Look Everybody We're East Berlin, Pre-Wall Topple!
 

Do we get to have statues of Dubya to topple later... much later? I bet we will...

Link to article with photos and links

Bush Is Pressed Over New Report on Surveillance
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Gen. Michael V. Hayden speaking to reporters following a meeting with Senater Chuck Hagel, left, on Capitol Hill.

Sign In to E-Mail This Print Single Page Reprints Save

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE
Published: May 12, 2006
WASHINGTON, May 11 — Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike demanded answers from the Bush administration on Thursday about a report that the National Security Agency had collected records of millions of domestic phone calls, even as President Bush assured Americans that their privacy is "fiercely protected."

Skip to next paragraph
Multimedia

Video: Domestic Spying Controversy

Graphic: Domestic Surveillance Revelations and Responses
Related
With Access Denied, Justice Department Drops Spying Investigation (May 11, 2006)
President Bush's Statement (May 11, 2006)
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts (Dec. 16, 2005)

The USA Today Article: NSA Has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls

Threats & Responses
Go to Complete Coverage »
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: National Security

Enlarge This Image

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Gen. Michael V. Hayden and Senator Mitch McConnell spoke to reporters Thursday on Capitol Hill.
"We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," Mr. Bush said before leaving for a commencement address in Mississippi. "Our efforts are focused on links to Al Qaeda and their known affiliates."

The president sought to defuse a tempest on Capitol Hill over an article in USA Today reporting that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth had turned over tens of millions of customer phone records to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But Mr. Bush's remarks appeared to do little to mollify members of Congress, as several leading lawmakers said they wanted to hear directly from administration officials and telecommunication executives.

The report rekindled the controversy about domestic spying.

Several lawmakers predicted the new disclosures would complicate confirmation hearings next week for Gen. Michael V. Hayden, formerly the head of the N.S.A., as the president's nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

One senior government official, who was granted anonymity to speak publicly about the classified program, confirmed that the N.S.A. had access to records of most telephone calls in the United States. But the official said the call records were used for the limited purpose of tracing regular contacts of "known bad guys."

"To perform such traces," the official said, "you'd have to have all the calls or most of them. But you wouldn't be interested in the vast majority of them."

The New York Times first reported in December that the president had authorized the N.S.A. to conduct eavesdropping without warrants.

The Times also reported in December that the agency had gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to get access to records of vast amounts of domestic and international phone calls and e-mail messages.

The agency analyzes communications patterns, the report said, and looks for evidence of terrorist activity at home and abroad.

The USA Today article on Thursday went further, saying that the N.S.A. had created an enormous database of all calls made by customers of the three phone companies in an effort to compile a log of "every call ever made" within this country. The report said one large phone company, Qwest, had refused to cooperate with the N.S.A. because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

Some Republicans, including Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, defended the N.S.A.'s activities and denounced the disclosure. Mr. Hoekstra said the report "threatens to undermine our nation's safety."

"Rather than allow our intelligence professionals to maintain a laser focus on the terrorists, we are once again mired in a debate about what our intelligence community may or may not be doing," he said.

But many Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were disturbed by the report, invoking images of Big Brother and announcing legislation aimed at reining in the N.S.A.'s domestic operations. Fifty-two members of Congress asked the president to name a special counsel to investigate the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance programs.

cont'

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee, said the reported data-mining activities raised serious constitutional questions. He said he planned to seek the testimony of telephone company executives.

The House majority leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, said he wanted more information on the program because "I am not sure why it would be necessary to keep and have that kind of information."

Mr. Bush did not directly confirm or deny the existence of the N.S.A. operation but said that "as a general matter every time sensitive intelligence is leaked it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy."

Seeking to distinguish call-tracing operations from eavesdropping, the president said that "the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval."

The phone records include numbers called, time, date and direction of calls and other details but not the words spoken, telecommunications experts said. Customers' names and addresses are not included in the companies' call records, though they could be cross-referenced to obtain personal data.

General Hayden, making rounds at the Capitol to seek support for his confirmation as C.I.A. director, did not discuss the report but defended his former agency. "Everything that N.S.A. does is lawful and very carefully done," General Hayden said.

