Remember that a dishonest political prosecutor or dishonest official might well take custody of this data some day. It will all be there just waiting for his use.
calm down there, Tex.
you dont need a "dishonest political prosecutor or dishonest official" to grab the info from the NSA.
You only need someone with enough cash to buy all that info. 2702(c)(6) of the US Code: phone records may be freely disclosed, at the company's discretion "(6) to any person other than a governmental entity."
that's right.
By law, with enough cash, I could personally buy all that phone call info, and donate it to the NSA.
So stop all the crying crap about your "lost privacy.
As you point out by referencing an earlier thread, some people seriously assert propositions like those in your post
Well, yeah, that was basically my point: People (12-17 year old slashdotters in particular probably) like to criticize the US and complain how we're sticking our noses in other countries business, but then expect us to stick our noses in when something bad happens to someone we like. If we behaved like BRSix and hp26 wanted, we would completely ignore Alaa's situation, because, like China can imprison Falun Gongers, Egypt should be allowed to imprison Alaa and friends.
For instance, this Alaa character. From BlackRookSix's post (and the allegedly chinese guy), we all have different definitions of "personal freedoms," where the Chinese are willing to give up some for security, Iranians will give up other freedoms, Bolivians presumably will give up other freedoms.
I have absolutely no problem saying the US is the best, freest country in the world (because we are). The Chinese imprison or kill people who disagree politically with the government. Iranians routinely hang gay men. All in the name of security, which blackrooksix and hp26 apparently are ok with.
Blackrooksix, is unfortunately, a complete moron.
The West has EVERY right to complain, and "interfere" if necessary, if some countries become "bad" enough.
-john
p.s. yes, for the sarcasm-impaired, my initial post was, well, sarcasm. Just applying a different thread to this new thread. Comparing and contrasting so to speak.
Echoing an earlier thread....how dare we judge Egypt by our arrogant, self-centered western views on human rights and justice. I'm sick of phrases like "highly inhuman and dirty practices." That's nothing more than name calling.
We need to respect Egypt's right to its culture. And these "protestors" need to get on with their lives and let Egypt rule itself. How dare they appeal to the outside world for "assistance."
Contact Egyptian embassies indeed. It is the height of arrogance to think that a bunch of foreigners should be allowed to dictate Egypt's domestic affairs.
First, the history lesson: Clinton WAS impeached. He was impeached for lying under oath. It had nothing to with sex in the oval office. Lewinsky had nothing to do with the impeachment. As an aside, Clinton lost his law license in Arkansas for 5 years as well as a result of committing perjury.
Ignorance of this basic fact is not a good way to start a "thoughtful" post.
Second: The US gov't does not control the US media. I don't even know where to begin on this one.
Three: Bush did not invade under false pretenses. And these "UN laws" of which you speak: Numerous UN resolutions told Saddam to completely disarm and allow inspectors back in, or risk being invaded. If anything, Bush was upholding these "UN laws."
And finally: "ignorant, self-centered egotism"? I'll bet you were one of the first to complain about the "torture" at abu grahib. But why would anyone be upset by that? To be upset, you would need to be judging by civilized, western standards. And that is apparently nothing more than "ignorant, self-centered egotism."
To go a step further, and take the "each country's values must only be judged within that country" nonsense to its logical conclusion, we should be torturing people at abu grahib. Abu grahib is, after all, in a middle-eastern, Arab nation, where torture was widely practiced. Using your (and other poster's) logic, torture is ok to use as long as we use it there, because that's what people there had been living with before the US came in.
Also, notice how all human rights organizations judge nations on their human rights record? It's a civilized, western standard. We don't judge nations on how they compare to Iran or Saudi Arabia or North Korea. We judge based on the US, most of Europe, Australia.
-john
p.s. "Governments abusing the rights of their people, the rights that they themselves gave them is nothing new" ???? What are you saying here? People only have the rights the gov't gives them? No. People inherently have rights. The people give the government the right to do certain thing (keep the peace, etc). Regardless of the gov't, all people have the same basic rights. Those "ignorant, self-centered" egotistical rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The suggestion that Congress has no power to interfere in any way with the president's Article II commander-in-chief power is ludicrous. There's no case law to back this up
Ask yourself one question: Can the President then sign an Executive Order limiting some of Congress' Constitutional powers? For example, can he sign an Order saying it is ok to bypass the Congress when appointing SUpreme Court Justices?
I don't think there's any case law there either.
The lack of case law does not make something ludicrous.
And the AUMF has been held by the SCOTUS to be the same as a dec. of war. Which even Ben Franklin thought was an outmoded concept back in the 1700s. Which means the "are we technically at "war"?" question itself is (sort of) a moot point. The important question is did COngress approve it.
