Dick Armitage disclosed Plame's role at the agency with no malice whatsoever. There was no "leaking". "Leak" implies an intentional disclosure of sensitive information, usually for nefarious purposes. Armitage's disclosure was neither intentional, nor particularly sensitive... but emphasis is properly placed on "intentional".
The ruling you mentioned was the one where a judge ruled that the government needed a warrant to listen to a call between two individuals overseas if the signal passed through the US. That is, of course, retarded on its face, but, MORE IMPORTANTLY, that happened this year. The leak occurred in 2005, meaning that it hadn't been "ruled illegal", so I stand by my assertion that neither had happened.
I think the thrust of my comment was the fact that you don't seem to understand what the program actually is. You seemed to be one of those "they're spying on us" types. If you actually know what its about and are aware that the government isn't spying on citizens without warrants, I apologize. If you DO believe that, you're a moron. Sorry for the confusion.
Are you trying to pass yourself off as "educated"? No intelligent, informed person is disturbed by this NSA program. In doesn't affect anyone on US soil. It is a program that only involves "targets" on foreign soil. Period.
Before rambling about what "educated, young" people are going to do, maybe you should try to at least provide yourself with a passing knowledge of the topic at hand, lest you sound silly.
What part of the Constitution says it is illegal to listen to the phone calls of a jihadist in Pakistan who happens to be talking to call some guy in Dearborn, Michigan? You expect any serious person to think that a warrant on the jihadi in Pakistan makes any legal difference whatsoever when he calls the guy in Dearborn, Michigan? In both cases, the person on US soil is completely incidental to the surveilance.
Or, maybe you just don't actually understand what this program is about but you're on slashdot so you figure nobody will notice?
It helps to know what you're talking about, though. No informed person is under the impression that anyone can "see and hear everything you do". This NSA program we are discussing involves listening to specific "targets" who are necessarily located outside of the United States. The only controversy is whether a warrant is required if a non-target who is on US soil is involved in a call with a target on foreign soil or, as we have learned recently, if an entirely foreign call passes through switches in the United States.
A judge recently ruled that if two guys are talking to each other and both are physically in Pakistan, but the call passes through the US in route from jihadi A and jihadi B then a FISA warrant is required. That is why FISA was ridiculously irrelevant and needed to be overhauled. Don't listen to people on slashdot. They're idiots and 95% don't have a clue what they're talking about. All of the 8th-grader conspiracy, fascism, blah blah talk may be "fun" for the... er... "intellectually incurious" on these forums, but in reality there's nothing sinister about this. It's common sense stuff.
Interestingly, neither of those two things has occurred and your post is therefore completely irrelevant. I know this is slashdot, where uninformed group-think passes for "intellect" among masses of less-than-moderately intelligent people who desperately want to be perceived as "smart", but at least make an effort to know what you're talking about.
20 months it takes them to try to find the person who leaked highly classified information. I hope the guilty party does life in prison.
And, for what it's worth, most of you guys are complete imbeciles with all of the throwing around of words you don't understand, like "fascism", "dictatorship", blah, blah, blah. Most of you wouldn't recognize a real fascist or dictator if one of your favorite useful idiots went down to Venezuela to do a photo-op with one.
Dude, you're stretching. A canister of sarin could certainly cause "mass destruction"--tens of thousands of deaths--but that's beside the point. You're playing stupid semantic games. The term "WMD" has a broadly accepted meaning that has no stipulations attached... it has come to be used to represent anything that is a chemical, biological, or nuclear (reaction) weapon.
That's like saying "You didn't find a car in my driveway, because the alternator is bad." It's an embarrassingly absurd argument. Just accept the fact that the poll in question in reflective of the bias of the pollster, not Fox News, and is more indicative of uninformed NPR listeners than of uninformed Fox News viewers. It may be painful to someone who has an unhealthily antagonistic obsession with Fox News, but its true.
Once again, nobody is claiming that the WMDs which were found were found in huge quantities or that they were in a potent state.