Skip to next paragraph

Ron Edmonds/Associated Press
"We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans." PRESIDENT BUSH

Multimedia

Video: Domestic Spying Controversy

Graphic: Domestic Surveillance Revelations and Responses
Related
With Access Denied, Justice Department Drops Spying Investigation (May 11, 2006)
President Bush's Statement (May 11, 2006)
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts (Dec. 16, 2005)

The USA Today Article: NSA Has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls

Threats & Responses
Go to Complete Coverage »
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: National Security


Doug Mills/The New York Times
"I don't think we can really make a judgment on whether warrants would be necessary until we know a lot more about the program." SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER


Doug Mills/The New York Times
"Everything that N.S.A. does is lawful and very carefully done." GEN. MICHAEL V. HAYDEN
The law on data-mining activities is murky, and legal analysts were divided Thursday on the question of whether the N.S.A.'s tracing and analysis of huge streams of American communications data would require the agency to use subpoenas or court warrants.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "If they don't get a court order, it's a crime." She said that while the F.B.I. might be able to get access to phone collection databases by using an administrative subpoena, her reading of federal law was that the N.S.A. would be banned from doing so without court approval.

But another expert on the law of electronic surveillance, Kenneth C. Bass III, said that if access to the call database was granted in response to a national security letter issued by the government, "it would probably not be illegal, but it would be very troubling."

"The concept of the N.S.A. having near-real-time access to information about every call made in the country is chilling," said Mr. Bass, former counsel for intelligence policy at the Justice Department. He said the phone records program resembled Total Information Awareness, a Pentagon data-mining program shut down by Congress in 2003 after a public outcry.

The N.S.A. refused to discuss the report, but said in a statement that it "takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth all issued statements saying they had followed the law in protecting customers' privacy but would not discuss details of the report.

"AT&T has a long history of vigorously protecting customer privacy," said Selim Bingol, a company spokesman. "We also have an obligation to assist law enforcement and other government agencies responsible for protecting the public welfare."

Mr. Specter said in an interview that he would press for information on the operations of the N.S.A. program to determine its legality.

"I don't think we can really make a judgment on whether warrants would be necessary until we know a lot more about the program," he said.

One central question is whether the N.S.A. uses its analysis of phone call patterns to select people in the United States whose phone calls and e-mail messages are monitored without warrants. The Times has reported that the agency is believed to have eavesdropped on the international communications of about 400 to 500 people at a time within the United States and of thousands of people since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Democrats said they would use the new disclosures to push for more answers from General Hayden at his confirmation hearing, set for May 18.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, predicted "a major Constitutional confrontation on Fourth Amendment guarantees of unreasonable search and seizure" and said the new disclosures presented "a growing impediment to the confirmation of General Hayden." Some members of Congress also reacted angrily to the news that the ethics office at the Justice Department had been refused the security clearances necessary to conduct a planned investigation of department lawyers who approved N.S.A.'s eavesdropping.

Mr. Specter called the denial of clearances to the department's own investigators "incomprehensible" and said he and other senators would ask that the clearances be granted to employees of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility

Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York for this article

It's worthwhile to look at this number-sifting as a way to clear just about everybody of any hint of chatting with terrorists, and with thee and me out of the way, the intel boys concentrate their finite resources actually upon the stuff we'd like to listen to.

This, like most intel sources and methods, is going to remain hidden in the fog. The bad guys have this problem: to execute anything strategic or even tactical, they have to plan, communicate, and coordinate. They are vulnerable at the communication and coordination stages. The other part of this, the problem on our part, is that we have to keep them from knowing how much we know about them -- the details of how this was done basically can't and shouldn't emerge until well after the war's over.

The leakmongers can be indicted for their deliberately trying to screw up our effort to win the war. What can such bozos be thinking?

Maybe they're thinking, "I should do something to try to uphold the constitution"?

Worthwhile question, but I don't think so. The Fourth Amendment is to provide protection against unreasonable search and seizure, and what this looks like to me is a method of making the search reasonable. We do want the good guys searching and seizing the bad guys, right?

Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

Slightly paraphrased cause I can't remember his exact wording.

My point being, we're not. This is a process for seeing who you don't search. I have a hard time seeing it as all the way unreasonable. Note, too, that this thing is constructed to do you precisely no harm -- at least, if you're not the kind of guy who showers in a suicide belt and masturbates to the idea of dead Americans because they aren't Moslem enough to suit you. Our enemies are emotionally driven by religious bigotry, remember.

One thing you will have to understand about me: I want us to win this war with the Islamofascists so thoroughly that anything but democracy will be unsatisfactory from now on to the entire Islamic world -- with the antidemocrats, slavemakers, and power pervs all rotting in the ground or making vultures and blackbacked jackals fat and torpid.

George W is not by any reasonable definition a power perv. He's a limited-government man trying to fight a war. His legal position would be simpler had Congress been moved to declare a state of war, as this simplifies matters for the Executive Branch to direct the war effort. However, since formal declaration of war struck everyone involved as disjunct, out of proportion, you have this "do whatcha gotta" Congressional resolution in its stead -- which seems to be taken by some damn fools on the Hill as license to see to it that he can't. The record shows most of these fools are Democrats.

I've never made it a secret that I'm not a big fan of the USofA. Does that make me fair game for the NSA? Where do you draw the line? What about the guy who bought a persian carpet from the guy down the street whos brother once prayed in the same mosque as an al Qaeda official? Is that a valid connection? I'd rather the government have less unchecked power, rather than more.

That's only part one of the Fourth Ammendment. Part two is the need for probable cause. And there aren't tens of millions of "the bad guys", so they had no probable cause to sieze the records of tens of millions of Americans. And more - even if they had probable cause, a court order is required. Which they did not get.

I don't trust this sort of thing at all. The need for warrants was intended to stop this sort of thing; if it was supposed to be "ok" to invade people's privacy like this, we'd never use warrants. Here are some reasons they might be nefcessary (though these have been hinted at already):

1) Discrimination. If the government findss that you have a certain lifestyle (eating habits, excercising habits, sexual behavior, whatever) that they don't like, it could very well be possible for them to discriminate against you in a job where such factors should not be an issue. Above that, if this information is unclassified, not only does the government know about it, but so do all your future employers, employees, etc.

2) Despotism. If the government finds that you do not support those in power, who's to say they won't use the same discrimination as above? Above that, they could stop you from assembling with like-minded friends (even if it is for peaceful discussion) to stifle any activity that isn't pro-government. This has some serious consequences; newspapers could be forced to print pro-government propaganda, opposing political parties could be eradicated, even something as peaceful as this forum could be stopped.

In addition, the United States does not have a history of only arresting "the bad guys". We arrested some people in the middle east for as little as wearing a Casio watch or a drab jacket (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11674324/)

Given this information, I don't think it's safe at all to trust the government to have wholesale access to private information.

In addition, AT&T might not have just provided phone records. AT&T possibly diverted wholesale domestic communications to the NSA by splicing the signal from their fiberoptic cables into a "secret" room where people from the NSA did installation of...something, according to a retired AT&T worker (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70619-0.html

A question for supporters of this NSA program: do you think Clinton should have had the ability to, without a warrant, get a list of everybody Ken Starr and Monica Lewinski had called in the last year?

George W is limited, all right, you and I agree on that. But demonstrate some "limited-government" position he champions. Oh, limited taxation, irrespective of unlimited spending, ok. Wait, limits on Congress' authority to decide what the laws are and limits on what they should know, sure. And there are those limits on what cases the Supreme Court should be able to hear, I forgot about them.

I guess you're right UG, W is all about limited government. But he is the puppet of the power pervs using the strategies listed above to further unbalance our nation's three part system of government in the favor of the unitary executive. But the fubar Iraqi adventure is just a distraction, like the flash powder from the magician's left hand while he pockets the prize with his right.

The real war is here at home. Where our Constitution is attacked and our civil liberties are the casualties. Where the co-equal branches of government are besieged and the citizens are prisoners, suspects, subjects of investigation. All under the color of authority. "Dissent is unpatriotic" you scream. Come a little closer, ok? FUCK YOU.