So, as Americans, *we* are (partially) responsible for the genocide *and* we are responsible for blowing the shit out of lots of innocents supposedly to take out the whacko *we put in power*.
If we put him Saddam in power, don't we have a duty and responsibility to remove him from power? To correct our mistake, if you will?
People constantly criticize the US for supporting bad, violent, etc, leaders. Well, as soon as we remove one, that we did at one time support, why are people still upset at the US? Shouldn't you people congratulate us for finally recognizing at least ONE of our past mistakes and taking steps to correct it?
This gets rid of the palestine problem once and for all. Once palestenians have voting rights they can then fully participate in the israeli democratic process and will not resort to violence. Being full israeli citizens they will also have rights to benefits like all other israeli citizens and their standard of living will increase.
While your ideas would "techinically" end the palentinean problem (no more palestine), it hardly "solves" anything.
Hamas just won an election there. Hamas primary goal is to remove Israel from the face of the earth. There can be no peace with that kind of palestinian "leadership."
To those people I will say take a moment to think about all the buildings that were destroyed in palestine, afghanistan and iraq and all the thousands of completely innocent people who have died in those countries as well. Maybe their suffering, death and destruction of their property deserves just a tiny little bit of outrage from you too.
Ah yes.
A moment of silence for all the innocent Palestinial children intentionally targeted by a never-ending string of Jewish suicide bombers. Those who get on buses during rush hour, or stand outside a school as children are let out, and then explode themselves, killing scores of innocents!
As are many of the Palestinial suicide bombers. I have a study synopsis lying around somewhere which I can't find at the moment, but poverty, etc has essentialy nothing to do with who decides to go blow themselves up in some perverted-name-of-god.
-john
p.s. and to the poster a few below who says that bin laden, etc are all still alive sending out thier minions to die, don't forget that Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers were all pretty rich themselves. so it's not just the rich sending off the poor to die.
Being a Clinton appointee, I wonder if he has any legal training?
And what about precedent?
I thought precedent was the latest all-important judicial philosophy lately to liberals (abortion, etc). What about the precedents upholding the legality of the President's right to gather intelligence, even domestically?
since you asked (much specific info can actually also be found at wikipedia):
1. We are at war. congress' AUMF gave the Pres all the authority he needs to prevent another attack.
2. the Truong case: "The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that constitutional authority in the case before it. We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power. The question before us is the reverse, does FISA amplify the President's power by providing a mechanism that at least approaches a classic warrant and which therefore supports the government's contention that FISA searches are constitutionally reasonable."
3. Re Sealed Case No. 02-001: "Even without taking into account the President's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance, we think the procedures and government showings required under FISA, if they do not meet the minimum Fourth Amendment warrant standards, certainly come close. We, therefore, believe firmly, applying the balancing test drawn from Keith, that FISA as amended is constitutional because the surveillances it authorizes are reasonable." IOW: is the search for intelligence or a court case.
You can also check here for some excellent commentary on court rulings: www.powerlineblog.com
As the FISA court of review has said, it has NO authority to interfere with the president's Constitutional right to collect intelligence. Foreign or domestic.
There is a huge amount of case law supporting the President's actions.
To anyone criticizing Pres. Bush and the NSA program: Please provide me with some LEGAL evidence showing what the NSA did is illegal. All the case law is against you. All the actions of prior President's is against you.
You do realize that there is no "knew" it was illegal. Regardless of what you think about it, most legal scholars are coming down on the side of the President and this little thing called the Constitution, which gives the President the right to collect intelligence data, and which Congress and the Courts CAN NOT encroach upon.
It be like Bush signing an executive order saying that he can just appoint judges bypassing the senate.
Even the FISA court of review has stated that the Pres. has the "inherent" right to collect intelligence and that the court has no authorization to limit that right.
The state of the law was summed up by the Second Circuit in United States v. Duggan, 743 F.2d 59 (1984), a terrorism case in which the court, among action was illegal under all but the most fantastic interpretations of the law
Apparently you missed this: The state of the law was summed up by the Second Circuit in United States v. Duggan, 743 F.2d 59 (1984), a terrorism case in which the court, among other rulings, upheld the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was adopted in 1981. The court wrote: Prior to the enactment of FISA, virtually every court that had addressed the issue had concluded that the President had the inherent power to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence information, and that such surveillances constituted an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment.
And: The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. -Ref http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012631.php#01263 1
Please. Do at least a LITTLE research before posting. (And yes, I know this is slashdot...)