Right... it was a binary question posed to the Fox News viewers, and the only correct answer is "Yes". If they had asked if huge stockpiles had been found, I'm sure the Fox News viewers would have said "No", as they appear to be the only people polled who seem to have been informed of the finds.
I do remember, at the time, wondering why none of the other networks bothered to mention it, and I remember thinking that it smacked of partisan bias to ignore those stories.
It is simply fact that every intelligence agency on the planet thought Saddam had WMDs. The questions only concerned the state of his nuclear program. Go read Hans Blix's report to the UNSC in February, right before the invasion. Inform yourself.
And, contrary to popular myth, the evidence still supports the notion that Saddam was seeking uranium in Niger... Joe Wilson's own report said that the former Nigerian PM interpreted Iraqi overtures to "expand business relations" as a desire to purchase uranium, and the British intelligence still stands by their own independent determination to that effect--indeed, their government investigated it after the whole Wilson debacle and concluded that the claims were "well founded". In other words, simply claiming that it was "a lie", like some uber-partisan cartoon, doesn't win you any points here.
The real question about the uranium is this: Why would Iraq be looking for uranium from Niger when we found 500 tons of yellowcake that they already had laying around?
We did find WMDs on multiple occassions... they were pretty much all small caches of old shells filled with mustard or sarin and which were probably were no longer effective, but it is a bit disingenuous for the pollster to take those answers and then arbitrarily say "oh, well those don't count... so Fox News viewers are dumb!". If the question was simply "Has the US found Iraqi WMDs?" then the Fox News viewers appear to be the only ones who were properly informed of those developments.
And, of course, there were also incidents where the insurgent groups got ahold of some lingering chemical weapons (mustard gas, I think) and tried to make bombs out of them--luckily, that also was old and non-effective. Those were widely reported at the time.
In other words, get off your uninformed, sanctimonious high-horse.:-)
Super Mario Galaxy Super Smash Brothers Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Mario Kart Wii Super Paper Mario WarioWare: Smooth Moves Donkey Kong Barrel Blast Mario Party 8 The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Kirby Mario Strikers Charged Many of their actual "roots" available for download.
And among third-party titles, I'm personally excited for "Project Rygar".
But they're making "Wii Fit", so those games obviously don't exist.
Sorry... correction: "inalienable right to privacy" is a combination of catchy phrases from the Declaration of Independence and case law. I previously said Constitution.
I'll mention again a point you have chosen again to ignore. When you are standing in the United States and are about to board a vehicle for the purposes of travelling internationally, the government can arbitrarily choose to search you, your belongings, and examine the data on your electronic devices--your cell phone, hard drives, etc.--if they feel it is necessary, and they can do so without a warrant. Your international mail, both into and out of the country, can be (and regularly IS) examined, and it is done without a warrant. Shipments of goods coming into and leaving the country are searched and inspected by the government, and it is done without a warrant. By what calculus, then, can you consistently say that inspecting the data transmitted in international phone calls is unconstitutional, despite the unchallenged constitutionality of those things I mentioned? And don't respond with cliched platitudes... give a thoughtful answer.
And why doesn't Bush go through the courts? Maybe because he doesn't think he is constitutionally obligated , and he feels that it unnecessarily dillutes executive power to do so. You even admit that he would get any warrant he wants through FISA... this is a phantom "threat" to your civil liberties, but it is a very real potential threat to the constitutional balance of power. If he acknowledges some need for the FISA court in this circumstance, it sets precedent. There is more at stake here than your "feelings"... there certainly is no practical difference to YOU than if the FISA court was consulted.
And you are acting as though the "elementary school" view of constitutionality is the one that prevails. In reality, we have almost 250 years of precedents introducing all sort of nuance. Where in the constituion does it say, such that an "elementary school" student could understand it, that digital signals cannot be intercepted when bouncing between a point in the US and a point in Saudi Arabia over a satellite? Chill with the hyperbole, and make some effort--even a little bit--to understand the other side of the argument. And, for the love of god, quit making up stuff... "inalienable right to privacy"? That's just a combination of a couple of catchy phrases plucked from the constitution and case law.