Hey, really, I'm not talking to you to persuade you. I have long since concluded that your mind, which may or may not be open, is so firmly sealed up your butt that nothing can get in. Fine. You're more useful as a negative example anyway.

I still remember this incident.

Now I know that FoxNews and some wacko Republicans consider Democrats traitors, but what was the Dept of Homeland Security doing tracking US citizens who were not terrorists?

So in addition to finding terrorists, how much effort will be made to insure that this database does not become abused in the same way that automobile license databases have been abused in the past? What law spells out penalties for misuse and how will it be enforced with no judicial oversight?

Our Constitution was built by men who distrusted goverment, and who designed a system of checks and balances to prevent tyranny, a system which we have been eroding in the past 4 years in the name of safety.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
I will do all I can to thwart the Anti-Patriot acts and all bastardizations of cowardice that the chicken-shits of today do. Our forefathers fought people like McCarthy, now we give them medals behind closed doors.
Saying things like, we have to "do all we can" to catch them is fear speaking... the fear of the terrorists winning... the fear of our sloth.... the sickness of how far we have come from the forgotten generation and how we are letting those on the front lines die in vein and dishonor.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
I will do all I can to thwart the Anti-Patriot acts and all bastardizations of cowardice that the chicken-shits of today do. Our forefathers fought people like McCarthy, now we give them medals behind closed doors.
Saying things like, we have to "do all we can" to catch them is fear speaking... the fear of the terrorists winning... the fear of our sloth.... the sickness of how far we have come from the forgotten generation and how we are letting those on the front lines die in vein and dishonor.

Illegal search and seizure is illegal search and seizure, you don't search unless you have PROBABLE CAUSE THAT IS LEGALLY OBTAINED BY EXISTING LAWS.

The only was we win the war is to never resort to the tactics of the Taliban... to not become what we are fighting... oops.. too late.

Yeah, those signing statements are sure limiting government... who needs those pesky checks and balances?

And probable cause is determined by what process? The process boils down most of the time to "taking a look." And taking a look is not prohibited by law. That's what I see here. Read Michelle Malkin on the subject of the datamining for something from a cooler head. Read the most recent Larry Elder, too.

Resorting to the tactics of the Taliban... hmm. Have you locked up your sister in her home? Are you in the morality police, mostly bastinadoing women for walking abroad while female? Dynamited any figural religious art such as a crucifix, on the grounds that you yourself aren't a Catholic?

Yeah, sure, this kind of thing is positively thick on the ground in the US, these days, isn't it? Can't take a walk without checking out the latest public execution, hey?

Tactics of the Taliban, quotha!

I'll tell you what I see in your thinking, rzen: you don't want to admit that some damn body started a war with us -- and on their fifth try, over a period spanning eighteen years from 1983 in Lebanon to 2001 in NYC. Our foes have diligently sown the wind -- should they somehow not reap the whirlwind? We should not be a target for every fucking idiot with a bomb and a grudge, nor should we be a target for their national sponsors.

A court order.

And ABC News is reporting that the NSA is targeting them and other news organizations in an effort to find anonymous confidential government sources. Phone numbers called by these news organizations are being recorded, and the feds are looking for patterns in these lists of calls to identify the leakers.

How many amendments to the Constitution does this violate? Freedom of the press is supposed to be sacred in this country. How can the government be allowed to see who the press is calling?

It's not a big leap from this type of behavior to "vee vant to zee your paperz". I hope yours are in order.

Revenge on Joe Wilson for dissenting with the administration?

Not that the administration will do anything. They'll just turn their back when they find the number everyone is calling is (800) KARL-ROVE :D

Were they so bad when the US was funding them? They and Iraq... no, they were not.

The fact remains... you don't listen without a warrant in a free nation, a specific warrant for a specific time period that spells-out how and when you listen. That would be in a free nation that cares about freedom... not a police state. But that is not what this nation wants to be now, Dubya and his ilk want to be Pre-reformation Berlin.

So this is a leak about a federal investigation into leaks?

I can't remember, are we for or against leaks this week?

