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-   -   Did the Bush admin break the law? (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/98845-did-bush-admin-break-law.html)

Charlatan 12-23-2005 06:20 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
It must be a Politics first, that we have stayed out of trouble for so long. :)
Perhaps there really is something called Christmas spirit...

Elphaba 12-23-2005 01:19 PM
It would appear that getting a warrant from FISA was not possible, because Bush had the NSA monitoring large blocks of phone traffic. I don't see how a fishing expedition could be considered legal.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122305K.shtml

Quote:
Wiretaps Said to Sift All Overseas Contacts
By Charlie Savage
The Boston Globe

Friday 23 December 2005

Vast US effort seen on eavesdropping.

Washington - The National Security Agency, in carrying out President Bush's order to intercept the international phone calls and e-mails of Americans suspected of links to Al Qaeda, has probably been using computers to monitor all other Americans' international communications as well, according to specialists familiar with the workings of the NSA.

The Bush administration and the NSA have declined to provide details about the program the president authorized in 2001, but specialists said the agency serves as a vast data collection and sorting operation. It captures reams of data from satellites, fiberoptic lines, and Internet switching stations, and then uses a computer to check for names, numbers, and words that have been identified as suspicious.

"The whole idea of the NSA is intercepting huge streams of communications, taking in 2 million pieces of communications an hour," said James Bamford, the author of two books on the NSA, who was the first to reveal the inner workings of the secret agency.

"They have a capacity to listen to every overseas phone call," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which has obtained documents about the NSA using Freedom of Information Act requests.

The NSA's system of monitoring e-mails and phone calls to check for search terms has been used for decades overseas, where the Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches does not apply, declassified records have shown.

But since Bush's order in 2001, Bamford and other specialists said, the same process has probably been used to sort through international messages to and from the United States, though humans have never seen the vast majority of the data.

"The collection of this data by automated means creates new privacy risks," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group that has studied computer-filtered surveillance technology through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

Among the risks, he said, is that the spy agency's computers will collect personal information that has no bearing on national security, and that intelligence agents programming those computers will be tempted to abuse their power to eavesdrop for personal or political gain.

But even when no personal information intercepted by the NSA's computers make it to human eyes and ears, Rotenberg said, the mere fact that spy computers are monitoring the calls and e-mails may also violate the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether automated surveillance of phone calls and e-mails, without a warrant, is constitutional.

The closest comparisons, legal specialists said, are cases challenging the use of dogs and infrared detectors to look for drugs without a warrant. The Supreme Court approved the use of drug-sniffing dogs to examine luggage in an airport, but said police could not use infrared scanners to check houses for heat patterns that could signal an illegal drug operation.

"This is very much a developing field, and a lot of the law is not clear," said Harvard Law School professor Bill Stuntz.

President Bush and his aides have refused to answer questions about the domestic spying program, other than to insist that it was legal. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week said the program only targeted messages "where we have a reasonable basis to conclude" that one of the parties is affiliated with Al Qaeda.

And some legal scholars have maintained that a computer cannot violate other Americans' Fourth Amendment rights simply by sorting through their messages, as long as no human being ever looks at them.

Alane Kochems, a lawyer and a national security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said, "I don't think your privacy is violated when you have a computer doing it as opposed to a human. It isn't a sentient being. It's a machine running a program."

But Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin said that Fourth Amendment privacy rights can still be violated without human contact if the NSA stores copies of everyone's messages, raising the possibility that a human could access them later. The administration has not revealed how long the NSA stores messages, and the agency has refused to comment on the program.

Balkin added that as technology becomes ever more sophisticated, any legal distinction between human agents and their tools is losing meaning. Under the theory that only human beings can invade people's privacy, he said, the police "could simply use robots to do their dirty work."

In 1978, following revelations that President Nixon had used the NSA to spy on his domestic enemies, Congress enacted a law making it illegal to wiretap a US citizen without permission from a secret national security court. The court requires the government to show evidence that the target is a suspected spy or terrorist.

Under the 1978 law, NSA officials have had to obtain a warrant from the secret court before putting an American's information into their computers' search terms.

The restrictions largely limited NSA to collecting messages from overseas communications networks, but some Americans' messages were intercepted before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Occasionally, the interception was deliberate. In April 2000, the NSA's then-director, General Michael Hayden, told Congress that since 1978 "there have been no more than a very few instances of NSA seeking [court] authorization to target a US person in the United States."

More often, the interception was accidental. Because American international calls travel through foreign networks, some of which are monitored by the NSA, the agency's computers have sifted through some American international messages all along.

"Long before 9/11, the NSA gathered from the ether mountains of [overseas] phone calls and e-mail messages on a daily basis," said Columbia Law School professor Deborah Livingston. "If you have such an extensive foreign operation, you'll gather a large amount of phone traffic and e-mails involving Americans. That's something we've lived with for a long time."

But Bush's order cleared the way for the NSA computers to sift through Americans' phone calls and e-mails.

According to a New York Times report last week, Bush authorized the NSA's human analysts to look at the international messages of up to 500 Americans at a time, with a changing list of targets.

Hayden, now the deputy director of national intelligence, told reporters this week that under Bush's order, a "shift supervisor" instead of a judge signs off on deciding whether or not to search for an American's messages.

The general conceded that without the burden of obtaining warrants, the NSA has used "a quicker trigger" and "a subtly softer trigger" when deciding to track someone.

Bamford said that Hayden's "subtly softer trigger" probably means that the NSA is monitoring a wider circle of contacts around suspects than what a judge would approve.

smooth 12-23-2005 05:41 PM
It's strange to me that Ustwo's straw man argument wasn't just directly replied:

President Bush didn't break the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act; he broke the F.I.S.A., which has been in place for 30 years.

Democrats aren't "blocking" the Patriot Act, it's still in effect and will continue to be in effect until agreed upon by a bi-partisan majority and finalized.

Finally, whether the president lied in 2004 isn't the issue he would be legally charged with. Lying goes to motive and inference of guilt. That's how lies have and will continue to be interpreted by prosecutors and juries. That coupled with Tom Daschle's recent revelations that discussions with the administration specifically ruled out the notion that the authority to use force against Iraq gave him special domestic powers in this regard. But that was a valiant attempt to direct the situation to Clinton lying under oath (about whatever--especially irrelevent given that prosecutors almost always give people the ability to "remember" a more true account before prosecuting for perjury a la repeat visits by current administration officials testifying to the grand jury before initiating a perjury charge) instead of the reality that President Bush has consistently lied to our representatives and public about violating his citizen's 4th amendment rights.

Elphaba 12-23-2005 07:22 PM
John Yoo's role in the legal advice given to the Bush administration is given a closer look in the following article. With a respectful nod to Host, you will find names that he has pointed out to us for some time.

That he is now at my alma mater strikes me as humorous, given it's past reputation.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122305S.shtml

Quote:
A Junior Aide Had a Big Role in Terror Policy
By Tim Golden
The New York Times

Friday 23 December 2005

Moments after planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, lawyers in the Justice Department's elite Office of Legal Counsel began crowding into the office of one of the agency's newest deputies, John C. Yoo, to watch the horror unfold on his television set.

"We all stood around watching this event, and he just seemed very calm, like he wasn't going to let these terrorists stop him from doing his work," recalled Robert J. Delahunty, a friend of Mr. Yoo's who worked in the office.

Fearful of another attack and told that all "nonessential personnel" should evacuate, Mr. Delahunty and others streamed out of the department's headquarters and walked home. Mr. Yoo, then a 34-year-old former law professor whose academic work had focused on foreign affairs and war-powers issues, was asked to stay behind, and he quickly found himself in the department's command center, on the phone to lawyers at the White House.

Within weeks, Mr. Yoo had begun to establish himself as a critical player in the Bush administration's legal response to the terrorist threat, and an influential advocate for the expansive claims of presidential authority that have been a hallmark of that response.

While a mere deputy assistant attorney general in the legal counsel office, Mr. Yoo was a primary author of a series of legal opinions on the fight against terrorism, including one that said the Geneva Conventions did not apply and at least two others that countenanced the use of highly coercive interrogation techniques on terror suspects. Recently, current and former officials said he also wrote a still-secret 2002 memorandum that gave legal backing to the administration's secret program to eavesdrop on the international communications of Americans and others inside the United States without federal warrants.

A genial, soft-spoken man with what friends say is a fiercely competitive streak, Mr. Yoo built particularly strong working relationships with several key legal officials in the White House and the Pentagon. Some current and former government officials contend that those relationships were in fact so close that Mr. Yoo was able to operate with a degree of autonomy that rankled senior Justice Department officials, including John Ashcroft, then the attorney general.

More than two years after Mr. Yoo returned to teaching, controversy over some of the legal positions he staked out for the administration in his two years in government has only continued to grow. Last year, an opinion he wrote on interrogations with the head of the legal counsel office, Jay S. Bybee, was publicly disavowed by the White House, a highly unusual step. Now, the revelation of the eavesdropping program has renewed the criticism.

In the uproar, Mr. Yoo has stood fast and even smiled cheerfully. Despite occasional campus protests and calls for his resignation, he has remained - somewhat incongruously but, he says, quite happily - on the law faculty at the liberal University of California, Berkeley. He keeps a busy schedule of speeches and debates at colleges and universities around the country. He is promoting a new book, and appears frequently on television to take on legal and policy issues that many former officials will discuss only under cloak of anonymity.

"I didn't go into these subjects looking for a brawl," Mr. Yoo said in an interview. Of his work at the Justice Department he added: "I had this job, and I had these questions to answer. I think it's my responsibility to explain how I thought them through."

Mr. Yoo is often identified as the most aggressive among a group of conservative legal scholars who have challenged the importance of international law in the American legal system. But his signature contributions to the policies of the Bush administration have had more to do with his forceful assertion of wide presidential powers in wartime.

While Mr. Yoo has become almost famous for some of his writings - the refutation of both his academic and government work has become almost a cottage industry among more liberal legal scholars and human rights lawyers - much less is known about how he came to wield the remarkable influence he had after Sept. 11 on issues related to terrorism.

That Washington tale began about a decade before Mr. Yoo joined the administration in July 2001, when he finished at Yale Law School and won a clerkship with Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a keen spotter of young legal talent and a patriarch of the network of conservative lawyers who have occupied key positions throughout the Bush administration.

By then, Mr. Yoo already thought of himself as solidly conservative. He had grown up with anticommunist parents who left their native South Korea for Philadelphia shortly after Mr. Yoo was born in 1967, and had honed his political views while an undergraduate at Harvard.

From the chambers of Judge Silberman, Mr. Yoo moved on to a clerkship with Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, stopping briefly at Berkeley. Justice Thomas helped place him with Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, as general counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Along the way, Mr. Yoo passed up a chance to work in the Washington office of the law firm Jones Day, where he caught the eye of a senior partner, Timothy E. Flanigan. After five years that Mr. Yoo spent at Berkeley, writing on legal aspects of foreign affairs, war powers and presidential authority, the two men met up again when Mr. Yoo joined the Bush campaign's legal team, where Mr. Flanigan was a key lieutenant.

Mr. Flanigan became the deputy White House counsel under Alberto R. Gonzales. Mr. Yoo ended up as a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, or the OLC, a small unit of lawyers that advises the executive branch on constitutional questions and on the legality of complex or disputed policy issues.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, Mr. Yoo - the only deputy with much expertise on foreign policy and war powers - began dealing with the White House and other agencies more directly than he might have otherwise.

Mr. Flanigan, who had led the legal counsel office himself at the end of the first Bush administration, was acutely aware of its role in providing a legal grounding for the kinds of policy decisions the White House faced. He called over for advice soon after the World Trade Center towers fell.

"John Yoo, given his academic background and interests, was sort of the go-to guy on foreign affairs and military power issues," Mr. Flanigan said in an interview, referring to the legal counsel office staff. "He was the one that Gonzales and I went to to get advice on those issues on 9/11, and it just continued."

The torrent of opinions that Mr. Yoo churned out in the months that followed was striking, notwithstanding the research and writing assistance he had from lawyers on the office staff. Although only a portion of those documents have become public, copies of some still-confidential memorandums reviewed by The New York Times give a flavor of their sweeping language.

On Sept. 20, Mr. Yoo wrote to Mr. Flanigan about the president's constitutional authority to conduct military operations against terrorists and nations that support them. He noted that two Congressional resolutions recognized the president's authority to use force in such circumstances.

"Neither, however, can place any limits on the president's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing and nature of the response," he wrote. Similar language concludes a memo written by Mr. Yoo on Sept. 25, only a week after Congress authorized President Bush to use military force against Al Qaeda and its supporters.

"One concern that people have raised is that John had a lot of these views going into the government and was perhaps overeager to write them," said Curtis A. Bradley, a law professor at Duke University who, like Mr. Yoo, has written skeptically about the import of international law. "In terms of war powers, you won't find a tremendous number of scholars who will go as far as he does."