A truly Web-hip newspaper would not only allow but encourage reader comments on all of its stories, not just on a blog or two. With thousands of readers as fact-checkers, mistakes would rarely go uncorrected for long, and if there was any perceived bias in a controversial article, reader comments would make sure the other side got heard. Even better, a reader who witnessed an event the paper covered would be able to add his or her account of it to the reporter's, which would give other readers a richer and deeper view of it.
Print newspapers don't WANT the corrections.
Readers pointing out errors are the last thing people like Paul Krugman want. And what about Mary Mapes and Dan Rather (granted, TV media, but still, the point remains)? Look at their reaction when they made a whole story based on fake documents.
The current media THRIVES on their biases. They don't want other opinions out there.
The French authorities obviously took this threat seriously, as they rounded up over a dozen suspected terrorist cell members throughout the country. I forget the timing exactly, but the rioting started either just before or just after the deportations of the terror cell leaders.
At least one bomb-making factory has been found.
And, if the rioting has nothing to do with Islam, then why are local Muslim leaders offering to talk to the rioters and stop the violence? "All we demand is to be left alone." This from Mouloud Dahmani, an "emir" who promises a return to quiet in exchange for local autonomy. Basically land-for-peace. Which we all know has worked all so well for Israel.
The beginning of jihad in europe? Maybe not yet. But certainly not a good sign of things to come.
-john
p.s. I can't find it now (don't remember where I saw/heard it), but some Spanish leader (may have been Muslim) said that France needs to be more like the USA and better integrate immigrants into their culture.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly the winner.
Or maybe ManBearPig.
Nah.....definately Two Days.
-john
Remember that a dishonest political prosecutor or dishonest official might well take custody of this data some day. It will all be there just waiting for his use.
calm down there, Tex.
you dont need a "dishonest political prosecutor or dishonest official" to grab the info from the NSA.
You only need someone with enough cash to buy all that info. 2702(c)(6) of the US Code: phone records may be freely disclosed, at the company's discretion "(6) to any person other than a governmental entity."
that's right.
By law, with enough cash, I could personally buy all that phone call info, and donate it to the NSA.
So stop all the crying crap about your "lost privacy.
-john
As you point out by referencing an earlier thread, some people seriously assert propositions like those in your post
Well, yeah, that was basically my point:
People (12-17 year old slashdotters in particular probably) like to criticize the US and complain how we're sticking our noses in other countries business, but then expect us to stick our noses in when something bad happens to someone we like. If we behaved like BRSix and hp26 wanted, we would completely ignore Alaa's situation, because, like China can imprison Falun Gongers, Egypt should be allowed to imprison Alaa and friends.
For instance, this Alaa character. From BlackRookSix's post (and the allegedly chinese guy), we all have different definitions of "personal freedoms," where the Chinese are willing to give up some for security, Iranians will give up other freedoms, Bolivians presumably will give up other freedoms.
I have absolutely no problem saying the US is the best, freest country in the world (because we are). The Chinese imprison or kill people who disagree politically with the government. Iranians routinely hang gay men. All in the name of security, which blackrooksix and hp26 apparently are ok with.
Blackrooksix, is unfortunately, a complete moron.
The West has EVERY right to complain, and "interfere" if necessary, if some countries become "bad" enough.
-john
p.s. yes, for the sarcasm-impaired, my initial post was, well, sarcasm. Just applying a different thread to this new thread. Comparing and contrasting so to speak.
We need to respect Egypt's right to its culture. And these "protestors" need to get on with their lives and let Egypt rule itself. How dare they appeal to the outside world for "assistance."
Contact Egyptian embassies indeed. It is the height of arrogance to think that a bunch of foreigners should be allowed to dictate Egypt's domestic affairs.
Stupid Americans. BlackRookSix is right on.
-john
First, the history lesson:
Clinton WAS impeached. He was impeached for lying under oath. It had nothing to with sex in the oval office. Lewinsky had nothing to do with the impeachment. As an aside, Clinton lost his law license in Arkansas for 5 years as well as a result of committing perjury.
Ignorance of this basic fact is not a good way to start a "thoughtful" post.
Second: The US gov't does not control the US media. I don't even know where to begin on this one.
Three: Bush did not invade under false pretenses. And these "UN laws" of which you speak: Numerous UN resolutions told Saddam to completely disarm and allow inspectors back in, or risk being invaded. If anything, Bush was upholding these "UN laws."
And finally: "ignorant, self-centered egotism"? I'll bet you were one of the first to complain about the "torture" at abu grahib. But why would anyone be upset by that? To be upset, you would need to be judging by civilized, western standards. And that is apparently nothing more than "ignorant, self-centered egotism."