Get your terminology right -- it's "whistleblowing" when a liberal does it.

Nothing wrong with investigating the source of a leak. What's wrong is where they are looking. How can a press be free when the government is logging all their phone calls?

It's very charitable of you to say that only liberals are conscientious enough to whistleblow, but I'm sure that there's a counterexample at some point in history.

If there's a leak reported at 3rd and Market I would check it out at 3rd and Market. If there's a leak reported to the press, where should they check it out, the Dep't of Agriculture? I don't think the press feels too threatened... if they print a story from an anonymous senior law enforcement official, with no corroborating evidence, and then a sort of "push speculation":
Parse this paragraph. There are no facts in it. ABC News "does not know", but connected the events casually so that the reader could draw their own conclusion.

And you did. Your own reading was "ABC News is reporting that the NSA is targeting them..." But that wasn't what they said, but - for some reason - they phrased it to strongly suggest that link.

If they are being investigated, is it legal or not legal? If they had facts on that, would they be reported? Did they contact anyone from the investigating agency to get an official statement on the matter? That would be Good Journalism so when they don't do it, why not?
Parse parse parse. They claim the government is watching what numbers they call. Then they say CIA is mad at ABC News. Is this related - did they mean to claim that CIA was watching their phone calls? When they were suggesting two paragraphs earlier that it might be NSA?

No, they just threw out a load of speculation and left the dots for you to connect.

I think you're missing the point. It's not that they are investigating leaks. It is that they are investigating leaks by using warrantless searches of a database of every phone call made through the majority of the phone companies in the US. These phone calls are not a) international or b) involving a known terrorist, so this is the first example to surface of the use of this NSA program for warrantless domestic surveilance outside of a terrorism investigation.

The story offers a lot of truthiness towards that conclusion. It sure feels like our rights are being violated, so they probably are.

Fair enough. I assumed "NSA" when they said "government." Maybe it was NSA. Maybe not. It's certainly in the NSA's field of expertise. I think it's a little irrelevant what part of the executive branch is doing this.

Here's what they said: "A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources."

I admit it's an article that's pretty sparse on facts, and is poorly written, but you are wrong when you say there are no facts in it. There is one new fact: the government is logging the calls of ABC News. Isn't one fact enough to be reported?

The fact reported is not "The government is logging the calls of ABC News."

The fact reported is "A senior federal law enforcement official says that some government entity is tracking the calls of Brian Ross and Richard Esposito."

What entity? They don't say. They don't ask anyone. They merely suggest.

Is the investigation without a warrant? They don't say. They don't ask anyone. They merely suggest.

That's because they are not looking for terrorists, they are trying on their jack-boots.

I will make you a deal. I will never refer to Janeane Garofalo and Al Franken as 'cooler heads', much as I might agree to their politics, and you do the same with Michelle Malkin. IMO, the woman is a first order nut. Not that I would kick her out of bed, I'd just make sure to run her through a metal detector first.:rolleyes:

And why is it that everyone recognizes the 'slippery slope' when it deals with guns and abortion, but noone recognizes it on fundamental issues like privacy. Using the database for anything except terrorists should at a minimum require the signature of a judge.

COLLECTING the database should require the signature of a judge, possibly one per customer.

Each listen, each recording, needs a specific warrant.

the followup

...suggests that it wasn't the NSA or CIA, who fail to make a reappearance here. Now it was the FBI, but again they fail to directly connect any dots.

...pulls back, on the basis of a fresh take from this anonymous senior government official, on the whole concept of the calls being "tracked". ('more like "backtracked"', now says official.)

...then weighs in with the utterly weak "But FBI officials did not deny", and a ridiculously loose conjecture on how the FBI might operate in an investigation.

You know, your probation officer needs to revoke your Internet access permanently. You show up here maybe once a month to spout neo-fascist propaganda and then vanish again.

I vote for you as board mod.

No supporters of the program (i.e. UG) ever responded to this. Where do you draw the line?