I understand concern about balancing rights with "getting the bad guys"... but I don't perceive any good will on your part or slashdotters in general with respect to the "balance" part. Once you remove the knee-jerk paranoia, I don't see any legitimate threat to liberties here and I don't see anything that is above and beyond that which is already accepted as constitutional.
Merely asserting that "one end of the call originates or terminates on US soil and therefore offers the caller or callee a right to privacy" doesn't make it true... you're entitled to simply make up anything you want, but don't expect it to carry weight. And it requires a remarkable stretch of the imagination to contrive some reason for which a person would have an "reasonable expectation of privacy" when on an international phone call with a representative from a terror-sponsoring group in Saudi Arabia. That's just silly.
"A time of war" also does not give the government special rights and privileges over the people.
No, but it does expand executive authority with respect to activities relating to the waging of war, including foreign intelligence gathering. And, as I said, there are plenty of analagous situations where we have always allowed warrantless inspection of citizen's property and data when it leaves the country--war or no war.
The problem today is that there are so many simple-minded "progressives" who are incapable of even TRYING to see the other side of an issue. The close-mindedness of the left is killing healthy debate in our country. Nevermind that this case has nothing to do with "domestic surveilance"... let's skip that inconvenience and jump straight to calls for impeachment and unfounded self-comparisons to founding fathers!
This case also lends support to the assertion by the government that they are only conducting international surveillance (what idiot decided to start calling it "domestic spying" in the first place?). These guys "have the distinction of being the only Americans who can prove they were specifically eavesdropped upon by the NSA's surveillance program," and they happened to be making international calls to a man in Saudi Arabia who represented an organization that is known to support terrorist organizations.
This, to me, is a perfect example of legitimate use of warrantless wiretaps. Just as you don't need a warrant to search someone's person, belongings, or data when they board an international flight departing or arriving on US soil, you shouldn't need a warrant to search their data (phone call) as it leaves the country--particularly during what has been acknowledged by the US Supreme Court to be a time of war. Domestic surveillance still should be--and IS--subject to FISA.
BTW, your international mail can legally be searched as well, as can cargo entering the country--in fact, many Bush administration critics harp on the fact that we don't search ENOUGH of other peoples belongings as they enter the country via harbors, etc.
I think that people pretending to see constitutional problems with this are either uneducated or are intentionally ignoring some obvious and fundamental aspects of it.
Only if we accept copyright it makes sense to require the owner to release the source after a while...
How... totalitarian of you. The government has no business forcing people to give away source code for something they spent their time and money developing. If someone wants to write a clone of it, that's a different situation.
I used to manage a GameStop here in Florida, and there were certainly restrictions on used media, but it wasn't quite as obnoxious as the article made it sound--but it was still obnoxious.
We didn't give cash because of the extra hoops we would have to jump through. It was only if we gave cash that we would be required to go through some of the more painful steps, such as holding the items for 30 days. Giving store credit, we only had to record the name, address, and driver's license number... no fingerprints (I don't recall a fingerprint requirement at all... maybe the author was conflating the two states' laws).
And it was definitely a problem. We had guys who would come in with books of game DVDs from Blockbuster within a couple of days of their release. We couldn't do anything about it, though, because Blockbuster does sell games and we had no basis for accusing them beyond intuition. I'm not sure if it warrants that degree of meddling by the government, but they weren't inventing the problem.
So your saying that this submission is better evidence of mindless groupthink on the part of Slashdotters than bad behavior on the part of the university? Unthinkable.
Slashdot Mirror
Dick Armitage disclosed Plame's role at the agency with no malice whatsoever. There was no "leaking". "Leak" implies an intentional disclosure of sensitive information, usually for nefarious purposes. Armitage's disclosure was neither intentional, nor particularly sensitive... but emphasis is properly placed on "intentional".