Mr. Yoo's belief in the wide inherent powers of the president as commander in chief was strongly shared by one of the most influential legal voices in the administration's policy debates on terrorism, David S. Addington, then the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney. Documents and interviews suggest that those views have been part of the legal arguments underpinning not only coercive interrogation and the prosecution of terrorism suspects before military tribunals but also the eavesdropping program.

Some current and former officials said the urgency of events after Sept. 11 and the close ties that Mr. Yoo developed with Mr. Addington (who is now Mr. Cheney's chief of staff), Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Flanigan and the general counsel of the Defense Department, William J. Haynes II, had sometimes led him to bypass the elaborate clearance process to which opinions from the legal counsel office were normally subjected.

Mr. Yoo's January 2002 conclusions that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the conflict in Afghanistan and that the conventions' minimum standards did not cover terrorists touched off a long, hard-fought battle within the administration, in which lawyers for the State Department and the military services strongly disputed his views. Thereafter, several senior officials said, those lawyers were sometimes excluded from the drafting of more delicate opinions.

For example, they said, Mr. Yoo's much-criticized 2002 memorandum with Mr. Bybee on interrogations - which said that United States law prohibited only methods that would cause "lasting psychological harm" or pain "akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure" - was not shared with either State Department or military lawyers, despite its implications for their agencies.

"They were not getting enough critical feedback from within OLC, or from within the Justice Department, or from other agencies," one former official said of Mr. Yoo's opinions. Officials said senior aides to Attorney General Ashcroft also complained that they were not adequately informed about some of the Mr. Yoo's frequent discussions with the White House.

Mr. Yoo said he had always duly notified Justice Department officials or other agencies about the opinions he provided except when "I was told by people very high in the government not to for classification reasons."

Yesterday, with controversy brewing again about some of the policies on which Mr. Yoo worked, he said he was unmoved.

"If you're being criticized for what you did and you believe that what you did was right, you shouldn't take it lying down," he said. "You should go out and defend yourself."
I believe that this is another example of the Bush "bubble." Listen only to those that agree with you, and exclude the rest.

pan6467 12-24-2005 02:17 AM
What I don't understand is if they are just "tapping" international calls for our "safety" does that not mean they are missing all the domestic terrorist phone calls?

I mean if I were a terrorist and I was in the U.S. the last thing I would do is call my friends in the Middle East to make sure I had the plans right.

And given there are a few on the Right here that want to believe I am not all that intelligent, I'm sure the terrorists would have thought of this also.

I mean Hell, if I needed to communicate with the heads of my organization, I'd just wait for the courier to cross the Mexico border as an illegal and wait till my nearest Wal*Mart hired him to stock shelves and clean.

Elphaba 12-27-2005 02:29 PM
To my knowledge, the New York Times remains mum on why they held the information of NSA spying on Americans for a year. It irritates me that our msp also gave this story a pass before the war began in Iraq. How do the "people" hold their free press accountable?

Link


Quote:
NSA Spied on UN Diplomats in Push for Invasion of Iraq
By Norman Solomon
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 27 December 2005

Despite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National Security Agency's domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on UN diplomats in New York before the invasion of Iraq.

That spying had nothing to do with protecting the United States from a terrorist attack. The entire purpose of the NSA surveillance was to help the White House gain leverage, by whatever means possible, for a resolution in the UN Security Council to green light an invasion. When that surveillance was exposed nearly three years ago, the mainstream US media winked at Bush's illegal use of the NSA for his Iraq invasion agenda.

Back then, after news of the NSA's targeted spying at the United Nations broke in the British press, major US media outlets gave it only perfunctory coverage - or, in the case of the New York Times, no coverage at all. Now, while the NSA is in the news spotlight with plenty of retrospective facts, the NSA's spying at the UN goes unmentioned: buried in an Orwellian memory hole.

A rare exception was a paragraph in a Dec. 20 piece by Patrick Radden Keefe in the online magazine Slate, which pointedly noted that "the eavesdropping took place in Manhattan and violated the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, all of which the United States has signed."

But after dodging the story of the NSA's spying at the UN when it mattered most - before the invasion of Iraq - the New York Times and other major news organizations are hardly apt to examine it now. That's all the more reason for other media outlets to step into the breach.

In early March 2003, journalists at the London-based Observer reported that the NSA was secretly participating in the US government's high-pressure campaign for the UN Security Council to approve a pro-war resolution. A few days after the Observer revealed the text of an NSA memo about US spying on Security Council delegations, I asked Daniel Ellsberg to assess the importance of the story. "This leak," he replied, "is more timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers." The key word was "timely."

Publication of the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, made possible by Ellsberg's heroic decision to leak those documents, came after the Vietnam War had been underway for many years. But with an invasion of Iraq still in the future, the leak about NSA spying on UN diplomats in New York could erode the Bush administration's already slim chances of getting a war resolution through the Security Council. (Ultimately, no such resolution passed before the invasion.) And media scrutiny in the United States could have shed light on how Washington's war push was based on subterfuge and manipulation.

"As part of its battle to win votes in favor of war against Iraq," the Observer had reported on March 2, 2003, the US government developed an "aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the e-mails of UN delegates." The smoking gun was "a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency - the US body which intercepts communications around the world - and circulated to both senior agents in his organization and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency." The friendly agency was Britain's Government Communications Headquarters.

The Observer explained: "The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia."

The NSA memo, dated Jan. 31, 2003, outlined the wide scope of the surveillance activities, seeking any information useful to push a war resolution through the Security Council - "the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises."

Noting that the Bush administration "finds itself isolated" in its zeal for war on Iraq, the Times of London called the leak of the memo an "embarrassing disclosure." And, in early March 2003, the embarrassment was nearly worldwide. From Russia to France to Chile to Japan to Australia, the story was big mainstream news. But not in the United States.

Several days after the "embarrassing disclosure," not a word about it had appeared in the New York Times, the USA's supposed paper of record. "Well, it's not that we haven't been interested," Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale told me on the evening of March 5, nearly 96 hours after the Observer broke the story. But "we could get no confirmation or comment" on the memo from US officials. Smale added: "We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting." Whatever the rationale, the New York Times opted not to cover the story at all.

Except for a high-quality Baltimore Sun article that appeared on March 4, the coverage in major US media outlets downplayed the significance of the Observer's revelations. The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to UN" Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times published a longer piece that didn't only depict US surveillance at the United Nations as old hat; the LA Times story also reported "some experts suspected that it [the NSA memo] could be a forgery" - and "several former top intelligence officials said they were skeptical of the memo's authenticity."

But within days, any doubt about the NSA memo's "authenticity" was gone. The British press reported that the UK government had arrested an unnamed female employee at a British intelligence agency in connection with the leak. By then, however, the spotty coverage of the top-secret NSA memo in the mainstream US press had disappeared.

As it turned out, the Observer's expose - headlined "Revealed: US Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War" - came 18 days before the invasion of Iraq began.

From the day that the Observer first reported on NSA spying at the United Nations until the moment 51 weeks later when British prosecutors dropped charges against whistleblower Katharine Gun, major US news outlets provided very little coverage of the story. The media avoidance continued well past the day in mid-November 2003 when Gun's name became public as the British press reported that she had been formally charged with violating the draconian Official Secrets Act.

Facing the possibility of a prison sentence, Katharine Gun said that disclosure of the NSA memo was "necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed." She said: "I have only ever followed my conscience."

In contrast to the courage of the lone woman who leaked the NSA memo - and in contrast to the journalistic vigor of the Observer team that exposed it - the most powerful US news outlets gave the revelation the media equivalent of a yawn. Top officials of the Bush administration, no doubt relieved at the lack of US media concern about the NSA's illicit spying, must have been very encouraged.

shakran 12-27-2005 05:21 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
To my knowledge, the New York Times remains mum on why they held the information of NSA spying on Americans for a year. It irritates me that our msp also gave this story a pass before the war began in Iraq. How do the "people" hold their free press accountable?
Simple. You stop subscribing to that newspaper, or quit watching that news cast, and send a letter to the media outlet explaining what they did and why that means you won't be watching them anymore.

Now understand that we get all SORTS of crackpot letters like that - We just got a letter this week saying they won't watch our station anymore because the meteorologist dresses too sloppy (didn't button his jacket one day) - so don't expect immediate change. However, if enough people write similar letters (I'm not buying your newspaper anymore because you're covering up the news rather than reporting it) and they see subscriptions (and therefore also advertising revenues) go down, then maybe management will get the message and remember that we are journalists, not political stooges.

Elphaba 12-27-2005 06:22 PM
Shakran, do you honestly believe it is that simple?

Network and cable news stations are now owned by large corporations with their own agenda; GE and Murdock for example. Deregulation has greatly reduced the number of owners that currently represent our main stream media. It is obvious, at least to me, that our msp abdicated their role in the checks and balances of government excess for continued "access" to this corrupt government. The Bush administration has succeeded on many fronts to corrupt the so called "free press."

I wonder what you would advise the average American whose only source of news is our msp? How does one object to a lack of coverage that occurs in Europe and is not reported on Channel 5? I read international media sources and I can't tell you how frustrating it has been to attempt discussions here that simply was dismissed by Ustwo and the like, because the source wasn't from Fox News.

We (the people) endured five years of msm obsequiousness to this administration. The only reason the press has returned to the role of government watchdog, in my opinion, is that they perceive the administration as weakened. This "watchdog" sells news for profit, just like any whore.

Shakran, this rant isn't directed at you or your obvious integrity. The Miller's, Woodward's and others that sold their journalistic integrity for personal or monitary gain have earned the wrath of everyone still believing in an independent press, including yourself.

Perhaps that is the key to accountability? Censure by your peers might be far more effective than getting cranky with my local paper that depends on national feeds.

shakran 12-27-2005 07:30 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
Shakran, do you honestly believe it is that simple?
Yes I do, and here's why. You're entirely correct that news stations (and most journalism outfits, not just TV, btw) are owned by large corporations.

So attacking it from a "journalists should tell the story no matter what because it's the right thing to do" perspective won't work. Oh, you'll convince us alright, but then we're already convinced so that's not necessary.

What you need to do is attack it from a "holy shit, you're gonna lose a CRAPload of money" perspective. Right now the large corporations think the American public wants more reality shows and less news. And they think what news you do want must be chock full of entertainment value. And you don't want much international news because "those funny names are hard to pronounce" and "other countries are so far away from us."

So, a mass movement of the public needs to prove them wrong. Whether its TV, radio, or newspaper, profit is the bottom line. And the only way to make more money is to get more eyeballs on your news product. If masses of people write in and say "I'm not gonna look at your product unless you start acting like real journalists again" then the bosses will either respond by turning their journos loose to do their jobs, or face the consequences when they lose viewer/readership.

Now the problem with this little scheme of mine is manyfold. But the big problem is (i'm switching to only TV here since that's my area) viewers are MUCH more likely to write in to complain about what clothes the anchor wore or the way the meteorologist talks than they are to write in and complain about the integrity and thoroughness of the journalism. So getting that mass movement together is going to be very tough.

Quote:
Network and cable news stations are now owned by large corporations with their own agenda; GE and Murdock for example. Deregulation has greatly reduced the number of owners that currently represent our main stream media. It is obvious, at least to me, that our msp abdicated their role in the checks and balances of government excess for continued "access" to this corrupt government. The Bush administration has succeeded on many fronts to corrupt the so called "free press."
you're largely correct, but that is overly simplified. First off, this didn't start with Bush. It would be more accurate to say it started with Reagan, who abolished the fairness doctrine. Second, journalists haven't abdicated anything. The press didn't abdicate anything. Unfortunately, the press and TV stations are two different things. The news department is only one part of a TV station. The higher ups at TV stations are the ones making the decision to sell out to large corporations. Ask just about any TV journalist and our dream is to start our own TV station that's staffed entirely by journalists and that delivers the news the RIGHT way. Unfortunately since the average TV journalist makes between 20 and 40 thousand a year, getting the funds together to actually do this is very unlikely.



Quote:
I wonder what you would advise the average American whose only source of news is our msp?
Well first off if you really pay attention the msp can still help you out. Look at the justification to the Iraq war for instance. Look at Colin Powell's speech to the UN that supposedly proved Iraq had WMD. Now I saw the same speech you did, many outlets carried it live, and CP had butkus for evidence. That was obvious to me, and to many others. The information IS out there if you make the effort to find it. Unfortunately most people don't want to make that effort.

Quote:
How does one object to a lack of coverage that occurs in Europe and is not reported on Channel 5? I read international media sources and I can't tell you how frustrating it has been to attempt discussions here that simply was dismissed by Ustwo and the like, because the source wasn't from Fox News.
And that's a HUGE problem with the American press. Media execs have decided you guys don't WANT international news. They've decided you can't understand international news even if you do want it.

I personally think that's bullshit. One of the most-watched series EVER was a multipart look into conditions in Africa. The ratings were through the roof. If we as journalists make world news available to you, you will consume it.

