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

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

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.

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

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Read Michelle Malkin on the subject of the datamining for something from a cooler head.

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.

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.

[Happy Monkey]

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

Each listen, each recording, needs a specific warrant.

[Undertoad]

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.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

We need to get rid of the Bill of Rights in order to preserve our stance of world conquest and domestic terror.

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.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by Ibram

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?

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

[tw]

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:

On March 19, 2005, about 200 mainly middle-aged peace marchers made their way through the streets of this city, stopping outside a Marine Corps recruiting center and a Federal Bureau of Investigation office to listen to speeches against the Iraq war. Close behind, police in unmarked cars followed them - acting on a tip from the Pentagon.

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.

For weeks prior to the demonstration, analysts at the Army's 902nd Military Intelligence Group in Fort Meade MD were downloading information from activist Web site, intercepting e-mails and cross-referencing this with information in police databases.

The Army's conclusion, contained in an alert to Akron police: "Even through these demonstrations are advertised as 'peaceful,' they are assessed to present a potential force protection threat." ...
Pentagon officials later issued an apology, admitting that some of the information in the military databases shouldn't have been there.

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.

After 9/11, the Bush administration declared the continental US a theater off military operation for the first time since the Civil War, creating a demand to better research potential threats to American forces at home.

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.

Now several parts of the vast Pentagon bureaucracy are building large databases of information from sources including local police, military personnel and the Internet. In doing so, the military is edging toward a sensitive area that has been off-limits to it since the 1970s: domestic surveillance and law enforcement.

One widely reported part to the new information battle is the National Security Agency's wiretapping of calls without a warrant between people in the US and suspected terrorists overseas. ... That practice is just one piece of a larger, less-discussed effort.

The military justified the gathering of domestic intelligence in part by relying on a key distinction between "receiving" information and "collecting" it. Military regulations over the past few decades have generally barred using soldiers to gather information on American citizens. Officials have interpreted the rules to mean that receiving information from the police and federal agencies is acceptable.

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?

On Nov 5, 2001, Lt Gen Robert W Noonan, then the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, sent a memo to Army commanders titled, "Collecting Information on US Persons."

"Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on intelligence components collecting US person information," it said. ... "Remember," the memo stressed, "merely receiving information does not constitute 'collection' " under Army regulations. ....

As Mr Wolfowitz was starting up CIFA, researchers at a separate Pentagon unit ... began work on a massive data-capturing program known as Total Information Awareness. This program, too, envisioned mining government databases and personal records of individuals for patterns that would predict a terrorist attack. A huge public outcry over the project led Congress to cancel it in October 2003 - but Congress created a specific exception for tools that might aid "counterterrorism foreign intelligence."

Many computer programs and techniques developed during the Total Information Awareness project quietly survived. Some were taken up by the Army's 902nd Military Intelligence Group.

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.

[Undertoad]

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.

[xoxoxoBruce]

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

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

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 then ABC News responds with this report:

FBI Secret Probes: 3,501 Targets in the U.S.
Department of Justice says it secretly sought phone records and other documents of 3,501 people last year under a provision of the Patriot Act that does not require judicial oversight.

The records were obtained with the use of what are known as National Security Letters, which can be signed by an FBI agent and are only for use in terrorism cases.
...
Federal law enforcement sources say the National Security Letters are being used to obtain phone records of reporters at ABC News and elsewhere in an attempt to learn confidential sources who may have provided classified information in violation of the law.

The FBI says its request for reporters' phone records are made in compliance with the law.

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.

[Undertoad]

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

[Happy Monkey]

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.

[Undertoad]

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