The ruling you mentioned was the one where a judge ruled that the government needed a warrant to listen to a call between two individuals overseas if the signal passed through the US. That is, of course, retarded on its face, but, MORE IMPORTANTLY, that happened this year. The leak occurred in 2005, meaning that it hadn't been "ruled illegal", so I stand by my assertion that neither had happened.
I think the thrust of my comment was the fact that you don't seem to understand what the program actually is. You seemed to be one of those "they're spying on us" types. If you actually know what its about and are aware that the government isn't spying on citizens without warrants, I apologize. If you DO believe that, you're a moron. Sorry for the confusion.
Are you trying to pass yourself off as "educated"? No intelligent, informed person is disturbed by this NSA program. In doesn't affect anyone on US soil. It is a program that only involves "targets" on foreign soil. Period.
Before rambling about what "educated, young" people are going to do, maybe you should try to at least provide yourself with a passing knowledge of the topic at hand, lest you sound silly.
What part of the Constitution says it is illegal to listen to the phone calls of a jihadist in Pakistan who happens to be talking to call some guy in Dearborn, Michigan? You expect any serious person to think that a warrant on the jihadi in Pakistan makes any legal difference whatsoever when he calls the guy in Dearborn, Michigan? In both cases, the person on US soil is completely incidental to the surveilance.
Or, maybe you just don't actually understand what this program is about but you're on slashdot so you figure nobody will notice?
It helps to know what you're talking about, though. No informed person is under the impression that anyone can "see and hear everything you do". This NSA program we are discussing involves listening to specific "targets" who are necessarily located outside of the United States. The only controversy is whether a warrant is required if a non-target who is on US soil is involved in a call with a target on foreign soil or, as we have learned recently, if an entirely foreign call passes through switches in the United States.
A judge recently ruled that if two guys are talking to each other and both are physically in Pakistan, but the call passes through the US in route from jihadi A and jihadi B then a FISA warrant is required. That is why FISA was ridiculously irrelevant and needed to be overhauled. Don't listen to people on slashdot. They're idiots and 95% don't have a clue what they're talking about. All of the 8th-grader conspiracy, fascism, blah blah talk may be "fun" for the... er... "intellectually incurious" on these forums, but in reality there's nothing sinister about this. It's common sense stuff.
Interestingly, neither of those two things has occurred and your post is therefore completely irrelevant. I know this is slashdot, where uninformed group-think passes for "intellect" among masses of less-than-moderately intelligent people who desperately want to be perceived as "smart", but at least make an effort to know what you're talking about.
20 months it takes them to try to find the person who leaked highly classified information. I hope the guilty party does life in prison.
And, for what it's worth, most of you guys are complete imbeciles with all of the throwing around of words you don't understand, like "fascism", "dictatorship", blah, blah, blah. Most of you wouldn't recognize a real fascist or dictator if one of your favorite useful idiots went down to Venezuela to do a photo-op with one.
Dude, that was dumb. What the hell are you talking about?
These weren't still images... the "images" in question were videos.
Dude, you're stretching. A canister of sarin could certainly cause "mass destruction"--tens of thousands of deaths--but that's beside the point. You're playing stupid semantic games. The term "WMD" has a broadly accepted meaning that has no stipulations attached... it has come to be used to represent anything that is a chemical, biological, or nuclear (reaction) weapon.
That's like saying "You didn't find a car in my driveway, because the alternator is bad." It's an embarrassingly absurd argument. Just accept the fact that the poll in question in reflective of the bias of the pollster, not Fox News, and is more indicative of uninformed NPR listeners than of uninformed Fox News viewers. It may be painful to someone who has an unhealthily antagonistic obsession with Fox News, but its true.
Once again, nobody is claiming that the WMDs which were found were found in huge quantities or that they were in a potent state.