Now, we're starting to get into an interesting age. With satellite radio, and the internet, it's not very hard at all for you to fire up a BBC broadcast. You CAN get the international news you want. You just have to want it. And if you can't find it from an American news outlet, go find it from the BBC.



Quote:
We (the people) endured five years of msm obsequiousness to this administration.
One of the problems there is with this concept of media bias. Higher ups at the outlets are so scared that the public will label them as biased, that they bias themselves toward bad coverage. We're so scared you'll think we're liberally biased if we tell you Bush screwed up, that we won't tell you bush screwed up unless someone else SAYS Bush screwed up.

The press used to go out and dig up the facts. Now they largely sit around waiting for some group to dig up the facts, then report it as "these guys say .. . " to avoid bias. Unfortunately, we're also avoiding our jobs when we do that.

Who's at fault for that? Well, partly the guys who scream "media bias" every time the media reports something they don't like. The rest belongs squarely with the media bosses who kowtow to that kind of manipulative bullshit.


Quote:
The only reason the press has returned to the role of government watchdog, in my opinion, is that they perceive the administration as weakened. This "watchdog" sells news for profit, just like any whore.
As I said, profit is the name of the game. And it will be until media outlets are busted away from their parent megacorporations.



Quote:
Shakran, this rant isn't directed at you or your obvious integrity. The Miller's, Woodward's and others that sold their journalistic integrity for personal or monitary gain have earned the wrath of everyone still believing in an independent press, including yourself.
I appreciate that. I do want to emphasize, however, that journalists with integrity are out there, and in great numbers. Our problem is that our hands are tied by our corporate bosses. The business is largely one of compromise nowadays. "Well if I give them this bullshit story about how good this woman feels now that she's using energy efficient light bulbs (made by GE) then maybe they'll let me expose the corruption on this other story"

Quote:
Perhaps that is the key to accountability? Censure by your peers might be far more effective than getting cranky with my local paper that depends on national feeds.
Sadly, it won't, for the reasons I mentioned above. Actually there's plenty of censure by our peers. Newsblues.com is only one place that routinely bashes poor journalism. But our corporate owners don't care about that - they only care about the almighty dollar. And since you the viewer are in control of that dollar, it's you the viewer that must convince the corporations of what you want.

By the way, you might find "Bad News" by Tom Fenton a very interesting read.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006...lance&n=283155

host 12-28-2005 02:26 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
Shakran, do you honestly believe it is that simple?

Network and cable news stations are now owned by large corporations with their own agenda; GE and Murdock for example. Deregulation has greatly reduced the number of owners that currently represent our main stream media. It is obvious, at least to me, that our msp abdicated their role in the checks and balances of government excess for continued "access" to this corrupt government. The Bush administration has succeeded on many fronts to corrupt the so called "free press."

I wonder what you would advise the average American whose only source of news is our msp? How does one object to a lack of coverage that occurs in Europe and is not reported on Channel 5? I read international media sources and I can't tell you how frustrating it has been to attempt discussions here that simply was dismissed by Ustwo and the like, because the source wasn't from Fox News..........
On the above theme:
Quote:
<a href="http://www.newshounds.us/2005/12/27/the_fox_news_reich_pins_a_yellow_star_on_the_ny_times.php#more">The Fox News Reich Pins a Yellow Star on the NY Times</a>

December 27, 2005

<a href="http://www.newshounds.us/2005/12/26/fox_covers_for_the_bush_administration_while_it_nukes_the_constitution.php">Yesterday</a> it was US News & World Report; today (December 27, 2005) the New York Times is caught in Fox News's cross hairs in what seems to be a rampage designed to foment public hatred toward any news outlet that reports what's going on behind the scenes in the Bush administration.

The third segment of Fox's "premiere business news program," Your World w/Neil Cavuto, was titled, "Treason at the New York Times." Substitute host Stuart Varney introduced his guest, John Podhoretz of the New York Post, with: "Should the New York Times be tried for treason? In a scathing editorial today <a href="http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/60379.htm">[The Gray Lady Toys with Treason]</a> the New York Post says the New York Times is badly in need of adult supervision and asks if the newspaper is fighting against the war on terror by exposing top secret programs." As Varney spoke, a graphic filled the screen which read, "Has the NY Times declared itself to be on the front line against the War on Terror?"

(Note: <a href="http://www.newscorp.com/operations/newspapers.html">The New York Post is owned by Fox News's parent company, News Corp.,</a> and John Podhoretz is on the Fox News payroll as a <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,46565,00.html">"Fox News Contributor.")</a>

Varney asked Podhoretz about the word treason and wondered, "would you use it?"

Podhoretz said the issue was more a question of whether or not "the New York Times and other journalistic institutions which are revealing state secrets and highly classified information in the War on Terror are lining up, effectively lining up, against fighting the war on terror, effectively."

<b>Varney, someone who claims to be a journalist</b> and who presumably is aware of the responsibilities that accompany his prominent position, said, "Well, it is a deliberate undermining of the war on terror if you expose these secret programs, <b>which are not, by the way, illegal,</b> and therefore undermine our security. I mean, again, it's a strong word, but it does amount almost to treason, doesn't it?" (Varney's emphasis.)

Podhoretz said that if you view the war on terror as "any declared war" then "the exposure of state secrets after the explicit request and recommendation out of the President of the United States' own mouth to the New York Times" that its story "on the National Security Agency's behavior not be published as a threat to national security, the New York Times then decided on its own that it could do so." I've "never in my life" heard of an editor and publisher who spent time with a president "and then chose to do so anyway."

Varney said it wasn't just the New York Times, but US News & World Report, the LA Times, and Newsweek who seem to have a "virulent anti-Bush hatred here, it seems to me."

Podhoretz said "I think that's the answer." He said they feel the methods used to fight the war on terror "may be illigitimate" and they don't want to be seen as "having endorsed these methods because they didn't fight against them." He said he thinks the New York Times feels "duped" by the administration on the question of WMD in Iraq and it doesn't want now to "be seen as a handmaiden to the administration."

Varney asked "What are we going to do about this?" Podhortez replied: "What my paper did today is a vital service." If the New York Times is "going to go and undermine the United States, it is up to other journalistic institutions to call them on it and to make their lives more difficult."

Varney wrapped it up with, "Well said."

Comment: In the December 18 New York Times' Review of Books, Brian Ladd reviewed (registration required) Richard J. Evans' new book, The Third Reich in Power. Ladd wrote in the review, titled "A State of Evil," that Evans explains that, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/books/review/18ladd.html">"Behind a facade of legality, the Nazis dismantled the established protections of law.</a> Not satisfied merely to crush a lively if troubled democracy, they used their police state and the mass media to dissolve traditional allegiances." Ladd said the result "was a nightmare version of a normal modern society, with popular entertainment manipulating public enthusiasms and hatreds..." Looks like Fox News is taking the lead in directing us down that road in a 21st Century, US version of "A State of Evil."
It is plain to see the desparation peeking out from behind the curtain as all the stops are pulled in the latest Rove "Op" intended on deflecting the crisis from where it sits squarely in the lap of the Bush junta, by attacking and labeling the whistle blowers as "traitors", with the "farce", described above, masking itself as "fair and balanced" news commentary.

Will the shameless efforts of wealthy international corporatist Rupert Murdoch's "trophy" propaganda "news" network, along with a blast from
his New York Post's rag of an "editorial" page, be enough to keep the American sheeple grazing obliviously in the meadow?

Please do not post objection to the comparison with Richard J. Evans' new book, "The Third Reich in Power", describing the "nightmare version of a normal modern society, with popular entertainment manipulating public enthusiasms and hatreds...", without also telling us what you think that the
Bush administration and Rupert Murdoch's network and newspaper are actually teaming up to "tell" us, that is legitimate or "balanced".

pan6467 12-28-2005 05:05 AM
Host,

I think that it is showing desperation. They can't fight what they are doing, public opinion is tearing them apart, even senators from their own party are looking to investigate and one has to ask, what isn't Bush coming clean about. It took a newspaper report to uncover this, what is he doing that isn't being reported?

Of course Murdoch is going to attack his competition. He wants to be the only game in town. But I don't think his attacks are going to work much anymore. People are tired of hearing 9/11 as an excuse for everything.

Plus, as I pointed out above, how the Hell can you say you are protecting the nation when you allow 1000's of illegals to cross the border every single day?

Are we truly supposed to believe that every terrorist is going to call their friends overseas and give the plans?

I'm also tired of the Right's argument that "we have forgotten the horrors of 9/11"...... To anyone using that FUCK YOU how dare you use that to further your own purpose and to excuse the president for his illegal actions. I cannot nor will not forget 9/11, but I will not allow a president to use that as an excuse to commit illegal actions.

I will not be told that because I want to hold the president to the laws of the land, that I am a traitor, that I have forgotten or that I am weak. The people using these excuses have no better defenses than attacking. They cannot defend the actions of the president, they cannot even support the actions of the president. All they can do is attack and threaten and blame the "leaks".....

Then there's the argument I heard yesterday about the warrants, the question was "why didn't he get the warrants even after the fact?"

The response was laughable. "Well, the court is not a rubber stamp and they may not have approved of it. We're supposed to let these people go then? I believe some people have forgotten the true horrors of 9/11 because Bush has protected us."

When the rebuttal was "the last major attack before 9/11 happened 8 years before in 1993, and the one before that was OKC a US natural that had no Al Quida ties. So what makes you believe that we would get another one now/"

The answer was..... "well regardless, Bush is doing what needs to be done."

I'm watching the local news right now and they are having e-mails on and the 5 they read all stated that Bush should be investigated. One made a good point that Bush came forward on this only because of the Times report and questioned what is going on that he doesn't have to come forward on because the news isn't reporting it.

The anchor states, "we are at war and the president is doing what is best for all of us."

Guess what news affiliate.....

The scary part for me is if we do try to investigate Bush, he has nothing to lose then and what might he do? And if we do impeach him, does anyone feel safer with Cheney as president? With Condoleeza? With Hastert? How far down the presidential chain do we have to go?

And here is the blow that not a single Righty can answer yes to.... and since they can't I would guess that that shows they truly cannot support Bush's actions, that it is only their hate that allows him their leniency.

If this were Hilary, or Bill or Kerry or Gore..... would you still argue that they haven't overstepped any boundaries?

I would still have my position. Would you?

ScottKuma 12-30-2005 05:36 AM
(EDIT): Oops...already covered...

ratbastid 12-30-2005 06:02 AM
That's nothing new. The strategy here is, attack the leaker to squash the leak. It's worked well in the past--notice that we're not talking anymore about starting a war based on the unsupported claim that Saddam got nuke materials from Niger, but we spent WEEKS dealing with who leaked Plame's identity. Course, that one bit 'em on the ass too...

Only problem is, it takes a level of credibility to run that gambit. A level of credibility they no longer have.

ScottKuma 12-30-2005 06:19 AM
In response to pan6467's lengthy post:

Although I voted for Bush, I started railing against USA PATRIOT as soon as it was announced. It seemed a clear indication of his intent to continue to weaken our individual rights. When I heard about the wiretap allegations, all I had to do was point back to USA PATRIOT and nod my head knowingly.

To be honest, I am not sure if he broke the law -- it sure seems as if he may have. Those on the left seem quick to judge; the right-leaning talk radio hosts seem convinced what he did was firmly within his powers as stated under Article II of the US Constitution. I've READ and RE-READ Article II, and can't find a single clause that allows the President to suspend someone's rights as given by law...with the possible exception of the (in my opinion) inadequate "...he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,..."

MY problem with the above is that it seems like by allowing wiretaps to go unchecked, he's directly violated the Constitution of the United States by completely bypassing our rights against unreasonable searches & seizures.

Does this constitute "High Crimes and Treasons" under which he may be impeached?

alpha phi 12-30-2005 10:11 AM
"...he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,..."

This is how Dubya read that passage
http://img495.imageshack.us/img495/3...03chair7le.jpg

host 12-30-2005 10:41 AM
Ustwo, earlier in this thread, I directed this post:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=273

to your attention by starting it with two quotes of your prior statements.

In addtion to the material in the linked post above, I directed your attention to
statements made by Bush on April 20, 2004, and by Gonzales on Jan. 6, 2005:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=222

You did not respond, but you posted this today on the
<b>"Government Manipulation of a Free Press" </b>
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...7&postcount=43
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
Perhaps not in print, but on the radio, all I hear the left talk about is the wire tapping story trying to make it into something it isn't. Its kinda cute as they dig thier own political graves for 2006 mid term elections :thumbsup:
It would be a gesture of respect from you to the rest of us, and a boost for your own credibility, if you could provide an argument that attempts to justify your statement, since you made no attempt to refute the argument that both Bush and Gonzales misled the congress and the American people about warrentless wiretapping, and that they bypassed the FISA court and jeopordized future and past prosecutions by failing to follow the law and the paper trail of justification and documentation for their surveillance that the deliberations of the FISA court provides in every request that is submitted to it for approval.