To go a step further, and take the "each country's values must only be judged within that country" nonsense to its logical conclusion, we should be torturing people at abu grahib. Abu grahib is, after all, in a middle-eastern, Arab nation, where torture was widely practiced. Using your (and other poster's) logic, torture is ok to use as long as we use it there, because that's what people there had been living with before the US came in.
Also, notice how all human rights organizations judge nations on their human rights record? It's a civilized, western standard. We don't judge nations on how they compare to Iran or Saudi Arabia or North Korea. We judge based on the US, most of Europe, Australia.
-john
p.s. "Governments abusing the rights of their people, the rights that they themselves gave them is nothing new" ???? What are you saying here? People only have the rights the gov't gives them? No. People inherently have rights. The people give the government the right to do certain thing (keep the peace, etc). Regardless of the gov't, all people have the same basic rights. Those "ignorant, self-centered" egotistical rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The suggestion that Congress has no power to interfere in any way with the president's Article II commander-in-chief power is ludicrous. There's no case law to back this up
Ask yourself one question: Can the President then sign an Executive Order limiting some of Congress' Constitutional powers? For example, can he sign an Order saying it is ok to bypass the Congress when appointing SUpreme Court Justices?
I don't think there's any case law there either.
The lack of case law does not make something ludicrous.
And the AUMF has been held by the SCOTUS to be the same as a dec. of war. Which even Ben Franklin thought was an outmoded concept back in the 1700s. Which means the "are we technically at "war"?" question itself is (sort of) a moot point. The important question is did COngress approve it.
-john
So, as Americans, *we* are (partially) responsible for the genocide *and* we are responsible for blowing the shit out of lots of innocents supposedly to take out the whacko *we put in power*.
If we put him Saddam in power, don't we have a duty and responsibility to remove him from power? To correct our mistake, if you will?
People constantly criticize the US for supporting bad, violent, etc, leaders. Well, as soon as we remove one, that we did at one time support, why are people still upset at the US? Shouldn't you people congratulate us for finally recognizing at least ONE of our past mistakes and taking steps to correct it?
-john
This gets rid of the palestine problem once and for all. Once palestenians have voting rights they can then fully participate in the israeli democratic process and will not resort to violence. Being full israeli citizens they will also have rights to benefits like all other israeli citizens and their standard of living will increase.
While your ideas would "techinically" end the palentinean problem (no more palestine), it hardly "solves" anything.
Hamas just won an election there. Hamas primary goal is to remove Israel from the face of the earth. There can be no peace with that kind of palestinian "leadership."
-johnv
To those people I will say take a moment to think about all the buildings that were destroyed in palestine, afghanistan and iraq and all the thousands of completely innocent people who have died in those countries as well. Maybe their suffering, death and destruction of their property deserves just a tiny little bit of outrage from you too.
Ah yes.
A moment of silence for all the innocent Palestinial children intentionally targeted by a never-ending string of Jewish suicide bombers. Those who get on buses during rush hour, or stand outside a school as children are let out, and then explode themselves, killing scores of innocents!
Oh wait.....other way around....sorry about that.
-john
As are many of the Palestinial suicide bombers. I have a study synopsis lying around somewhere which I can't find at the moment, but poverty, etc has essentialy nothing to do with who decides to go blow themselves up in some perverted-name-of-god.
-john
p.s. and to the poster a few below who says that bin laden, etc are all still alive sending out thier minions to die, don't forget that Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers were all pretty rich themselves. so it's not just the rich sending off the poor to die.
My god.
You still read/watch those?
Those two sources haven't released any news in years. It's all been a bunch of anti-republican tripe since (at least) Reagan.
-john
Being a Clinton appointee, I wonder if he has any legal training?
And what about precedent?
I thought precedent was the latest all-important judicial philosophy lately to liberals (abortion, etc). What about the precedents upholding the legality of the President's right to gather intelligence, even domestically?
-john
since you asked (much specific info can actually also be found at wikipedia):
1. We are at war. congress' AUMF gave the Pres all the authority he needs to prevent another attack.
2. the Truong case: "The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that constitutional authority in the case before it. We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power. The question before us is the reverse, does FISA amplify the President's power by providing a mechanism that at least approaches a classic warrant and which therefore supports the government's contention that FISA searches are constitutionally reasonable."
3. Re Sealed Case No. 02-001: "Even without taking into account the President's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance, we think the procedures and government showings required under FISA, if they do not meet the minimum Fourth Amendment warrant standards, certainly come close. We, therefore, believe firmly, applying the balancing test drawn from Keith, that FISA as amended is constitutional because the surveillances it authorizes are reasonable." IOW: is the search for intelligence or a court case.
