencies against US citizens, you posted:
By the way, did the members of the Trump administration and his campaign team speak to anyone who wasn't Russian? And why do they seem to have such awful memories when it comes to these meetings when they're filling out (or amending) their security clearance forms? I mean, the Russians I know tend to be pretty memorable people.
WILL YOU FUCKING STOP THE "OMFG!!! LOOK!!! RUSSSIA!!!!" BULLSHIT??!?!?
We're not squirrels, you fucking slobbering moron.
First thing I thought of when I saw the headline. Slashdot could really use some copyeditors.
This is the same Devin Nunes that was accused of bias in the Congressional investigation into the Russian hacking around the Presidential election. As a matter of fact, he is not acting as chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at the moment (although he is still the named chairman) as he is currently under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for disclosing classified information to the public.
Also, lets look at what happened with unmasking towards the end of the Obama administration: Certain individuals around Donald Trump, especially Michael Flynn and a few others with exceptionally close connections to him, were unmasked after the routine capture of communications between Russian officials and US citizens was discovered, communications which helped oust Flynn as National Security Advisor, as well as being central to the current expansion of official investigations into possible illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 Presidential election.
Putting the above two facts together... until I have some outside, non-partisan source that is backing Nunes, then this looks like a blatantly transparent effort to probably paint the unmasking likely discredit whoever found and revealed the above mentioned conversations, in an effort to paint the entire Russia investigation as illegitimate. And, as a matter of fact, reading a number of sources, it becomes clear that is the EXACT intent of this move. They cover it up by claiming there was 'no justification' because the forms were mostly 'boilerplate'... Yeah, well, at LOT of forms are boilerplate, that's why boilerplate exists in the first place. Just because something is boilerplate doesn't mean that there was no justification. It just means that the justification is used enough that drawing up a standard filler for it is worthwhile. So until there's actual evidence of wrongdoing, Nunes is not exactly an unbiased person in this case, and he has proven before that he is willing to use his biases and act unethically against his political opponents in an effort to retain as much power as possible. If some non-partisan source can confirm what he claims, that's when I'll give these allegations any chance of actually being true, and the actions discussed as being illicit.
I think it goes way beyond just trying to "preserve a party". It's not just a single party at risk. It's an entire political ideology we're seeing being rejected by the masses on a global scale.
What we're seeing is a slow, world-wide collapse of leftist ideology in progress. This includes communism, socialism, and neoconservatism (which despite its name has little to do with conservatism).
Leftism's most recent rise started roughly 100 years ago, with the rise of communism and socialism. It gained steam throughout the following century, and by the 1970s it had established a strong foothold even within most Western nations. The United States, which has typically been quite politically conservative, has experienced the effect of leftism much later than many other nations did.
But as an inherently unsustainable ideology, leftism's collapse started in the 1980s. The most extreme forms collapsed first, such as in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Mao-era China. Next we saw the collapse of extremely socialist European countries (like Greece, Italy and Spain, and to some extent even France, the UK, and the Scandinavian nations) during the early 2000s. Now we're seeing it happen in the US, too.
The masses have rejected leftism. They've seen how leftist economic policies do not work. They're tired of being taxed at extreme levels to support these failed economic policies. They're also tired of leftist social programs that exploit and harm the capable in favor of the inept and incompetent. They're tired of the social degeneracy that leftism promotes. They're tired of the bureaucracy that leftism imposes. They're tired of the failed immigration policies that leftists force. They're tired of hearing about -isms and -phobias all of the time, and they're particularly tired of being mislabeled by leftists.
It's only the beginning, but we're seeing a widespread rejection of leftist ideals. That's why we're seeing the Republicans gain so much power in the United States, not just at the federal level, but at all levels of government. Even in countries or areas when leftism isn't overtly rejected, such systems end up collapsing economically, and then socially. Venezuela is a good example of this at the national scale, and Detroit and Chicago are examples at a more local level.
Those promoting leftist ideologies know this is happening. They know that everything they have worked for is falling apart. Knowing that they can't hold on to power through democratic means, we've seen them resort of more desperate tactics. It's doubtful that they will prevail, however. They don't have the support of the masses, and especially the people who are the real drivers behind local and global economies.
President Obama allowed (and in this case encouraged) a lot of programs and policies that basically violated privacy of it's citizens, violated the constitution (see the data dragnet and court ruling on the programs revealed by Snowden), violated due process (see rendition of Americans) and even violated foreign sovereignty (see Drone programs). Every president has worked to increase the powers of it's position since George Bush Senior. We are losing credibility that we govern under a rule of law as we continue to erode due process, and find new ways muzzle and control U.S. citizens. Now any media critical of the current president is labelled "fake news" and given hostile treatment by the White House. Not exactly the free press were supposed to have. Question is, what the next attack on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and due process is to come this term.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
It's telling that the issue is trying to be framed as one about the intelligence agencies revealing U.S. citizens whose conversations were intercepted as part of legitimate intelligence gathering rather than the fact of collusion between a presidential campaign and a foreign government.
We know for an absolute fact Russia was trying to, and successfully did, influence our election. The Senate committee, the House committee and the intelligence services all agree on that unassailable fact.
Yet instead of being concerned or even upset at this interference, Nunes is trying to deflect from this fact to one of, "But people's names were revealed!", as if trying to figure out who was colluding with Russia is a bad thing.