In response to the "news" that the Justice Dept. will investigate the "leaks" that influenced the NY Times' warrantless search reporting that had already been delayed by at least a year from being released to the public by the "influence" of the Bush administration, SCOTUS Justice Black put a similar matter...the attempt by another Executive Branch to block publication of the classified "Pentagon Papers", during the Vietnam War in 1971, this way:
Quote:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/htm...3_0713_ZC.html
......In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do......
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum.

stevo 12-30-2005 11:39 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by host
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum.
Woah. :eek:

Ustwo 12-30-2005 12:58 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by host
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum.
Guard yourself well with the Foil of Renyolds for verily I come for thee!

Willravel 12-30-2005 01:04 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
Guard yourself well with the Foil of Renyolds for verily I come for thee!
Wow, that response really makes me think!! :crazy:
All you have to do it you want to shut down host is prove him wrong. I've not seen that done, so until then it is host who makes qualitied acusations and points, and you who retorts with jibberish. Who do you think people will think is right?

Ustwo 12-30-2005 05:02 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by willravel
Wow, that response really makes me think!! :crazy:
All you have to do it you want to shut down host is prove him wrong. I've not seen that done, so until then it is host who makes qualitied acusations and points, and you who retorts with jibberish. Who do you think people will think is right?
I've already posted why to me this is a non issue, I've already posted why I think this non-issue will only help the Republicans in 2006 and 8, I am not the only one who saw it that way (I posted that too) and I think the whole thread here is quite silly and a hopeful attempt to 'get Bush'.

I don't know what host does for a living, what he does for fun, who his friends are, or where he lives (or do I) but I don't have time to rehash my thought.

I only WISH I was an agent of the shadow government trilateral commission, skull and bones division, sent here to confuse and monitor the activities of freedom loving and clear thinking Americans because then I would get paid for my time I spend on these forums when I should be doing something useful like cleaning my desk or working.

Charlatan 12-30-2005 05:45 PM
People...stop pestering Ustwo. He doesn't care if Bush broke the law or not. He thinks Bush did the right thing regardless of the law.

I don't think he will change this position even if Bush is impeached and hauled off to jail.

Move on... why waste your time chasing your tails (or his).

Elphaba 12-30-2005 06:02 PM
Excellent point, Charlatan, and one that I have adopted. And once again, I agree with Ustwo that he could make better use of his time by cleaning off his desk. :)

pan6467 12-30-2005 06:33 PM
My question is why if someone finds this so unnewsworthy and not worth their time, why post and say so?

It's like the talking heads on radio and Fox and elsewhere the more they talk and try to defend this or try to blow this off the more foolishly stupid and self involved they look.

This is a big issue and hopefully the Left doesn't let this die like they have so many other things.

I just wonder what more Bush is doing that HASN'T been released. We should truly know what liberties he is taking ffor granted or what rights he is destroying, this is 'WE THE PEOPLE'S" GOVERNMENT not just W's not just the Right's but ALL OF US and WE have the right to know.

P.S. As someone who writes his own long posts and sometimes I make sense and sometimes I just babble and most likely I am ignored most of the time.....

I APPRECIATE HOST'S POSTS. I may not read every item but this is a man who has a great love for his country and friends and works hard to speak out against the wrongs he sees.

I may not always agree with him, but I don't always agree with myself...... But to HOST, I say, I truly appreciate what he does and the effort and love of country he has.

I also have yet to see anyone dispute and debate him. Rather they attack him for his posts and not the articles and information he brings. How sad, this man does not get the true respect owed to him.

Ustwo 12-30-2005 07:42 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Charlatan
People...stop pestering Ustwo. He doesn't care if Bush broke the law or not. He thinks Bush did the right thing regardless of the law.

I don't think he will change this position even if Bush is impeached and hauled off to jail.

Move on... why waste your time chasing your tails (or his).
If you were to listen to the left learning media types even they are saying it appears he didn't 'break' the law, so they are focusing on the ethics of it all. The odds of Bush going to jail for this are far less than the odds of host voting straight republican next election cycle. Unless of course he is an agent of the right wing secret army attempting to sway people to the right by being so far left. (If you read the illuminatis trilogy you know what I'm talking about :p )

So do any of you socialist types think that government agents are posting on this forum? Its time for check here.

Elphaba 12-30-2005 08:05 PM
Ustwo, back to the tittie forum, please. You do so much better there. Host already addressed your notion of the "liberal" response that you claim to have heard, read, caught in your Renyolds (sic) tinfoil hat. It really isn't amusing anymore when it is obvious that you simply wish to disrupt any topic in the politics forum.

Big yawn, darlin'

Charlatan got it right.

host 12-30-2005 08:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
Guard yourself well with the Foil of Renyolds for verily I come for thee!
Moved..... <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=1970385&postcount=67">here.</a>

Elphaba 12-30-2005 08:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
If you were to listen to the left learning media types even they are saying it appears he didn't 'break' the law, so they are focusing on the ethics of it all. The odds of Bush going to jail for this are far less than the odds of host voting straight republican next election cycle. Unless of course he is an agent of the right wing secret army attempting to sway people to the right by being so far left. (If you read the illuminatis trilogy you know what I'm talking about :p )

So do any of you socialist types think that government agents are posting on this forum? Its time for check here.
I would have expected the master of mockery to recognize that he was being mocked with similar jibberish. Host is getting better at your own game, Ustwo.

Elphaba 12-30-2005 08:58 PM
Ok, lets call a truce. dksuddeth has created a politics topic that is now at nine pages. That deserves all of our respect and getting it shut down now due to the usual shit stirring from the usual source means the terrorists win or some dumb bullshit like that.

Back on topic, but dksuddeth deserves a mighty applause.

Elphaba 01-02-2006 02:28 PM
It would appear that NSA spying on US citizens has been hiding in plain sight. I remember Bolton needing to defend his requests for NSA information during his confirmation hearing, but no bell rang and no light turned on for me.

Link


Quote:
Bolton Testimony Revealed Domestic Spying
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report

Monday 02 January 2006

This past spring, an explosive nugget of information slipped out during the confirmation hearings of John Bolton - nominated by President Bush to be the United States Ambassador to the United Nations - that in hindsight should have blown the lid off Bush's four-year-old clandestine spy program involving the National Security Agency.

At the hearing in late April, Bolton, a former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, told Congress that since 2001 he had asked the NSA on 10 different occasions to reveal to him the identities of American citizens who were caught in the NSA's raw intelligence reports in what appears to be a routine circumventing of the rules governing eavesdropping on the American public.

It turned out that Bolton was just one of many government officials who learned the identities of Americans caught in the NSA intercepts. The State Department asked the NSA to unmask the identities of American citizens 500 times since May 2001.

Newsweek revealed earlier this year that the NSA disclosed to senior White House officials and other policymakers at federal agencies the names of as many as 10,000 American citizens the agency obtained while eavesdropping on foreigners. The Americans weren't involved in any sort of terrorist activity, nor did they pose any sort of threat to national security, but had simply been named while the NSA was conducting wiretaps.

The "NSA received - and fulfilled - between 3,000 and 3,500 requests from other agencies to supply the names of U.S. citizens and officials (and citizens of other countries that help NSA eavesdrop around the world, including Britain, Canada and Australia) that initially were deleted from raw intercept reports," Newsweek said in its May 2 issue. "Sources say the number of names disclosed by NSA to other agencies during this period is more than 10,000. About one third of such disclosures were made to officials at the policymaking level; most of the rest were disclosed to other intel agencies and, perhaps surprisingly, only a small proportion to law-enforcement agencies."

The NSA has always blacked out the names of American citizens when it distributes reports about its activities to various governmental agencies because the NSA, by law, is not supposed to spy on Americans. If the NSA intercepts the names of Americans in the course of a wiretap, the agency is supposed to black out the names prior to distributing its reports to other agencies. The names of American citizens that are blacked out can be revealed to government officials if they ask for them in writing and only if they're needed to help the official better understand the context of the intelligence information they were included in.

But that didn't appear to be the case with Bolton.

During one routine wiretap, the NSA obtained the name of a state department official whose name had been blacked out when the agency submitted its report to various federal agencies. Bolton's chief of staff, Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA official, revealed during the confirmation hearings that Bolton had requested that the NSA unmask the unidentified official. Fleitz said that when Bolton found out his identity, he congratulated the official, and by doing so he had violated the NSA's rules by discussing classified information contained in the wiretap.

In a letter to Gen. Michael Hayden, then the NSA's outgoing director, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Intelligence Committee's vice chairman said, "the NSA memorandum forwarding the requested identity to State (Intelligence and Research) included the following restriction: 'Request no further action be taken on this information without prior approval of NSA.' I have confirmed with the NSA that the phrase 'no further action' includes sharing the requested identity of U.S. persons with any individual not authorized by the NSA to receive the identity."

"In addition to being troubled that Mr. Bolton may have shared U.S. person identity information without required NSA approval," Rockefeller wrote, "I am concerned that the reason for sharing the information was not in keeping with Mr. Bolton's requested justification for the identity in the first place. The identity information was provided to Mr. Bolton based on the stated reason that he needed to know the identity in order to better under the foreign intelligence contained in the NSA report."

Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Chatter: Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping, said at the time that he was troubled that, other than the questions raised by Rockefeller, Congress and the Senate showed little concern over the NSA's practices "beyond the specifics involving Bolton."

"If the National Security Agency provides officials with the identities of Americans on its tapes, what is the use of making secret those names in the first place?" Keefe wrote in an August 11 op-ed in the New York Times. "We now know that this hasn't been the case - the agency has been listening to Americans' phone calls, just not reporting any names. And Bolton's experience makes clear that keeping those names confidential was a formality that high-ranking officials could overcome by picking up the phone."

pan6467 01-03-2006 11:21 PM
There's a very simple way to get at the "suspected" terrorists without treading on the Constitution and taking rights away.

It's this: simply take your suspect in hold him for the 24-48 hours without charge while you get warrants for anything and everything you need..... once you have the warrants and you have the evidence charging the suspect should not be that hard. It's legal and it would work....oooo but wait... for some reason Bush would rather try all these people in private.

I think public trials of these suspected terrorists would not only help show we mean business, but may actually help sway public opinion back to Bush, by showing what he is doing is necessary and that poltical enemies and innocent of terrorism suspects are not losing any rights or freedoms.

Unfortunately, won't happen..... makes one wonder why, also makes one wonder what he is hiding.

smooth 01-04-2006 01:00 AM
the problem with public trials and evidence probes are that figuring out networks of secretive people takes time and discretion. Even in domestic drug network infiltrations, the investigations may take years of covert operations and observations. That's just the shitty thing about all this. But then you have to give up vulnerabilities to get them. Vulnerabilities they exploit to operate. And when we transgress our open society, we illustrate the sham of a freedom loving society we are. That's what much of the world sees when we violate our own tenets. Much of our population manages to see our own actions in ways that don't transgress our values, but these are the choices we have to make in my opinion.

Poppinjay 01-04-2006 05:39 AM
<a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1145243,00.html">Bob Barr</a> is smarter than I thought.

From the column:
Quote:
Back in the 1930s, when confronted with clear evidence he had violated the law, Georgia's then agriculture commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Eugene Talmadge popped his bright red suspenders and dared those accusing him of corruption to do something about it, declaring, "Sure, I stole, but I stole for you." He was elected Governor in 1932. Accused of breaking the law in the current debate over electronic spying, President George W. Bush has, in his own way, dared the American people to do something about it. For the sake of our Constitution, I hope they will.

dksuddeth 01-04-2006 08:49 AM
america is doomed. either people don't realize or they just plain don't care that if an elected leader like POTUS breaks the law and congress won't, or can't, do anything about it then they (the citizens) are the LAST line of defense for the constitution. It should be every citizens personal obligation to remove the current government when its not working anymore, just like it says in the constitution, but the majority of 'citizens' we have in this nation today are as morally and ethically bankrupt as are the politicians. If President Bush told america at the state of the union address that he's suspending the constitution due to a national emergency crisis, most citizens would just roll over and whine like babies.

I repeat, america is doomed.

Ustwo 01-04-2006 09:00 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
america is doomed. either people don't realize or they just plain don't care that if an elected leader like POTUS breaks the law and congress won't, or can't, do anything about it then they (the citizens) are the LAST line of defense for the constitution. It should be every citizens personal obligation to remove the current government when its not working anymore, just like it says in the constitution, but the majority of 'citizens' we have in this nation today are as morally and ethically bankrupt as are the politicians. If President Bush told america at the state of the union address that he's suspending the constitution due to a national emergency crisis, most citizens would just roll over and whine like babies.

I repeat, america is doomed.
When was this golden age when people were not morally and ethically bankrupt?