Right... it was a binary question posed to the Fox News viewers, and the only correct answer is "Yes". If they had asked if huge stockpiles had been found, I'm sure the Fox News viewers would have said "No", as they appear to be the only people polled who seem to have been informed of the finds.
I do remember, at the time, wondering why none of the other networks bothered to mention it, and I remember thinking that it smacked of partisan bias to ignore those stories.
It is simply fact that every intelligence agency on the planet thought Saddam had WMDs. The questions only concerned the state of his nuclear program. Go read Hans Blix's report to the UNSC in February, right before the invasion. Inform yourself.
And, contrary to popular myth, the evidence still supports the notion that Saddam was seeking uranium in Niger... Joe Wilson's own report said that the former Nigerian PM interpreted Iraqi overtures to "expand business relations" as a desire to purchase uranium, and the British intelligence still stands by their own independent determination to that effect--indeed, their government investigated it after the whole Wilson debacle and concluded that the claims were "well founded". In other words, simply claiming that it was "a lie", like some uber-partisan cartoon, doesn't win you any points here.
The real question about the uranium is this: Why would Iraq be looking for uranium from Niger when we found 500 tons of yellowcake that they already had laying around?
We did find WMDs on multiple occassions... they were pretty much all small caches of old shells filled with mustard or sarin and which were probably were no longer effective, but it is a bit disingenuous for the pollster to take those answers and then arbitrarily say "oh, well those don't count... so Fox News viewers are dumb!". If the question was simply "Has the US found Iraqi WMDs?" then the Fox News viewers appear to be the only ones who were properly informed of those developments.
:-)
And, of course, there were also incidents where the insurgent groups got ahold of some lingering chemical weapons (mustard gas, I think) and tried to make bombs out of them--luckily, that also was old and non-effective. Those were widely reported at the time.
In other words, get off your uninformed, sanctimonious high-horse.
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Smash Brothers
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Mario Kart Wii
Super Paper Mario
WarioWare: Smooth Moves
Donkey Kong Barrel Blast
Mario Party 8
The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Kirby
Mario Strikers Charged
Many of their actual "roots" available for download.
And among third-party titles, I'm personally excited for "Project Rygar".
But they're making "Wii Fit", so those games obviously don't exist.
Sorry... correction: "inalienable right to privacy" is a combination of catchy phrases from the Declaration of Independence and case law. I previously said Constitution.
I'll mention again a point you have chosen again to ignore. When you are standing in the United States and are about to board a vehicle for the purposes of travelling internationally, the government can arbitrarily choose to search you, your belongings, and examine the data on your electronic devices--your cell phone, hard drives, etc.--if they feel it is necessary, and they can do so without a warrant. Your international mail, both into and out of the country, can be (and regularly IS) examined, and it is done without a warrant. Shipments of goods coming into and leaving the country are searched and inspected by the government, and it is done without a warrant. By what calculus, then, can you consistently say that inspecting the data transmitted in international phone calls is unconstitutional, despite the unchallenged constitutionality of those things I mentioned? And don't respond with cliched platitudes... give a thoughtful answer.
And why doesn't Bush go through the courts? Maybe because he doesn't think he is constitutionally obligated , and he feels that it unnecessarily dillutes executive power to do so. You even admit that he would get any warrant he wants through FISA... this is a phantom "threat" to your civil liberties, but it is a very real potential threat to the constitutional balance of power. If he acknowledges some need for the FISA court in this circumstance, it sets precedent. There is more at stake here than your "feelings"... there certainly is no practical difference to YOU than if the FISA court was consulted.
And you are acting as though the "elementary school" view of constitutionality is the one that prevails. In reality, we have almost 250 years of precedents introducing all sort of nuance. Where in the constituion does it say, such that an "elementary school" student could understand it, that digital signals cannot be intercepted when bouncing between a point in the US and a point in Saudi Arabia over a satellite? Chill with the hyperbole, and make some effort--even a little bit--to understand the other side of the argument. And, for the love of god, quit making up stuff... "inalienable right to privacy"? That's just a combination of a couple of catchy phrases plucked from the constitution and case law.