You can also check here for some excellent commentary on court rulings:
www.powerlineblog.com
consider yourself informed.
-john
As the FISA court of review has said, it has NO authority to interfere with the president's Constitutional right to collect intelligence. Foreign or domestic.
There is a huge amount of case law supporting the President's actions.
To anyone criticizing Pres. Bush and the NSA program: Please provide me with some LEGAL evidence showing what the NSA did is illegal. All the case law is against you. All the actions of prior President's is against you.
The "domestic spying" program is legal.
'nuff said.
-john
You do realize that there is no "knew" it was illegal. Regardless of what you think about it, most legal scholars are coming down on the side of the President and this little thing called the Constitution, which gives the President the right to collect intelligence data, and which Congress and the Courts CAN NOT encroach upon.
It be like Bush signing an executive order saying that he can just appoint judges bypassing the senate.
Even the FISA court of review has stated that the Pres. has the "inherent" right to collect intelligence and that the court has no authorization to limit that right.
-john
The state of the law was summed up by the Second Circuit in United States v. Duggan, 743 F.2d 59 (1984), a terrorism case in which the court, among
3 1
action was illegal under all but the most fantastic interpretations of the law
Apparently you missed this:
The state of the law was summed up by the Second Circuit in United States v. Duggan, 743 F.2d 59 (1984), a terrorism case in which the court, among other rulings, upheld the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was adopted in 1981. The court wrote:
Prior to the enactment of FISA, virtually every court that had addressed the issue had concluded that the President had the inherent power to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence information, and that such surveillances constituted an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment.
And:
The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information.
-Ref http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012631.php#0126
Please. Do at least a LITTLE research before posting. (And yes, I know this is slashdot...)
-john
You might want to look at this regarding the 72-hours provision as well.
7 0
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012770.php#0127
-john
FISA hardly ever said no.
Not true.
FISA refusals under Bush have increased roughly 10-fold than under any previous president.
-john
By "swift boating method" you of course mean telling the truth about someone.
Right?
-john
There is no similar "Dirty Thirty" list for extreme right-wing professors.
That's probably because there aren't nearly 30 right-of-center professors at UCLA, much less "extreme right-wing" ones.
-john
http://gaypatriot.net/2006/01/16/law-school-dropou t-accuses-president-of-breaking-the-law
-john
ability to reinforce Bush's position and defer the attention away from failing economy
What failing economy? It was just starting to come back after the massive stock market collapse under Clinton.
9/11 stalled the economic recovery.
And the plane over PA wasn't shot down.
Your ignorance is shining thru.
-john
A truly Web-hip newspaper would not only allow but encourage reader comments on all of its stories, not just on a blog or two. With thousands of readers as fact-checkers, mistakes would rarely go uncorrected for long, and if there was any perceived bias in a controversial article, reader comments would make sure the other side got heard. Even better, a reader who witnessed an event the paper covered would be able to add his or her account of it to the reporter's, which would give other readers a richer and deeper view of it.
Print newspapers don't WANT the corrections.
Readers pointing out errors are the last thing people like Paul Krugman want. And what about Mary Mapes and Dan Rather (granted, TV media, but still, the point remains)? Look at their reaction when they made a whole story based on fake documents.
The current media THRIVES on their biases. They don't want other opinions out there.
-john
these are hardly muslim radicals
u bchannel_id=25&story_id=24044&name=Algerian+group+ calls+France+%E2%80%99enemy+number+one%E2%80%99
Oh?
Are you aware that in September, the Algerian Islamist terror group GSPC issued a communiqué describing France as "enemy number one" and called for Muslims to conduct attacks on France? http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?s
The French authorities obviously took this threat seriously, as they rounded up over a dozen suspected terrorist cell members throughout the country. I forget the timing exactly, but the rioting started either just before or just after the deportations of the terror cell leaders.
At least one bomb-making factory has been found.
And, if the rioting has nothing to do with Islam, then why are local Muslim leaders offering to talk to the rioters and stop the violence? "All we demand is to be left alone." This from Mouloud Dahmani, an "emir" who promises a return to quiet in exchange for local autonomy. Basically land-for-peace. Which we all know has worked all so well for Israel.
The beginning of jihad in europe? Maybe not yet. But certainly not a good sign of things to come.
-john
p.s. I can't find it now (don't remember where I saw/heard it), but some Spanish leader (may have been Muslim) said that France needs to be more like the USA and better integrate immigrants into their culture.
it will not bring anything good to the world.
There you have it.
Democracy in Iraq is a bad thing.
-john