Willravel 01-04-2006 09:11 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
When was this golden age when people were not morally and ethically bankrupt?
Just because things have never been perfect does not mean we can't take actions in order to make things better. Don't you hate political corruption (from any party), just like the rest of us? Wouldn't you like to remove that stress from our country?

dksuddeth 01-04-2006 09:18 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
When was this golden age when people were not morally and ethically bankrupt?
I think it ended somewhere between the end of WW2 and Vietnam. I guess it should be expected though since people, as a whole because they are little sheep, have a tendency to follow the shining examples of morals and ethics that are exhibited by their elected leaders.

pan6467 01-04-2006 11:13 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
america is doomed. either people don't realize or they just plain don't care that if an elected leader like POTUS breaks the law and congress won't, or can't, do anything about it then they (the citizens) are the LAST line of defense for the constitution. It should be every citizens personal obligation to remove the current government when its not working anymore, just like it says in the constitution, but the majority of 'citizens' we have in this nation today are as morally and ethically bankrupt as are the politicians. If President Bush told america at the state of the union address that he's suspending the constitution due to a national emergency crisis, most citizens would just roll over and whine like babies.

I repeat, america is doomed.
I don't think America is doomed, to be quite honest it is always darkest before the dawn. I think the people will wake up when it is necessary. Sometimes something has to be taken away or threatened before truly appreciated. Ideally, I wouldn't want it to be our rights and liberties but if that is what it takes........

You also have to remember that America is very centrist by it's nature and when we allow the penduulum to swing too far in one direction the people have always moved it back.

It's what happened to the Dems and it's what is happening now to the GOP. The radicals and far Right took over and there are enough moderate GOP that are going to start splitting the party more and more. Same as what the Dems. have gone through.

Historically, the generation following the one in power leans more toward the opposite direction of their parents. Hence Clinton after Bush, JFK after Ike, Ike after Truman, all the way to Addams and Jefferson.

The only thing that concerns me is that right now there is no compromising and the Radical Right refuses to give on anything, which worries me that they may play with the penduulum and try to hold onto power using any means necessary.

If that happens though, I don't see the people rolling over, I see a 60's radical type revolution happening. Noone believed the Boomers would do it, and had you told the people in the 50's what was coming they would have laughed..... and I see that type of struggle coming if things do not change.

stevo 01-04-2006 11:34 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by pan6467
There's a very simple way to get at the "suspected" terrorists without treading on the Constitution and taking rights away.

It's this: simply take your suspect in hold him for the 24-48 hours without charge while you get warrants for anything and everything you need..... once you have the warrants and you have the evidence charging the suspect should not be that hard. It's legal and it would work....oooo but wait... for some reason Bush would rather try all these people in private.

I think public trials of these suspected terrorists would not only help show we mean business, but may actually help sway public opinion back to Bush, by showing what he is doing is necessary and that poltical enemies and innocent of terrorism suspects are not losing any rights or freedoms.

Unfortunately, won't happen..... makes one wonder why, also makes one wonder what he is hiding.
It sounds easy enough, doesn't it? But what about when NSA receives some vague intel, that doesn't give them a name. How do you detain a suspect when you don't even know his name? How do you get a warrent when all you have is a bit of info? You can't. So using that bit of intel NSA gains more intel until they have a clearer picture on what is going on. Sometimes things aren't as simple as you put it, Pan. I'm also suprised that you would rather have a a suspect held a detained for up to 48 hours rather than just listening in on their calls. Wouldn't your option infringe on the guys freedom more than just listening to a conversation with al-qaeda?

Do you remember the 21st highjacker, Z. Massoui (sp?)? The FBI had him detained prior to 9/11 and wanted to get into his laptop, but alas, a Federal Judge DENIED the FBI access to his laptop that may have had info on 9/11 and actually prevented it. But we don't hear about that, do we?

The longer this story goes on the more obvious it is that what bush did was legal and moral.

dksuddeth 01-04-2006 12:00 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevo
The longer this story goes on the more obvious it is that what bush did was legal and moral.
while technically it might be wholly legal, care to point out to me where its 'moral'?

stevo 01-04-2006 12:03 PM
What is done is for PROTECTING the american people, not to undermind them.

roachboy 01-04-2006 12:20 PM
fact is that there should be an interesting and potentially important series of consequences for the bushpolicies in question here---there should be an investigation into this, which would set off a series of legal battles over the legitimacy of john yoo's carl schmitt-like usage of a state of emergency to remove all boundaries to executive power and the bushpeople's---um---loose interpretation of this argument.

and if the administration looses, it should fall along with the doctrine of unlimited execustive power that it has ridden since 9/2001.

in the "debate" above all that is really happening is a rehearsal of basic political divisions without any real dialogue--the rightwingers cannot see any possibility of a problem, everyone else sees a problem, round and round.
it is a bit surprising to see the conservatives above already arrayed in a "defense" of total denial of any problem whatsoever--but no matter, this is the right we are talking about here and submissiveness to the dominant talking point of the moment is evidently a kind of marker of belonging to that curious little world. and the recycling of these same divisions is tedious. no-one ever moves when things reach this point. maybe this recurrent state of affairs is a type of penis function, marking of territory, walking purposefully about on it.....it's hard to know, really.

anyway, it would appear that the folk who run the ideological show on the right think that this problem can be managed at the public opinion level--but the problem is bigger than that: it is whether the administration acted illegally in claiming unlimited power for the executive branch (and thereby jettisoning any pretense to democratic accountability--like the carl schmitt precursor for this ove, a state of emergency cannot abide democracy because it is too slow and too messy--a dictator, capable of Decision is required--a "logic" which is essentially that of the national security state as a whole since ww2, and of the ever-submissive american right now---with dick cheney as the most attractive spokesmodel for it.)

i would like to see the legal fight happen.
of course i would hope that the defeat the bushpeople would suffer would be total....
but that is just my opinion about outcome and has nothing to do with the importance of the legal fight--which would function to reinscribe the balance of power between branches as the states enters a new and improved slide into that twilight world of fading empires.

Ustwo 01-04-2006 12:23 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
I think it ended somewhere between the end of WW2 and Vietnam. I guess it should be expected though since people, as a whole because they are little sheep, have a tendency to follow the shining examples of morals and ethics that are exhibited by their elected leaders.
Edit: OOpps read that wrong.

Political scandal was around long before WW2, there is no golden age in American politics.

I'm at work and don't have time to dig up examples beyond the obvious war we had based on false assumptions (Spanish American) civil liberties shot to hell far beyond your wildist imaginations (Civil war), big time scandal (T-pot dome), and lets not forget the great depression.

dksuddeth 01-04-2006 12:42 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ustwo
Edit: OOpps read that wrong.

Political scandal was around long before WW2, there is no golden age in American politics.

I'm at work and don't have time to dig up examples beyond the obvious war we had based on false assumptions (Spanish American) civil liberties shot to hell far beyond your wildist imaginations (Civil war), big time scandal (T-pot dome), and lets not forget the great depression.
you've misunderstood what golden age I was talking about. I KNOW there was never a golden age of politics, I was referring to the golden age of the american population when it came to being decently american.

dksuddeth 01-04-2006 12:45 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevo
What is done is for PROTECTING the american people, not to undermind them.
so when any political office holder tells you he/she broke the law and they would do it again to protect you, you'll give them a pass, right? after all, its all about protecting us in a time of war.

so tell me, if the government figures out that you will let them do whatever they need to (read that as want to) as long as they tell you its for your protection, do you ever think that you'll no longer need their protection? and how long will you let the government continue to ignore basic laws, complex laws, constitutional laws?

dksuddeth 01-04-2006 12:51 PM
Bush could bypass torture ban

Quote:
When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."

Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law.
With this kind of attitude, why should we even bother with congress and the courts anymore? If he can interpret the laws in any way he deems fit and necessary, why should we even bother? somebody just give him a frickin bejeweled crown already and get it over with.

Rekna 01-04-2006 01:07 PM
all hail king bush!

Elphaba 01-04-2006 01:19 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevo
Do you remember the 21st highjacker, Z. Massoui (sp?)? The FBI had him detained prior to 9/11 and wanted to get into his laptop, but alas, a Federal Judge DENIED the FBI access to his laptop that may have had info on 9/11 and actually prevented it. But we don't hear about that, do we?

The longer this story goes on the more obvious it is that what bush did was legal and moral.
Stevo, we don't hear about that, because it didn't come down the way you describe. The Washington Post article below is a long one, but I have posted the relevant information.

Link

Quote:
A Zeal to Defend Secrecy

Saturday, December 24, 2005; Page A15

In their zeal to defend President Bush for ordering the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on communications of American citizens, William Kristol and Gary Schmitt got key things wrong regarding the FBI's terrorism investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui ["Vital Presidential Power," op-ed, Dec. 20].

They are wrong about Moussaoui being a "U.S. person" who required a higher standard of probable cause under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Moussaoui was a French citizen in the United States with an expired temporary visa, which means that the higher FISA standard did not apply.

More important, and contrary to Kristol and Schmitt's assertion that "the Justice Department decided there was not sufficient evidence to get a FISA warrant to allow the inspection of his computer files," no evidence of Moussaoui's suspicious flight training and ties with terrorism was presented to the Justice Department. The department was never contacted and so did not decide anything; therefore, no decision was ever made regarding the given evidence and its subsequent application to FISA standards.


-- Coleen Rowley

Apple Valley, Minn.

The writer is a retired FBI agent who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002 about the problems the FBI faces in investigating terrorists.
That means the FISA procedures were not the reason the FBI failed to inspect Moussaoui's computer files. Rather, the FBI's failure to share and analyze intelligence sufficiently is what enabled Moussaoui to escape further investigation. If you recall, Rowley was the whistle blower on the ineptitude of FBI senior management in reviewing her Moussaouri intel.

pan6467 01-04-2006 03:06 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevo
It sounds easy enough, doesn't it? But what about when NSA receives some vague intel, that doesn't give them a name. How do you detain a suspect when you don't even know his name? How do you get a warrent when all you have is a bit of info? You can't. So using that bit of intel NSA gains more intel until they have a clearer picture on what is going on. Sometimes things aren't as simple as you put it, Pan. I'm also suprised that you would rather have a a suspect held a detained for up to 48 hours rather than just listening in on their calls. Wouldn't your option infringe on the guys freedom more than just listening to a conversation with al-qaeda?
Hope you enjoyed your trip.

The 24-48 holding period is a good idea and it is legal. If Bush is going to do these things at least do these things using LEGAL techniques.

I'm not in favor of either but at least my suggestion is legal and would probably garner just as much if not more info.

So according to your scenario
Quote:
But what about when NSA receives some vague intel, that doesn't give them a name. How do you detain a suspect when you don't even know his name? How do you get a warrent when all you have is a bit of info? You can't. So using that bit of intel NSA gains more intel until they have a clearer picture on what is going on.
There are a few questions..... how did they get the info, how do they know who to tap, and if they know the phone they are to tap then they know who the suspect is?

If you are following the suspect and you know he has info, take him down and get the warrants and all the info you can.

The problem is Bush isn't even getting the warrants. If Bush got warrants (even after the fact), there wouldn't be any argument from me. I'd still believe it was wrong but, again, at least what he would be doing was legal.

It just amazes me that people back him no matter what and the arguments used make no sense, when you know damn well if Bill had used this, or if a future Dem. President uses this, the people supporting Bush would be yelling as loud as we are now.

It's hypocritical, and I have already stated that Waco and Ruby Ridge were abuses of power and at the time I would have supported any Impeachment hearings.

Right, legal and moral is what our leadership should aspire to and set as their goal.... not hiding and using technicalities and flinging bullshit around as they perform illegal tactics, regardless of why or who the party in power is.

Once you start to support such action the government eventually takes more and more liberty on those powers they abuse...... very rarely if ever do they right the wrongs and even if they do it takes generations to correct the situation.

And again I ask if there are no warrants, no paper trails how do we know who truly is being tapped? It could be political opposites of Bush, dissidents that Bush wants tabs on and claims they are Al Quida. If there's no paper trail how do we know he isn't abusing these powers? How do we know what else he is doing, I mean look how long it took this to come out and be admitted to and the "investigations of the leak" we have now. And yet, what isn't being reported, that should scare us even more.

Or are you of the belief what we don't know won't hurt us?

And how can we allow this to continue, knowing the next president can and may take this power even that much further?

Where does it end?

Whether you believe Bush is breaking laws or not, we should make sure NO PRESIDENT ever can excute anything like this without warrants. Because I guarantee you, should we continue down this road it maybe too late, when people who are okaying this and turning blind eyes to it start realizing their rights have been eroded.

(BTW I was raised 7th Day Adventist and the Branch Davidians, who were accused of having some far out religion were also 7th Day Adventists.. but you never really heard that info given anywhere.... just a tidbit of semi-off topic info.)

Elph answered the part I snipped so no sense in my reanswering it.

roachboy 01-07-2006 10:18 AM
Quote:
Report Rebuts Bush on Spying
Domestic Action's Legality Challenged


By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 7, 2006; A01


A report by Congress's research arm concluded yesterday that the administration's justification for the warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush conflicts with existing law and hinges on weak legal arguments.

The Congressional Research Service's report rebuts the central assertions made recently by Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales about the president's authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad.

The findings, the first nonpartisan assessment of the program's legality to date, prompted Democratic lawmakers and civil liberties advocates to repeat calls yesterday for Congress to conduct hearings on the monitoring program and attempt to halt it.

The 44-page report said that Bush probably cannot claim the broad presidential powers he has relied upon as authority to order the secret monitoring of calls made by U.S. citizens since the fall of 2001. Congress expressly intended for the government to seek warrants from a special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before engaging in such surveillance when it passed legislation creating the court in 1978, the CRS report said.

The report also concluded that Bush's assertion that Congress authorized such eavesdropping to detect and fight terrorists does not appear to be supported by the special resolution that Congress approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which focused on authorizing the president to use military force.

"It appears unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized the NSA electronic surveillance operations here," the authors of the CRS report wrote. The administration's legal justification "does not seem to be . . . well-grounded," they said.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has pledged to hold hearings on the program, which was first revealed in news accounts last month, and the judges of the FISA court have demanded a classified briefing about the program, which is scheduled for Monday.

"This report contradicts the president's claim that his spying on Americans was legal," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), one of the lawmakers who asked the CRS to research the issue. "It looks like the president's wiretapping was not only illegal, but also ensnared innocent Americans who did nothing more than place a phone call."

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the president and the administration believe the program is on firm legal footing. "The national security activities described by the president were conducted in accord with the law and provide a critical tool in the war on terror that saves lives and protects civil liberties at the same time," he said. A spokesman for the National Security Agency was not available for a comment yesterday.

Other administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the CRS reached some erroneous legal conclusions, erring on the side of a narrow interpretation of what constitutes military force and when the president can exercise his war powers.

Bush has said that he has broad powers in times of war and must exercise them to target not only "enemies across the world" but also "terrorists here at home." The administration has argued, starting in 2002 briefs to the FISA court, that the "war on terror" is global and indefinite, effectively removing the limits of wartime authority -- traditionally the times and places of imminent or actual battle.

Some law professors have been skeptical of the president's assertions, and several said yesterday that the report's conclusions were expected. "Ultimately, the administration's position is not persuasive," said Carl W. Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor and an expert on constitutional law. "Congress has made it pretty clear it has legislated pretty comprehensively on this issue with FISA," he said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "And there begins to be a pattern of unilateral executive decision making. Time and again, there's the executive acting alone without consulting the courts or Congress."

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the report makes it clear that Congress has exerted power over domestic surveillance. He urged Congress to address what he called the president's abuse of citizens' privacy rights and the larger issue of presidential power.

"These are absolutely central questions in American government: What exactly are the authorities vested in the president, and is he complying with the law?" Rotenberg said.

The report includes 1970s-era quotations from congressional committees that were then uncovering years of domestic spying abuses by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI against those suspected of communist sympathies, American Indians, Black Panthers and other activists. Lawmakers were very disturbed at how routinely FBI agents had listened in on U.S. citizens' phone calls without following any formal procedures. As they drafted FISA and created its court, the lawmakers warned then that only strong legislation, debated in public, could stop future administrations from eavesdropping.

"This evidence alone should demonstrate the inappropriateness of relying solely on executive branch discretion to safeguard civil liberties," they wrote. The lawmakers noted that Congress's intelligence committees could provide some checks and balances to protect privacy rights but that their power was limited in the face of an administration arguing that intelligence decisions must remain top secret.

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...010601772.html

the legal battle lines are being drawn.
interesting how central the problematic status of this "war on terror" fiction is to the counterarguments
kinda cuts to one of the main questions that conservatives here have never really answered concerning their understanding of this "war" thing, where it comes from, how they understand themselves to be threatened personally by it and the relation of these positions to support for the bushposition on unlimited executive power.

Cynthetiq 01-07-2006 11:52 AM
I just read this on Gothamist.com a local NYC blog:

Quote:
So, our siblings over in the Windy City recently pointed out a really creepy set of businesses that we had kinda hoped only existed on Veronica Mars.

What are we blabbering on about? Basically while much of the world is worried about Bush listening in on your phone calls (or those of CNN reporters), the FBI is warning its agents (and pretty much anyone who'll listen) to be aware that your phone records are very, very, easy to obtain for a hundred bucks or so thanks to websites like this.

How easy to get? "To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said." Uhm, by now we probably really shouldn't be at all surprised by that, and yet we are.

Chicagoist points out that this could be a great boon for wives looking into their cheating husbands (no need to steal his phone to look for suspicious numbers, just get the record!). In the meantime, we think we're going be moving all of our "shadier" phone dealings to a prepaid phone...
So if private companies can do it via legal loophole, I'm sure that the government can do it as well via similar legal loopholes. And besides, the damage is already done for those affected immediately by it. It's those future "unborn" situations that need to be protected.

pan6467 01-07-2006 12:15 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
I just read this on Gothamist.com a local NYC blog:



So if private companies can do it via legal loophole, I'm sure that the government can do it as well via similar legal loopholes. And besides, the damage is already done for those affected immediately by it. It's those future "unborn" situations that need to be protected.

While I don't agree phone records should be so easily gotten, that is nothing compared to actually taping a conversation on the phone between people.

cybersharp 01-07-2006 01:27 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevo
So the count now is 5 for letting the terrorist go free or should I round up to 10?

to answer you, rekna, I'd really just have to quote ustwo

Who cares if the law was followed if we're dead?
Are you saying that you really thought the Terrorists in Iraq could have ever prevailed against the U.S in a war? The fact that any of them are still ALIVE is a miracle. I mean seriously consider that some of the most effective methods of attacking the U.S that they have are Suicide bombers and Car Bombers... Honestly they dont exactly fight us to begin with.. as most of their battle tactics involve getting themselves killed, to kill anyone else.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pan6467
What about you Libertarians???? How can you support such an obvious violation of the Constitution?
Well I am Libertarian... I DONT support this violation. The consitution was meant to protect civil rights and limit/balance govermental powers. Not the other way around.

If evidence is gained by breaking the laws that are proficent (as ours are if followed) it can not be used in court. They should without a doubt release him inless they have some more substantail proof of his guilt other than stuff that they got by violating his constitutional rights.

From what I know, the only thing they could have LEGALY done is held him for 24 hours, then, without any other evidence they would have had to release him.

Rekna 01-07-2006 02:33 PM
So if Bush is given power because of "broad war time powers" my question is this which war is granting him the power to spy on domestic civilians? I don't think there is some vast conspiricy of civilians helping out Iraq. Or is it the war on terror? Wait did congress ever offically declare a war on terror? Are we allowed to be officially at war with an idea?

Elphaba 01-07-2006 06:51 PM
Good point, Rekna. The Bush admin says that the "war on terrorism" is a global war, without end. We are being told to cede our constitutional rights to executive war powers, forever. I cannot abide that line of thinking.

Hardknock 01-07-2006 09:29 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by dksuddeth
america is doomed. either people don't realize or they just plain don't care that if an elected leader like POTUS breaks the law and congress won't, or can't, do anything about it then they (the citizens) are the LAST line of defense for the constitution. It should be every citizens personal obligation to remove the current government when its not working anymore, just like it says in the constitution, but the majority of 'citizens' we have in this nation today are as morally and ethically bankrupt as are the politicians. If President Bush told america at the state of the union address that he's suspending the constitution due to a national emergency crisis, most citizens would just roll over and whine like babies.

I repeat, america is doomed.
I called this six years ago when Bush first got elected (placed) and everyone either won't listen to me or writes me off as either a communist or a plain idiot.

I agree with you. Our democracy is already dead. The sheep of this country will just sit there, watch tv while gouging their faces with Micky D's, get fat and not care one fucking bit.

Hardknock 01-07-2006 09:36 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevo
It sounds easy enough, doesn't it? But what about when NSA receives some vague intel, that doesn't give them a name. How do you detain a suspect when you don't even know his name? How do you get a warrent when all you have is a bit of info? You can't. So using that bit of intel NSA gains more intel until they have a clearer picture on what is going on. Sometimes things aren't as simple as you put it, Pan. I'm also suprised that you would rather have a a suspect held a detained for up to 48 hours rather than just listening in on their calls. Wouldn't your option infringe on the guys freedom more than just listening to a conversation with al-qaeda?

Do you remember the 21st highjacker, Z. Massoui (sp?)? The FBI had him detained prior to 9/11 and wanted to get into his laptop, but alas, a Federal Judge DENIED the FBI access to his laptop that may have had info on 9/11 and actually prevented it. But we don't hear about that, do we?

The longer this story goes on the more obvious it is that what bush did was legal and moral.
You can write arguement after arguement after arguement trying to justfity Bush's actions but he violated the 4th amendment plain and simple. So you can't get the name of a suspect that you are persuing? All you have is a bit of info? YOU GET A WARRANT FROM THE FISA COURT. It's a simple process.

You're making this so much more difficult and complicated than it needs to be. I suspect the reason why is to again, to try and justify the criminal Bush's actions.

The longer this goes, I think that more information will come out (espically from Specter's hearings) that this really was an illegal action and Bush overstepped his authority.

He is nothing more than a plain criminal as far as I'm concerned. A murderer too.

Elphaba 01-08-2006 01:02 AM
Um, Hardknock? Take a deep breath and a short break. You have made really thoughtful posts in all of the time I have been here. I agree with you, but keeping it chilled goes farther.

Hardknock 01-08-2006 07:02 PM
The truth hurts. And you know what? It needs to be said. Over and over and over again because apparently, the people of this country do not want to either listen or they're too dumb to comprehend it.

That's why Bush was permitted to violate our constitution in the first place. If citizens had only been paying attention......

Willravel 01-08-2006 07:26 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hardknock
The truth hurts. And you know what? It needs to be said. Over and over and over again because apparently, the people of this country do not want to either listen or they're too dumb to comprehend it.

That's why Bush was permitted to violate our constitution in the first place. If citizens had only been paying attention......
They have to want to listen first. Shouting doesn't make people want to listen. The funny thing? The best way to defeat Bush and those who would take our freedom is to let them win. It is then and only then that those lazy, apathetic, lethargic people will actually give a crap.

dksuddeth 01-09-2006 05:50 AM
the majority of people in this nation simply will not care. As long as they have a relatively easy time of getting a job, keeping their family taken care of, and not incurring major outside interference they will continue to not care. thats why I say, america is doomed.

Elphaba 01-09-2006 05:21 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hardknock
The truth hurts. And you know what? It needs to be said. Over and over and over again because apparently, the people of this country do not want to either listen or they're too dumb to comprehend it.

That's why Bush was permitted to violate our constitution in the first place. If citizens had only been paying attention......
That is exactly what Host was trying to tell us for years. Do you finally comprehend his frustration and anger?

Cynthetiq 01-09-2006 05:28 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
That is exactly what Host was trying to tell us for years. Do you finally comprehend his frustration and anger?
host hasn't been on for years.. only months.

Willravel 01-09-2006 05:35 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
host hasn't been on for years.. only months.
I think Elphaba meant 'us' in the wider sense.

pan6467 01-09-2006 05:53 PM
While DK and Will are correct in that the majority need to wake up and see what is going on, I firmly disagree with their prognosis that the end of the country is near, at least in the way they describe. Economically, is what I am worried about.

I do think we are due for a social revolution of the '60's type, but nothing any more drastic unless the government reacts in extreme fashion.

I think what we are seeing is that the penduulum and the GOP have gone too far to the right and the correction will start to occur in the elections this year and in full blown fashion in '08.

I firmly believe once everything comes out on what Bush has done there will be an outcry and the illegalities or borderline legal but ethically wrongs Bush committed will be legislatively taken care of. It seems some people expect things to happen overnight, and they can't evidence has to be gotten, people have to be shown exacts and probables and not conspiracies that are impossible to prove.

I believe we should be more concerned about the economics. The national deficit and the trade deficit are killing us and they are only going to be worsened over time unless we find ways to correct them.

That is where the Dems need to focus and the platform that will win. Focussing on the scandals works, but it gives you only a temporary bump and unless you have a platform that can work and hold people and get their votes, the scandals, alone, aren't going to do it.

Focus on getting money into education and social programs that will better the country.

If we are losing our manufacturing industries to others, then find the next big thing to focus on, develop and work on.

We have been so inundated with conspiracies and scandals people are becoming immune to them. And yes, as long as people have enough to live they don't care because in times like these people are worried about just staying economically viable and afloat.

Elphaba 01-09-2006 07:31 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
host hasn't been on for years.. only months.
Cyn, Host's join date is 9-2004. That would be a year and "only months," more. I assumed he had been here longer, because I have only been here one year.

His exact start date doesn't change my point that he had been trying for "many months" to awaken us to the machinations of the Bush admin. Agreed?

pan6467 01-09-2006 07:44 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elphaba
because I have only been here one year.