I understand concern about balancing rights with "getting the bad guys"... but I don't perceive any good will on your part or slashdotters in general with respect to the "balance" part. Once you remove the knee-jerk paranoia, I don't see any legitimate threat to liberties here and I don't see anything that is above and beyond that which is already accepted as constitutional.
Merely asserting that "one end of the call originates or terminates on US soil and therefore offers the caller or callee a right to privacy" doesn't make it true... you're entitled to simply make up anything you want, but don't expect it to carry weight.
And it requires a remarkable stretch of the imagination to contrive some reason for which a person would have an "reasonable expectation of privacy" when on an international phone call with a representative from a terror-sponsoring group in Saudi Arabia. That's just silly.
"A time of war" also does not give the government special rights and privileges over the people.
No, but it does expand executive authority with respect to activities relating to the waging of war, including foreign intelligence gathering. And, as I said, there are plenty of analagous situations where we have always allowed warrantless inspection of citizen's property and data when it leaves the country--war or no war.
And modest too!
The problem today is that there are so many simple-minded "progressives" who are incapable of even TRYING to see the other side of an issue. The close-mindedness of the left is killing healthy debate in our country. Nevermind that this case has nothing to do with "domestic surveilance"... let's skip that inconvenience and jump straight to calls for impeachment and unfounded self-comparisons to founding fathers!
This case also lends support to the assertion by the government that they are only conducting international surveillance (what idiot decided to start calling it "domestic spying" in the first place?). These guys "have the distinction of being the only Americans who can prove they were specifically eavesdropped upon by the NSA's surveillance program," and they happened to be making international calls to a man in Saudi Arabia who represented an organization that is known to support terrorist organizations.
This, to me, is a perfect example of legitimate use of warrantless wiretaps. Just as you don't need a warrant to search someone's person, belongings, or data when they board an international flight departing or arriving on US soil, you shouldn't need a warrant to search their data (phone call) as it leaves the country--particularly during what has been acknowledged by the US Supreme Court to be a time of war. Domestic surveillance still should be--and IS--subject to FISA.
BTW, your international mail can legally be searched as well, as can cargo entering the country--in fact, many Bush administration critics harp on the fact that we don't search ENOUGH of other peoples belongings as they enter the country via harbors, etc.
I think that people pretending to see constitutional problems with this are either uneducated or are intentionally ignoring some obvious and fundamental aspects of it.
Doesn't seem like the smartest thing to let potential enemies know of such plans in advance.
Yeah, don't these incompetent morons know that that's the New York Times' job!
Only if we accept copyright it makes sense to require the owner to release the source after a while...
How... totalitarian of you. The government has no business forcing people to give away source code for something they spent their time and money developing. If someone wants to write a clone of it, that's a different situation.
I used to manage a GameStop here in Florida, and there were certainly restrictions on used media, but it wasn't quite as obnoxious as the article made it sound--but it was still obnoxious.
We didn't give cash because of the extra hoops we would have to jump through. It was only if we gave cash that we would be required to go through some of the more painful steps, such as holding the items for 30 days. Giving store credit, we only had to record the name, address, and driver's license number... no fingerprints (I don't recall a fingerprint requirement at all... maybe the author was conflating the two states' laws).
And it was definitely a problem. We had guys who would come in with books of game DVDs from Blockbuster within a couple of days of their release. We couldn't do anything about it, though, because Blockbuster does sell games and we had no basis for accusing them beyond intuition. I'm not sure if it warrants that degree of meddling by the government, but they weren't inventing the problem.
Oh. Nevermind then. :-)
Do you remember when slashdot was a bastion of intellect, back before it was overrun by paranoid 8th graders?
So your saying that this submission is better evidence of mindless groupthink on the part of Slashdotters than bad behavior on the part of the university? Unthinkable.
I yawned several times just reading about people yawning.