Don't fool yourself for one minute. This administration is not about the law. Like another administration that also hid behind "We enforce the law" to subvert the United States, George Jr administration has been doing same. That means bugging other nation's diplomatic communications to force Security Council approval for 'Pearl Harboring' of Iraq. That means bugging and listening to international calls - without any judicial approval - only because they want to. That means extraordinary rendition and torture because they could not find mythical WMD and mythical terrorist cells in the US.

So like in Nixon's time, patriots had to leak truth to the press. Like the crook Nixon, George Jr's administration demands loyalty first; principles of America secondary. Anything that would stop whistle blowers is essential to this administration. And programs that would expose patriots - the whistle blowers - are best for a draconian and dictatorial administration.

But we can trust George Jr people to build databases on everyone's phone records - just like we can trust them to uncover who exposed a CIA agent for political purposes. Phone records that once required court orders are now acceptable in 'honest' administration hands? Same people who have no guilt about kidnapping and torturing people .... and lying about it?

So how large is this program? Are you so anti-American (which means as dumb as a mental midget) to believe phone records are all they are collecting? From the Wall Street Journal of 27 April 2006: Note that date - over a year ago - and who has that information. Do you think this tip is an exception? Not according to the WSJ report. Yes, after a whistle blower - by definition a great American patriot - leaked what was happening. Do you think for one minute that program has stopped? If so, then you also believe Saddam attacked the World Trade Center - still think George Jr is a great president. Does that make you uneasy? If not, learn why these techniques are found mostly in dictatorial nations - where government cannot trust its own people. Do you trust a military officer who need not answer to judicial oversight AND who might have Urbane Guerrilla's "libertarian" beliefs? Did we not learn from Nixon and Watergate? Apparently not considering so many who don't care what 'they' know about us - who clearly have no idea what even McCarthyism did to good Americans. It was not acceptable before a lying president took power and demanded loyalty over all else. (Same loyalty that stopped four separate FBI teams from discovering 11 September attacks.) This administration's attitude of 'nothing illegal until challenged'. Principles that make America a free nation ... only apply to those who support a mental midget president? And so government can collect anything on you without any judicial review? They don't need no court approval if a court does not specifically rule against them. Yes, even torture and international kidnapping - extraordinary rendition - is acceptable because courts did not rule otherwise. Men as honest as Nixon.

Did you file income taxes using a tax service? Did you file electronically via some service? Why do some companies offer free tax filing software? Because they can sell your income tax information; this administration has that much regard for your privacy - and identity protection. You don't need identity protection? Good. Then you don't need your phone records protected by judicial review.

As a White House mouthpiece once declared and this is an exact quote, "You have no expectation of privacy."

Are you 'Deep Throat' desperately trying to protect the United States from a widespread and corrupt administration? Today, you are traceable because who you talk to is no longer secret - does not even require Judicial review. This is a radical departure from America of 10 years ago. And this is not just limited to collecting your phone records. If a machine does collecting, then the DoD is only receiving (not collecting) information? So what would avert or expose corruption by this group? Where is the oversight? They are called whistle blowers. Anyone trying to notify the fourth estate that a president wanted to nuke Germany, Russia, or India (as a Wolfowitz paper suggested we should be prepared to do) could then be arrested and held in a secret Afghanistan or Rumanian prison without even judicial review? We would never know he is gone - because this administration says such military action was not declared illegal (yet) by courts. Courts cannot rule on things not reported. And if a court does not rule, then it must be legal. Welcome to the George Jr atttitude even about domestic spying.

Why do we need Fatherland Security? Why do we need a military compiling dossiers on each of us? Because if any one finds corruption at the highest level of government, he cannot even go to the press. No wonder a president who demands 'total loyalty' is so upset that we might know about the 902nd MIG, that he is bugging phones without judicial review, and that private information can be sold to others without your knowledge. Once the military was not permitted information on your tax returns. Hello.

Once we were worried about no government effort to protect you from identity theft. Now they must know even who you talk to; even if you dial a wrong number. J Edgar Hoover wished he had this much power; this much information. Did you learn enough about history to appreciate how scary that is? J Edgar Hoover wishes he had this much information. J Edgar Hoover blackmail was legendary. But we can trust George Jr to be honest - just like those other Christians in Dover PA?