And some of us are very happy to have gotten to know you in that year, beautiful. :icare:


/end threadjack

Elphaba 01-09-2006 07:47 PM
Pan:
Quote:
I believe we should be more concerned about the economics. The national deficit and the trade deficit are killing us and they are only going to be worsened over time unless we find ways to correct them.
I agree Pan. Late last week, China announced it is going to reevaluate it's foreign investments which primarily consists of the US dollar. Our ever escalating debt has been bought up by China, which gives them a hold over our country. Economics, particularly global economics is something I have little knowledge, but it is worthy of it's own thread. I have found a couple of articles that might be worthy of a separate discussion.

Elphaba 01-09-2006 07:48 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by pan6467
And some of us are very happy to have gotten to know you in that year, beautiful. :icare:


/end threadjack
You are such a sweetheart. :icare:

Elphaba 01-17-2006 06:06 PM
This is a legal tactic that I don't recall seeing before. Rather that waiting for Congress to sort out the legality of the NSA domestic wiretapping, two lawsuits in two different courts are challenging the NSA directly.

Truthout Link Again

Quote:
Two Groups Plan Lawsuits over Federal Eavesdropping
By Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times

Tuesday 17 January 2006

Washington - Two leading civil rights groups say they plan to file lawsuits Tuesday against the Bush administration over its domestic spying program to determine whether the operation was used to monitor 10 defense lawyers, journalists, scholars, political activists and other Americans with ties to the Middle East.

The two lawsuits, which are being filed separately by the American Civil Liberties Union in Federal District Court in Detroit and the Center for Constitutional Rights in Federal District Court in Manhattan, are the first major court challenges to the eavesdropping program.

Both groups are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional. The Bush administration has strongly defended the legality and necessity of the surveillance program, and officials said the Justice Department would probably vigorously oppose the lawsuits on national security grounds.

Justice Department officials would not comment on any specific individuals who might have been singled out under the National Security Agency program, and they said the department would review the lawsuits once they were filed.

Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Justice Department, added Monday that "the N.S.A. surveillance activities described by the president were conducted lawfully and provide valuable tools in the war on terrorism to keep America safe and protect civil liberties."

The lawsuits seek to answer one of the major questions surrounding the eavesdropping program: has it been used solely to single out the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people with known links to Al Qaeda, as President Bush and his most senior advisers have maintained, or has it been abused in ways that civil rights advocates say could hark back to the political spying abuses of the 1960's and 70's?

"There's almost a feeling of déjà vu with this program," said James Bamford, an author and journalist who is one of five individual plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit who say they suspect that the program may have been used to monitor their international communications.

"It's a return to the bad old days of the N.S.A.," said Mr. Bamford, who has written two widely cited books on the intelligence agency.

Although the program's public disclosure last month has generated speculation that it may have been used to monitor journalists or politicians, no evidence has emerged to support that idea. Bush administration officials point to a secret audit by the Justice Department last year that reviewed a sampling of security agency interceptions involving Americans and that they said found no documented abuses.

The lawsuit to be filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights has as plaintiffs four lawyers at the center and a legal assistant there who work on terrorism-related cases at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and overseas, which often involves international e-mail messages and phone calls. Similarly, the plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit include five Americans who work in international policy and terrorism, along with the A.C.L.U. and three other advocacy groups.

"We don't have any direct evidence" that the plaintiffs were monitored by the security agency, said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U. "But the plaintiffs have a well-founded belief that they may have been monitored, and there's a real chilling effect in the fear that they can no longer have confidential discussions with clients or sources without the possibility that the N.S.A. is listening."

One of the A.C.L.U. plaintiffs, Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, said that a Stanford student studying in Egypt conducted research for him on political opposition groups, and that he worried that communications between them on sensitive political topics could be monitored. "How can we communicate effectively if you risk being intercepted by the National Security Agency?" Mr. Diamond said.

Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Barnett R. Rubin, a scholar at New York University who works in international relations; Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at The American Prospect; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic advocacy group.

The lawsuits over the eavesdropping program come as several defense lawyers in high-profile terrorism cases around the country have begun legal challenges on behalf of their clients, arguing that the government may have improperly hidden the use of the surveillance program from the courts in investigating terrorism leads.

Bill Goodman, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that in suing in federal court to block the surveillance program, his group believed "without question" that Mr. Bush violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs wiretaps, by authorizing the security agency operation.

But Mr. Goodman acknowledged that in persuading a federal judge to intervene, "politically, it's a difficult case to make."

He added: "We recognize that it's extremely difficult for a court to stand up to a president, particularly a president who is determined to extend his power beyond anything envisioned by the founding fathers. That takes courage."

The debate over the legality of Mr. Bush's eavesdropping program will be at the center of Congressional hearings expected to begin next month. Former Vice President Al Gore entered the fray on Monday with a speech in Washington that accused Mr. Bush of running roughshod over the Constitution.

American liberties, Mr. Gore said, "have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power."

"As we begin this new year," he continued, "the executive branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses."

RonRyan85 01-20-2006 02:37 PM
President George W. Bush took an oath to do everything to try and get
justice for the persons who attack America and if listening in to those
who may be planning another 9/11 type attack, I say more power to him.
What do the innocent Americans have to fear? The "Loss of Freedoms?" I
have nothing to conceal from the C.I.A. or F.B.I. IF an Atomic or Bio-
bomb is set off in one of our big cities, the people who hate Bush and
say he is bad for the USA will be the first to say:"Why didn't he do
something to prevent this attack?"

Willravel 01-20-2006 02:56 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by RonRyan85
President George W. Bush took an oath to do everything to try and get
justice for the persons who attack America and if listening in to those
who may be planning another 9/11 type attack, I say more power to him.
What do the innocent Americans have to fear? The "Loss of Freedoms?" I
have nothing to conceal from the C.I.A. or F.B.I. IF an Atomic or Bio-
bomb is set off in one of our big cities, the people who hate Bush and
say he is bad for the USA will be the first to say:"Why didn't he do
something to prevent this attack?"
Remember 9/11? Remember the speech Bush gave right after the attacks? "They hate our freedom. They hate our democratic system." Bush is the one not respecting the system by breaking checks and balances, and FISA. You cannot simply go around the Judicial system because you feel like it. If there were a threat, then all you need to do is go get a quick FISA warrent, which is really, really easy. You8 don't even need to prove someone has commited a crime, all you need for probable cause is if proof that someone is linked with a known terrorist. If Bush couldn't prove that, if these people who are bugged have NO connections to terrorists, then how, oh how, are these wire taps connected to protecting us?

RonRyan85 01-20-2006 04:07 PM
Al Gore Led Effort to Tap Every Phone in America
Charles R. Smith
Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006

Big Brother Al

There are times when Al Gore should sit down and shut up. Former Vice
President Al Gore called for an independent investigation into President
Bush's domestic spying program, insisting that the president
"repeatedly and insistently" broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without
court approval.

What Al Gore forgot to tell his audience was that he not only supported
eavesdropping on Americans without court approval - he also chaired a
project designed to execute just that in total secrecy. In short, Al
Gore wanted to bug every phone, computer and fax in America.

In 1993 Al Gore was charged by then President Bill Clinton to run the
"Clipper" project. Clipper was a special chip designed by the National
Security Agency (NSA) to be built into all phones, computers and fax
machines. Not only would Clipper provide scrambled security, it also
contained a special "exploitable feature" enabling the NSA to monitor all
phone calls without a court order.

In 1993, VP Al Gore went to work with a top secret group of Clinton
advisers, called the IWG or Interagency Working Group, and delivered a
report on the Clipper project.

"Simply stated, the nexus of the long term problem is how can the
government sustain its technical ability to accomplish electronic
surveillance in an advanced telecommunications environment," states the TOP
SECRET report prepared by Gore's Interagency Working Group.

"The solution to the access problem for future telecommunications
requires that the vendor/manufacturing community translate the government's
requirements into a fundamental system design criteria," noted the Gore
report.

"The basic issue for resolution is a choice between accomplishing this
objective by mandatory (i.e., statutory/regulatory) or voluntary
means."

The documented truth is that America was to be given no choice but to
be monitored by Big Brother Al. This awful conclusion is backed by
several other documents. One such document released by the Justice
Department is a March 1993 memo from Stephen Colgate, Assistant Attorney General
for Administration.

According to the Colgate memo, Vice President Al Gore chaired a meeting
with Hillary Clinton crony Webster Hubbell, Janet Reno, Commerce
Secretary Ron Brown and Leon Panetta in March 1993. The topic of the meeting
was the "AT&T Telephone Security Device."

According to Colgate, AT&T had developed secure telephones the U.S.
government could not tap. The Clinton-Gore administration secretly
contracted with AT&T to keep the phones off the market. Colgate's memo noted
that the administration was determined to prevent the American public
from having private phone conversations.


"AT&T has developed a Data Encryption Standard (DES) product for use on
telephones to provide security for sensitive conversations," wrote
Colgate.

"The FBI, NSA and NSC want to purchase the first production run of
these devices to prevent their proliferation. They are difficult to
decipher and are a deterrent to wiretaps."

Buried in the Colgate memo is the first reference to
government-developed monitoring devices that would be required for all Americans.

According to the March 1993 Colgate memo to Hubbell, "FBI, NSA and NSC
want to push legislation which would require all government agencies
and eventually everyone in the U.S. to use a new public-key based
cryptography method."

Gore Lied

Al Gore quickly embraced the Clipper chip and the concept of monitoring
America at all costs. In 1994, Gore wrote a glowing letter supporting
the Clipper chip and the government-approved wiretap design.

"As we have done with the Clipper Chip, future key escrow schemes must
contain safeguards to provide for key disclosures only under legal
authorization and should have audit procedures to ensure the integrity of
the system. We also want to assure users of key escrow encryption
products that they will not be subject to unauthorized electronic
surveillance," wrote Gore in his July 20, 1994 letter to Representative Maria
Cantwell.

However, Gore lied. In 1994, federal officials were keenly aware that
the Clipper chip design did not have safeguards against unauthorized
surveillance. In fact, NASA turned down the Clipper project because the
space agency knew of the flawed design.

In 1993, Benita A. Cooper, NASA Associate Administrator for Management
Systems and Facilities, wrote: "There is no way to prevent the NSA from
routinely monitoring all [Clipper] encrypted traffic. Moreover,
compromise of the NSA keys, such as in the Walker case, could compromise the
entire [Clipper] system."

Ms. Cooper referred to Soviet spy John Walker, who is serving life in
prison for disclosing U.S. Navy secret codes. In 1993 Ms. Cooper did not
know of Clinton Chinagate scandals, the Lippo Group, John Huang or
Webster Hubbell, but her prophetic prediction was not so remarkable in
retrospect.

Yet, Al Gore pressed ahead, continuing to support a flawed design
despite warnings that the design could "compromise" every computer in the
U.S.

A 1996 secret memo on a secret meeting of CIA Directer John Deutch, FBI
Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno states, "Last
summer, the Vice President agreed to explore public acceptance of a key
escrow policy but did not rule out other approaches, although none seem
viable at this point."

According to the 1996 report to V.P. Gore by then CIA Director Deutch,
Reno proposed an all-out federal takeover of the computer security
industry. The Justice Department proposed "legislation that would ... ban
the import and domestic manufacture, sale or distribution of encryption
that does not have key recovery. Janet Reno and Louis Freeh are deeply
concerned about the spread of encryption. Pervasive use of encryption
destroys the effectiveness of wiretapping, which supplies much of the
evidence used by FBI and Justice. They support tight controls, for
domestic use."

Yes the Democrats did bug us...they just had the liberal Press to keep
everything secret. Why is it that all left wing Senators who goof up
get a pass and Republicans who missspeak get drummed out of office?
Senator Kennedy is a good example. He should have been ridden out of
town,tared and feathered after letting that woman drown. Democrats are
without any honesty and do exactly what they preach against.

roachboy 01-20-2006 04:22 PM
ronryan: please post a link to the source when you bite an article.

Willravel 01-20-2006 04:28 PM
Found the article: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/arti...106.shtml?s=lh

alpha phi 01-20-2006 05:29 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by willravel
Totally not backed up by facts or evidence
and a mis-repensaition of the Clipper project
Besides the fact that asuming it was completly true
HOW does one persons crime excuse anothers!!!
So some dude killed someone in the past
do I get a free pass to do the same?

Elphaba 01-20-2006 05:41 PM
Thanks, Will. That was "enlightening."

Addition: Great link, Alpha Phi and I agree that the excuse of "they did it too," is well beyond it's shelf life.

Willravel 01-20-2006 06:47 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha phi
Totally not backed up by facts or evidence
and a mis-repensaition of the Clipper project
Besides the fact that asuming it was completly true
HOW does one persons crime excuse anothers!!!
So some dude killed someone in the past
do I get a free pass to do the same?
You're preaching to the choir, here. Actually, you're preaching to an archangel. I posted the link to exposed the website that it came from, which is a right wing propoganda machine at best.

alpha phi 01-20-2006 07:33 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by willravel
You're preaching to the choir, here. Actually, you're preaching to an archangel. I posted the link to exposed the wensite that it came from, which is a right wing propoganda machine at best.
I know Will.....I know
I wasn't disagreeing with you
I hope it didn't seem that way :icare:
I have found you to be one of the most intelligent posters here.
On the rare occasion I disagree with your point of view,
It causes me to stop and rethink my view
just to make sure my thinking is straight.