Another thing which is even more disturbing is the continued insistence, and outright denial, by the con artist that Russia either did anything during the campaign, or if they did, that they did anything wrong. This raises the very real question of why the con artist is trying to protect Russia? Why has he abjectly refused to say a single bad word about that country despite it deliberately bombing hospitals in Syria and coordinating the chemical weapon attack in Syria, not to mention its seizure of the Crimea from Ukraine, its invasion of Ukraine and its support for terrorist groups inside Ukraine? If this were Iran doing this the con artist would be bombing away, but because it's Russia, he lets them literally get away with murder.
Further, had Hillary Clinton won and these exact same facts come out, you can be absolutely sure Republicans would be laser focused on who did what and trying to pin the collusion on her. But when it comes to the con artist, they are doing what they can to deflect from the crimes and protect him. Hypocrisy at its best.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Every major news org" is owned by a handful of people. And every US intelligence org didn't conclude squat. The ODNI report claimed "17 agencies" but in reality it said that maybe hacking was something Russia would like to do, it certainly didn't tell us that anyone actually did anything. And it was signed off on by a couple of political appointees. Oh, you also have that opposition report in which nothing of substance could be verified, which contained a /pol piss fanfic, and which allegedly came from MI5... (collusion with foreign spies!). Oh, it also put people in the wrong country because it confused them with people of the same name, displaying exactly the level of "raw intelligence" gathered (i.e. every random rumor from the internet). Even /r/conspiracy can do better than that.
Half of the articles come from the WaPo, owned by Bezos, who can be found in Wikileaks running a clandestine fund-raiser with the DNC that the DNC's own lawyers had forbidden. Then there's the Daily Beast, so you're effectively listening to Chelsea Clinton there. Or CNN? Yeah, the ones who leaked the debate questions and lied to us about it being illegal to read Wikileaks? Oh, and then people told us the emails were "altered" never mind that we have DKIM validation via a key on Hillary Clinton's own DNS server.
You can try to sweep all that under the "conspiracy" rug, but you realize that we have hard proof here, right? If you want to talk conspiracy, why not go after the hundreds of stories that cite each other and anonymous sources? Top officials have confirmed to me that most of these stories are completely fabricated. And who are you to doubt them?
If there's this big rejection of "leftist" ideas, why is it exactly that the ACA is still alive this morning?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That means that this is an attempt to generate a fake Benghazi type scandal.
Let us know when a responsible person comes to the same conclusion.
I hate to break this to you, but Russia and China are not "left." They are capitalists working on building empires, run by dictators.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
ACA is remaining because the majority in Washington are left of center, Republican and Democrat. They all believe in the concept of big government and themselves being considered the elites. There's no real difference between the two mainstream parties in this regard, just look at the amount of spending increases that occur when Republicans are in office. Since Congress passed that bogus base-line budgeting bill in 1974 there has not been an actual cut to spending. They claim a reduction in automatic growth as a cut just like the Republicans claimed they would repeal ACA and even "proved" it by holding mock votes during Obama's years knowing full well he'd veto the legislation. Now that it is time to pass a meaningful vote they are just as much in favor of big government controlling our healthcare as the Democrats are.
What we're seeing is a slow, world-wide collapse of leftist ideology in progress.
What we're seeing is a slow, world-wide collapse of democratic ideology.. regardless of what side of the isle you happen to like. Even in "democratic" states like the US, we're seeing all sorts of legislation being proposed to knock of voter "fraud" which, completely coincidentally of course, also happens to disproportionately affect democratic voters. Its was bad day when your choices for president were Trump lying to your face and Clinton lying behind your back. Its going to be a worse day when your choices are Trump Jr vs Paul Ryan -- that is, no democratic nominee at all. Even if you don't like the left, its pretty hard to argue that having an opposing view around is helpful to temper the worst ideas.
But as an inherently unsustainable ideology
You do realize that pure capitalism is equally unsustainable right? As with pretty much everything in the world, a balance is generally best. Well unless you're one of the guys at the top, then too far either direction is great as both ways give you nearly supreme power. But unless you're in the 1% (or maybe even 0.1%,) you're going to want to be in the middle where you can make your mark if you're lucky (not too far left) but not be entirely screwed when you're not (not too far right.)
The masses have rejected leftism.
No, the elite have rejected leftism, unsurprisingly. The masses have no idea wtf you're talking about and just vote for the guy who hates on Mexicans and Muslims the most (or whatever the baddie of the decade is if we're discussing other elections) when they see him on TV.
Those promoting leftist ideologies know this is happening.
Well this much is true.
The problem isn't that we're moving away from "leftism." The problem is that the right has sunk to slinging mud and the left hasn't got there yet.
Left: "Climate change is happening, here's shitloads of evidence."
Trump: "Nope fake news!"
Left: "Ok so where's you're evidence to the contrary?" Trump: "Fake news! Its all Hillary's fault!"
Left: "That doesn't even make sense."
Trump: "I know all the things. FAKE NEWS!"
Its hard to argue like that when one side just refuses to even generate a point, never mind a conclusion. And unfortunately the proles are dumb enough to like the reality TV stupidity without realizing that they're losing things like their health care (Yay they can now "choose" to have no healthcare, or a plan that costs 4x as much as it does under the ACA. Too bad they can't choose to just not get sick..) Or their right to choose if they have an abortion or not (because the political right is overrun by Christian fundamentalists who throw their will around even though the US is supposed to have separation of church and state,) and many many other rights and freedoms that all get thrown under the bus in the name of making the already-rich a little bit richer.
You are correct in that the world is moving away from socialist policies.. but I don't think your reasoning about the causes is correct, and unless there's some reversal, the long goal of the current political climate is toward oppression of the masses, rather than freedom for them, as more and more of the currently-middle class get pushed closer to the poverty line.