What was necessary to start a Spanish Inquisition? Cardinal Fag? It was not started by a cushy pillow.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/..._responds.html

Statement by the FBI:
The impression left by the ABC News report is misleading. In specific cases, after receiving a referral from the Department of Justice, the FBI will take logical investigative steps to determine if a criminal act was committed by a government employee by the unauthorized release of classified information. In such cases, investigators may examine the telephone records of government agencies. In any case where the records of a private person are sought, they may only be obtained through established legal process.

And the FBI wouldn't lie.....ever. :rolleyes:

And then ABC News responds with this report: Let's see. Whistle blowers reporting illegal kidnapping, torture, bugging of citizen's international calls without court order, or simply spyin on UN diplomats to justify an illegal "Peral Harboring" of Iraq .... clearly these whistle blowers must be terrorists.

Same reasoning was used by Nixon to justify the plumbers. Nixon would not lie either.

OK, we're in favor of leakers this week. I just want to be sure we're clear on that.

Leakers of what? It matters, you know.

Let's start with ANY unconstitutional activity EVER, by ANY branch, regardless of what they think of their fantasy status.

Typically we don't know what was leaked and in this case we have no idea whatsoever.

What's "established legal process" mean?

I like how they made no mention of a warrant or other judicial review here. Since Bush now says that he don't need no stinkin' badges, that's probably what they mean by "established legal process." Anything they do is legal, because they are the ones doing it. So the FBI could be telling the truth here and so could ABC.

I'll admit the whole set of ABC News stories was sloppy reporting. We don't know if the Feds are looking at the leakers or looking at the press. But the first story clearly said it was the press.

Anybody here watch Law and Order? Especially the original series (as opposed to the D'Onofrio Overacting Seminar :-) ).

How many times have you heard Lenny or one of his colleagues say "We pulled his LUDs and it shows a call to blah at blah woof...".

Had you assumed he'd gotten a warrant for that? Considering how they usually make a big deal about getting a search warrant under other circumstances, or at least conspicuously mentioning that they'd gotten one, I hadn't.

But in this case, I'll bet USC Title 18 Chapter 121 § 2709 (or something like it) applies. I guess we'll be finding out.

The tighter the control, and the secrecy, the more rampant the leaks- good ones and bad ones, big ones and little ones, ones to aid the good guys and the bad guys.

I'll settle for a return to the illusion of some degree of governmental transparency, even during wartime, even a little, with constitutional checks on executive power.

Get a warrant. work with FISA.

Then don't try to put some blanket "we're in favor of leakers this week" statement on it.

Why would anyone leak anything to the press that was not in the interest of America (and against extremist interests of Democrat, Republican and Communist party loyalists)?

Oh. Valerie Plame. Clearly we must access all phone records so that the President and Vice President will be prosecuted for outing a CIA agent.

Oh. Maybe all this J Edgar Hoover security without judicial review would not stop such criminal activity. So why does the President and Vice President want all this power without judicial review?

Tin Soldiers and Nixon's coming.
We're finally on our own.
Why do such refrains sound so familiar?

Nixon had an 'Enemies List'. George Jr has '1984 Big Brother'. Both required no judicial review. Both to provide the president with more power. America be damned.

Because evidently Neil Young is still the same whiney moron he was thirty years ago. :-)
It's not just the military who is always "perfectly trained and equipped to win the last war".

It's possible to take nostalgia too far. Anybody see South Park last night? :-)

Whiney? Probably. Moron? He was correctly on the money back then as he is about a mental midget leader today.

But that is all secondary to a large problem: a president who needs powers that even J Edgar Hoover did not have - and have those powers without Congressional or Judicial oversight. Hoover, with less power, could blackmail anyone in the US - any president, any congressman, or any citizen. Apparently Hoover did so often. And yet this president - like Nixon - declares he needs "more power"? Presidential mouth pieces even justify it by saying "You have no expectation of privacy."

Why complain about a whiney Neil Young when a current president is and is surrounded by those who pervert America (and science, and religious freedoms, and wealth distribution, and education, and social welfare) for their self serving agenda.