Willravel 01-20-2006 07:42 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by alpha phi
I know Will.....I know
I wasn't disagreeing with you
I hope it didn't seem that way :icare:
I have found you to be one of the most intelligent posters here.
On the rare occasion I disagree with your point of view,
It causes me to stop and rethink my view
just to make sure my thinking is straight.
That's one of the nicest thing's that I've ever read. Much thanks, and the feeling is certianly mutual. :D

samcol 02-07-2006 05:45 PM
This is too damn funny. I wish I knew how to do that cool embedded video thing. Oh well

George Washington authorized electronic surveilence too
I'm guessing he was trying to get at how other presidents abused their power too, but apparently it came out wrong.

alpha phi 02-07-2006 06:38 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by samcol
This is too damn funny. I wish I knew how to do that cool embedded video thing. Oh well

George Washington authorized electronic surveilence too
I'm guessing he was trying to get at how other presidents abused their power too, but apparently it came out wrong.
If our Goverment had electronic surveillance way back in 1776
I want to know WTF else they are hideing from us. :hmm:
If that's the case....We should be traveling on a beam of light by now! :crazy: :lol:

shakran 02-07-2006 06:50 PM
All kidding aside, this is just another example of what those currently in power are doing to try and justify their illegal actions. Assuming the attorney general really meant that Washington had authorized non-electronic surveillance such as mail intercepts, he has two fundamental flaws in his logic.

1) It was not illegal then. FISA had not been estableshed yet. This argument ignores the fact that it is illegal NOW and the president broke the law in the PRESENT.

2) Even if it was illegal then, that is no excuse for the current president to break the law. I cannot murder someone just because someone else once murdered someone. And if I try to tell the judge "well gee Charlie Manson murdered someone so you should let me off because he did it too" he will laugh me out of the court room before throwing me in jail. Or possibly the nuthouse for thinking such an argument is valid.

Elphaba 04-08-2006 06:51 PM
I am bumping this topic. Those of you that are electronic communication experts certainly knew what I merely suspected. There was no conceivable way that the NSA could cherry pick an international call or email communication. It was obvious to me that they had to be swallowing the entire pipeline. Therefore, no warrant could be asked for or given by FISA under that circumstance. A whistle blower has come forward and I will bet you dollars to donuts...err make that euros, that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Link

Quote:
Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room
By Ryan Singel
Wired News

Friday 07 April 2006

AT&T provided NSA eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.

On Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT&T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT&T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.

According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls.

"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."

Klein's job eventually included connecting internet circuits to a splitting cabinet that led to the secret room. During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

"While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.

The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.

The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400, "known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets," according to Klein's statement.

Narus, whose website touts AT&T as a client, sells software to help internet service providers and telecoms monitor and manage their networks, look for intrusions, and wiretap phone calls as mandated by federal law.

Klein said he came forward because he does not believe that the Bush administration is being truthful about the extent of its extrajudicial monitoring of Americans' communications.

"Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA's spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA's charter or with FISA," Klein's wrote. "And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals' phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens."

After asking for a preview copy of the documents last week, the government did not object to the EFF filing the paper under seal, although the EFF asked the court Wednesday to make the documents public.

One of the documents is titled "Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco," and is dated 2002. The others are allegedly a design document instructing technicians how to wire up the taps, and a document that describes the equipment installed in the secret room.

In a letter to the EFF, AT&T objected to the filing of the documents in any manner, saying that they contain sensitive trade secrets and could be "could be used to 'hack' into the AT&T network, compromising its integrity."

According to court rules, AT&T has until Thursday to file a motion to keep the documents sealed. The government could also step in to the case and request that the documents not be made public, or even that the entire lawsuit be barred under the seldom-used State Secrets Privilege.

AT&T spokesman Walt Sharp declined to comment on the allegations, citing a company policy of not commenting on litigation or matters of national security, but did say that "AT&T follows all laws following requests for assistance from government authorities."
Swell, just fricken swell. Are we feeling safer yet?

dksuddeth 04-09-2006 05:17 AM
Wow, all my talk about guns should have the ATF knocking at my door pretty soon. I'm feeling safe. :thumbsup: :rolleyes:

host 07-13-2006 10:52 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
host hasn't been on for years.. only months.
It probably just seems like years....

Here's some new coverage of this controversy from the <a href="http://www.mcclatchy.com/100/story/179.html">"second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States."</a> You've most likely never heard of them. That will probably change. Mcclatchy purchased Knight Ridder in 2006. Knight Ridder, IMO, offered actual "fair and balanced" news reporting, and there was speculation that this reputation actually decreased profitability. The new owner, Mcclatchy, provides the following coverage from it's Washington bureau.
The original Mcclatchy Co. has owned the "Sac Bee" since it's founding, by James McClatchy, in 1857.

Their reporting is consistent with what Knight Ridder was capable of, and it confirms my worst fears. If it's true, and more is disclosed and confirmed, if that is even possible in the "new order", the implications should scare the shit out of everyone:
Quote:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwash...athan_s_landay
Posted on Thu, Jul. 13, 2006

Bush agrees to have domestic eavesdropping program reviewed
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - In a policy reversal, President Bush has agreed to sign legislation allowing a secret federal court to assess the constitutionality of his warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, a senior Republican senator announced Thursday.

By having the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court conduct the review instead of a regular federal court, the Bush administration would ensure the secrecy of details of the highly classified program. The administration has argued that making details of the program public would compromise national security.

<h3>However, such details could include politically explosive disclosures that the government has kept tabs on people it shouldn't have been monitoring.</h3>

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who's questioned the program's legality, said the legislation he's sponsoring strikes a balance between the president's inherent constitutional authority to protect the country and citizens' right to privacy.

"It is a weighing of the interests in security to fight terrorism with the privacy interests which are involved," Specter said. "You have here a recognition by the president that he doesn't have a blank check."

Specter said the FISA court wouldn't have to make it findings public.

<b>Bush agreed to sign the bill only if it passed Congress without major changes, Specter said.</b>

The bill was the result of weeks of negotiations between Specter and the White House.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales welcomed the measure, saying it "recognizes the president's constitutional authority to gather up information."

Civil liberties groups called the measure a ruse designed to keep Congress and the public in the dark about the full extent of what they condemned as an illegal program run by the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic eavesdropping.

"Senator Specter's proposal would set up a sham judicial review," charged Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies. "It gives them a blank check and legal cover for what they have been doing."

Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that's suing AT&T over its cooperation with the NSA program, called the bill "terrible" in part because it provides no opportunity for outside attorneys to contest the program's legality before FISA court.

"This bill says nothing about how any outsider or the folks that we represent would have any kind of a voice in this," he said. "It's almost alien to the concept of judicial review in this country."

The NSA has been monitoring overseas telephone and Internet communications of Americans suspected of supporting or belonging to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups without court orders since just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Bush confirmed the existence of the Terrorist Surveillance Program after its disclosure by The New York Times in November. He said the revelation had seriously damaged national security, and he rejected charges that the program was illegal.

Democrats and civil liberties advocates contended that Bush violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The act requires federal officials to obtain warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor overseas communications of U.S. citizens.

Some Republicans, including Specter, also expressed concerns that the program violated FISA.

The administration said Bush could authorize warrantless wiretaps under his constitutional authority to protect the nation's security and a congressional resolution empowering him to use force against al-Qaida.

The bill would allow the secret court to determine the constitutionality of foreign intelligence surveillance operations, <h3>but wouldn't make such reviews mandatory.</h3>

<b>Specter said Bush insisted on that language "because the president does not want to bind presidents in the future" to having to seek the court's permission to conduct warrantless eavesdropping programs.....</b>

...... -Would also allow the attorney general to seek the transfer of all regular federal court challenges to federal surveillance programs to the FISA court for adjudication. If the FISA court found problems, the cases would be sent back to the original court.

There are about 100 such cases pending.

Sending all the legal challenges to the FISA court would vastly reduce the number of judicial authorities weighing in on their legality, said Tien, the civil liberties group attorney.
This article is a wake up call. These "authorities" have been illegally monitoring domestic political opponents, and they want to use this law to keep confirmation of that, secret, hiding behind the excuse of "national security concerns". I predict that there will be a determined effort to hustle this bill into law, before the november, mid-term elections.

I regard this effort as a Bush "signing statment", dressed up to resemble a legislative initiative. It will become increasingly difficult to <b>confidentially</b> campaign and win against the ruling party. We are witnessing the death of our parents' republic and it's constitution "by a thousand cuts", IMO.

Clam Dip 07-14-2006 08:11 AM
hey, host, lemme axe you a question... or three...

1: why do you always post an entire article when just the gist will suffice along with a link to it?

2: why do always place emphasis on what you like in the quoted article when the article did not?

3: do you really believe we would be better off with john kerry?

i mean, look at the "big dig"... a few years ago while campaigning in massachusetts, he referred to it as a quagmire regarding over-spending by the government on the project. now because of cost over-runs, cut back demands on his part, as well as the part of the contractors forced to do so, has cost the life of a person. i'm just wondering if he will set a withdrawl date.

how do you ask a commuter to be the last to die for a mistake?

Willravel 07-14-2006 09:36 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clam Dip
hey, host, lemme axe you a question... or three...

1: why do you always post an entire article when just the gist will suffice along with a link to it?
I'll field this one: no one seems to want to click on the links. When people, myself included, post links, rarely is the information in the link considered by posters. A lot of people don't care. Also, Host tries to point out the gist by placing emphasis or putting in bold or large letters the gist of the article, but that doesn't meet with your approval because:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clam Dip
2: why do always place emphasis on what you like in the quoted article when the article did not?
You're giving mixed messages.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clam Dip
3: do you really believe we would be better off with john kerry?
The "lesser of the two evils" argument has been beaten to death here, so why not let it die. Those who wanted Kerry in office have given the argument over and over and over. Do you really think Kerry would be connected with a domestic spying program?

host 07-14-2006 10:45 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clam Dip
hey, host, lemme axe you a question... or three...

1: why do you always post an entire article when just the gist will suffice along with a link to it?

2: why do always place emphasis on what you like in the quoted article when the article did not?

3: do you really believe we would be better off with john kerry?

i mean, look at the "big dig"... a few years ago while campaigning in massachusetts, he referred to it as a quagmire regarding over-spending by the government on the project. now because of cost over-runs, cut back demands on his part, as well as the part of the contractors forced to do so, has cost the life of a person. i'm just wondering if he will set a withdrawl date.

how do you ask a commuter to be the last to die for a mistake?
1.) Answer: What willravel said, and, before a recent "revision" of tfproject forums, the entire forum was searchable, any post was retrievable using search words. That resource disappeared from here in the last ten weeks.

If I had simply posted this link,
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/r...20030714.shtml in this post concerning Bob Novak's columns about "Joe Wilson's CIA wife".... or this link, http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1000978837 both in this post, http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...6&postcount=18
they would be meaningless now, because both of those links no longer resolve. It happens with at least half the links, after a short while, and with almost every link to NY Times reports....so....I know of no other way to preserve the docmentation in what I post. Do you have any suggestions to solve this, or should I post with the recognition that documentation and references should vanish after a brief period? Doesn't make much sense, to me.

2.) As willravel said, "You're giving mixed messages." How do you know "when the article did not?" (emphasize a certain point....) In the FISA "reform" legislation article that I posted, I enlarged and bolded the sentence:
"However, such details could include politically explosive disclosures that the government has kept tabs on people it shouldn't have been monitoring."

Why do you think that this sentence is placed as the third paragraph in the article, if it is not intended to "stand out" by it's author? In the original article, none of the sentences are highlighted. I observe "placement" of ideas and facts in news reporting, as one of the ways to determine what details are being emphasized by the reporter. How do you decide what is important, once you get past the headline of an article?

3.)John Soloman is an AP reporter with, if you research his reports, a reputation for less than unbiased reporting, when it comes to his pieces on prominent democrats.

Here is another AP report that counters Soloman's reporting on Kerry and the "Big Dig". I'll just post the link and headline:
http://www.showmenews.com/2004/Feb/20040208News030.asp
Kerry defends ‘Big Dig’ decision
Company gave him money, report says.
Published Sunday, February 8, 2004

As far as your last question, I have plenty of company, as far as my opinion:
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x11385.xml?ReleaseID=919
June 1, 2006 - Bush Tops List As U.S. Voters Name Worst President, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Reagan, Clinton Top List As Best In 61 Years

http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/9549319.html
Historians say Bush is sinking fast

Kerry, or just about any native born, American citizen, over aged 35, would have been a better choice in Nov., 2004, than Bush.


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