God, these governmental perverts even have you blaming illegal immigrants - using emotion - for a problem directly traceable to those leaders. At what point do you stand up for America rather than parrot Rush Limbaugh propaganda?

BTW, in Law and Order, those LUDs get pulled after a court order is issued. But then those who respect American principles would be very angry if that were not true. Those who hate America - Rush Limbaugh disciples - agree that "We have no expectation of privacy".

Want a benchmark to measure enemies of everyone in America - legal, tourist, and illegal? Those enemies of all people say "You have no expectation of privacy". Rush Limbaugh - drug addict and money launder - says "You have no expectation of privacy". Being enemies of all people is profitable? He got all prosecution dropped and his record expunged because so many perverted American (such as a president) also believe "You have no expectation of privacy".

If it violates the rights of Americans it is against the interest of America, period.

Attorney General Gonzales weighed in on this yesterday, saying that the rights under the first amendment, guaranteeing the freedom of the press, are not as strong as the "right" of the federal government to prosecute who it wants to.

His exact words: "I understand very much the role that the press plays in our society, the protection under the First Amendment we want to promote and respect . . . but it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity."

He admitted that his Justice Department is currently looking for ways it can prosecute the NYT journalists who printed the leaks about the NSA phone surveillance of US citizens.

Ooh, now that is a foul statement.

GodDAMMIT!!

Let's just get the teensy generous part of my rant out of the way first, shall we?

AG AG is a prosecutor. I understand that. His freakin job is to take people to court, to presume guilt, to focus on wrongdoing and wrongdoers. He's a lawman. No bad guys--his kids go hungry. Fine. His motivations are clear. When you are a hammer, the whole world looks like nails

However.

The ends do not justify the means.

There are so many things wrong indicated in his statement, it makes my head spin. First off, it is not his place to pretend that one "right" has precedence over another right. Note the quotes. "right" == "[Alberto gonzales]...the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity." Contrasted with the right == ""[Framers of the Constitution]...the protection under the First Amendment..."

WTF?!

You, Gonzales, you are responsible for trying to create a distracting smokescreen by falsely suggesting that in order for the government "go after criminal activity" it is permissible or necessary to disregard the First Ammendment to the Constitution of the United States. That is lying by implication. It is *neither* necessary nor permissible.

You are a lawman. Why would you consider breaking one part of the law to uphold another part of the law? That didn't come out exactly right...I mean to disregard the protection written in the law covering the behavior you claim is criminal. The cynic in me can think of several reasons. It's easier, it suits your boss's agenda, it's habitual, you *truly, truly, cross your heart* believe what you said...

Tough. Because it makes things easier is no excuse. You weren't elected (appointed) because it's an easy job. It's not ok to cut corners. Stop it. Because your boss told you so is also insufficient. You've no obligation to obey illegal orders, capisce? I won't derail my own rant to examine the long list of his problems, but you should use your own judgement here and decide if *our country* is better served in the long run by this kind of attitude. I say emphatically no. Because that's the way it's always been done. Well, when you're doing the wrong thing, doing more of it is no way to make things better. Just stop digging. Lastly, you *may* have drunk the kool aid. I suspect you have. And that makes me sorry for you and sad for our country.

I am no anarchist. I believe in the law. It is that very belief that is the fount of my tears and the fire of my anger when I see the display of attitudes and actions of intelligent people in postitions of responsibility like this that tear our country down from within. You don't preserve, uphold and defend the Constitution by ignoring the parts you don't wipe your feet on. When you weaken it this way, by not respecting it and working within its constraints, you help win it for the bad guys by making it less, less valid, less important, less alive.

"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable, if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering."
Dr. Who (The Face of Evil)

We have met the enemy and he is us - Walt Kelly (Pogo)

C.I.A. Choice Says He's Independent of the Pentagon

By MARK MAZZETTI
In a hearing that put him on track to win swift confirmation, Gen. Michael V. Hayden also defended an eavesdropping program.

Now that would be an interesting case. Of course we would not hear any of it. The journalists would disappear, maybe get hauled before a FISA court, and shipped to Guantanamo.

Again, the scum rising to the top. It's way past time to skim the scum. :mad: