Government May Help Bells Defend Against Wiretap Suits 315
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "As lawsuits mount against phone companies from plaintiffs who allege their call records were handed over to the National Security Agency illegally, the companies' defense may get help from the U.S. government, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'The plaintiffs, who accuse Bell phone companies of privacy violations and are seeking billions of dollars in damages, would need to delve into the depths of the NSA's surveillance program to make their cases. But the government considers such information top secret, and legal experts expect the Bush administration to assert the "state secrets" privilege in the 20 or more lawsuits filed by privacy advocates in recent weeks. If judges accept the claim, as has been the case in nearly every instance in which it has been asserted since the early 1950s, the suits will dissolve.'"
Proposed Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they ask the director of the NSA, Michael V. Hayden, whether or not their information was collected? They don't need the classified records, just to have him swear under oath (after checking appropriate databases) whether or not AT&T gave it to the NSA.
I would think a simple "yes" or "no" answer would be enough evidence and also keep the classified information concealed.
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
He Could Lie (Score:3, Insightful)
He could lie but you have to remember that there are people in the NSA with an axe to grind.
He could get up there and contemplate lying. But what if he lied and the information was leaked from the NSA or released after his death that the collections did occur?
Hayden is an important man. Important men (when intelligent enough) are constantly worried about how history sees them after they die. I would wager that h
Re:He Could Lie (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:He Could Lie (Score:2, Informative)
A lie of ommission is still a lie.
No, the nature of intelligence is to find out which ones are correct and which ones are false by INTELLIGENCE ANALYSTS. The nature of intelligence is NOT filtering out intelligence reports that do not support your agenda by someone totally not qualified to do so.
Re:He Could Lie (Score:4, Informative)
You make some very good, well presented points, but you left several major critical facts out of your analysis.
We know for a fact that one of if not the most important goals of this administration since before they even got into office was starting a war with Iraq. We know for a fact that they knew the American people wouldn't go for it. We know for a fact that they knew that it would require a "Pearl Harbor" level event to convince the American people to back the invasion.
We know for a fact that once said event happened that they immediately began agitating to attack Iraq even though there is no evidence of their involvement. We know for a fact that they intentionally misled people in an attempt to make them think Iraq was responsible for 9/11..
If you are not aware of all of these facts, then feel free to read it in their own words. [newamericancentury.org]
Add in the fact that the CIA specifically told them not to run with the known bad information that they had and they intentionally ignored it in order to make out Saddam to be a big threat and it's obvious that the situation is not even anywhere near as unclear as your argument would indicate.
Re:He Could Lie (Score:3, Informative)
On the contrary, we know none of these to be facts. We know that Saddam tried to assasinate Bush v1 and that Bush v2 was pissed about that, but we "know" the later only by heresay.
I provided you a link to the web page where the members of this administration stated exactly those facts in no uncertain terms. Go read the website. Then look at whose website it is. Don't say something isn't a fact after I present the proof right to you. It lowers you.
The idea that Bush consciously thought that the only way he c
Re:He Could Lie (Score:3, Informative)
You know, I absolutely, 100% remember reading a statement like that on that website very shortly after 9/11 - and the paper was from the mid-to-late 90s. I distinctly remember emailing people about it at the time, it was such a shocker even for my own jaded ass.
The particular paper I'm linking the pdf [newamericancentury.org] from that same site (your googlefu could use some improvement. I got it on the first hit with this search: "site: www.newamericancentury.org would take pearl harbor iraq") lists its own publication date as Se
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:2)
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as he remains unaware, and continues to leak intel, you can stay a step ahead of his game (whatever it may be).
The moment you describe your techniques, the enemy has an opportunity to become aware of his leaks, and plug them.
Leveraging your enemy's ignorance is a key component in getting good intel on your enemy. It is very different from encryption, in the sense that good enc
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:2)
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Recursive Iteration (Score:3, Funny)
See? It's all so simple for them.
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
If there was enough information leaked already to clearly establish that the records were turned over illegally then they might still have a case, but the government probably will try to have all the leaked evidence thrown out and to prevent anyone in the phone companies, who might not have a clearance to worry about, from testifying on national security grounds.
You would hope that if the law was broken, and it almost certainly was, that the phone companies and the government would be held to account. There is a communication act the explicitly forbids releasing your phone records without a court order.
It is an unfortunate fact that laws are much more vigorously enforced against ordinary citizens than they are against people in power. When the DOJ brings a Federal case against a citizen their success rate is extremely high like 80%. When citizen's bring a case against the government their success rate is extremely low. Welcome to Fascism.
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:2)
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:4, Informative)
Having researched it I agree that the government will try to just use the state-secret privilege so Hayden wont even make it to the stand. If by some miracle the judge doesn't cave to it and Hayden does have to testify then I assume either CIPA will have to come in to play and be bent to this novel case, or Hayden will just refuse to answer any questions that would divulge classified information because it would in fact incriminate him in the process if he did it in a public court.
The Wikipedia article on the states-secret privilege [wikipedia.org] is quite interesting and probably more interesting than the WSJ article.
Its not even a law, its just a precedent that was established during the McCarthy era where the Air Force used it, apparently fraudulently, to cover up the fact a B-29 crash was due to poor maintenance of the air plane, and was basicly negligence on the part of the Air Force.
"In United States v. Reynolds (1953), the widows of three crew members of a B-29 Superfortress bomber that had crashed in 1948 sought accident reports on the crash, but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission. The Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could bar evidence from the court which they had deemed a threat to national security. In 2000, the accident reports in question were declassified and released, and were found to contain no secret information. They did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case. Many commentators have alleged government misuse of secrecy in the landmark case."
Just goes to show you that once you let your government establish an illegal and unconstitutional precedent, during times of war or paranoia, to screw you, they can continue to abuse it forever. The Bush administration has been successfully using the fact that Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the civil war to justify denying American citizens basic due process today, and that FDR spied on American cables in World War II to justify spying on Americans now indefinitely.
Another interesting invocation of the "state-secret privilege" was in 2005 in a patent suit brought against none other than AT&T. Apparently a company called Crater Corp thinks AT&T is violating its patents for "WetMate underwater fiber optic coupling devices" which I'm guessing is probably being used by the U.S. to tap and evesdrop on fiber optic cables on the ocean floor. I would assume it must be used for tapping otherwise it wouldn't be classified. Now the U.S. has used underwater tapping technology against the Soviet Union for a long time, both on copper and fiber optic cables, but I bet you the NSA in concert with the U.S. Navy is underwater tapping any fiber optic cable they can't eavesdrop on land with the help of U.S. phone companies. It would be an interesting case to tack in to this case against AT&T.
The "state-secret privilege" was also use to defeat a case brought by Maher Arar, the Canadian detained by the U.S. at a New York Airport on his way home to Canada. You probably remember reading about it here on slashdot. He was shipped by the U.S. to Syria where he was abused for a year or so before Canada finally managed to free him. His crime as best I remember was he signed as a reference on a lease for a friend of a family member
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? Isn't that like saying circa 1943: "The information itself may be classified but the fact that there is a secret project at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge and Hanford involving uranium shouldn't be"? Or perhaps "The photos themselves should be classified, but the fact that many photo recon missions are being flown over the Normandy coast shouldn't be?"
Sometimes keeping secret the fact that information is being collected is as important, or even more important, than the information itself.
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:2)
Sometimes keeping secret the fact that information is being collected is as important, or even more important, than the information itself.
In this case, the existence of the thing is itself illegal, so your example doesn't really hold water.
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless they're not willing to share the fact that they've collected it, and deem even that to be a state secret.
All they have to do is say "Your honour, if people knew the ways in which we spied on them, they'd switch to other ways to avoid us". If they were stubborn, or just the invasive idiots we believe them to be, they'd fight this just on principle and to deny you the knowledge of if they did it or
EFF's bungling again (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Proposed Strategy (Score:2)
Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
Re:Bah! (Score:3, Insightful)
"this is not your father's america".
what we have, now, is nothing close to what the founding fathers envisioned.
Re:Bah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
Actually no, it doesn't. Read up on the opinions written by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington regarding the owning of slaves - the founders who did own slaves by and large owned them ONLY so that their positions as wealthy, powerful men would not be questioned. They were well aware of the contradiction between advocating freedom and owning slaves.
They were still politicians, and they weren't perfect. They had their flaws. George Washi
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
This depends on the context. If, as you appropriately point out, you're measuring CURRENT standards of freedom and liberty against those achieved by the founders, you can say they missed something.
That is not the spirit of posts like "The founders envisioned a world with slaves and enslaved women." The spirit of such words is to say that the founders did NOT envision a
Re:Bah! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry but that's not good enough. The rule of law is not something that should be lumped in with tax cuts and gay marriage and all the other happy fun wedge issues.
We can start with trying to vote out the current elite. But we need laws that hold the government accountable, we need to impeach after the fact (strips 'em of pensions and the rights to hold any other office), and so on. We cannot allow tyranny to be the natural result of a term-limited official.
Re:Bah! (Score:3, Informative)
Remember, Remember, the Seventh November,
Congress, Corruption and Rot.
I see no reason Dempublican treason,
Should ever be forgot.
Re:Bah! (Score:4, Insightful)
In the second panel, the mob has installed a cute mouse in the excercise wheel. The mouse is running after that same bundle of money while the mob walks off congratulating itself on a job well done.
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
And what if the election system isn't valid? [rollingstone.com] What then?
the next step... (Score:3, Insightful)
Classify all information about lung cancer as a "state secret" and you can get rid of all the lawsuits against tobacco and asbestos companies. Do the same with medical records, and *poof* there go all of the malpractice claims.
It would certainly save trying to ram all those tort reform packages through pesky Congressional committees.
Re:the next step... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:the next step... (Score:2)
If it is wrong - it is wrong when the side you support does it too.
Re:the next step... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing to hide (Score:5, Insightful)
The State broadly speaking may argue if we have nothing to hide, then why do we object to being watched?
If this is so, why does the State hide so much from *us*?
Re:Nothing to hide (Score:2, Insightful)
Kill the bells with decentralized telephony (Score:2, Interesting)
I can see that VOIP is starting to show the potential of decentralized telephony. But could it go completely wireless? I know the technology would be tricky, but it's certainly plausable, yes?
Take for example the LP. Back in the day only very large companies could press records. The machines to mass produce these were expensive
VOIP can't exist without centralized utilities (Score:2)
A very serious issue... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yeah Asshole (Score:2)
Really now... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask yourself this:
DO WE REALLY live in a time more dangerous than the Vietnam War?
DO WE REALLY live in a time more subversive than the Free Speech Movement of the 60's?
DO WE REALLY live in a time more frightening than the Cuban Missile Crisis?
DO WE REALLY live in a time more threatening to our way of life than the 70's Oil Embargo?
State Secrets was ONLY used in the past when classified data could be revealed in a case such that it would greatly hinder or be a serious detriment to National Security. Now I ask you this: What is that danger? Is it Osama Bin Laden? Is it a terrorist in the Middle East who hates us even more for a War that wasn't justified to begin with? Who is our enemy?! Damn, this is the most infuriating thing!
WHY IS NO ONE IN THE MEDIA ASKING THESE QUESTIONS?
Re:Really now... (Score:5, Interesting)
No one in the mainstream media is asking these questions because if they did they would lose their jobs. More than 95% of all the media we see (radio, newspapers, tv & movies) comes from one of five media corporations. [corporations.org] These corporations are interested in maintaining and gaining power. They do not want the general population to start asking these questions, so they rarely allow any dissenting viewpoints to enter the mainstream media.
If you want to hear these and other questions being asked, you need to go to independent media sources.
Re:Really now... (Score:4, Interesting)
After 9/11 the Bush Administration was extremely successful in their "You are either with us or you are against us" strategy which painted anyone who questioned the Bush administration's actions, including journalists, as unpatriotic, or practically terrorists themselves. This is a classic propaganda and nationalism card and they played it very well. This campaign along with the general mood after 9/11 completely terrified journalists out of questioning anything the Bush administration did. Its just now starting to wear off because a few journalists are realizing they were played for complete suckers by the Bush administration.
Rupert Murdoch built Fox News to completely destroy the liberal media and independence in the news room and it worked. He single handedly turned news networks in to sensationalist propaganda tools for the executive branch, witness Fox's Tony Snow is now the press secretary. The fact Fox sky rocketed to #1 news network after 9/11 made all the other networks try to emulate them, not refute them. CNN is now an embarrassing Fox News parody, they aren't even good at it, so they are tanking. I can't stand watching CNN anymore. One liberal media outlet down. The Daily Show is the only liberal news outlet left and its a comedy show, parody. The best thing that could happen to American media right now would be for Time-Warner to sell CNN back to Ted Turner so he could rebuild a news network to challenge the Fox propaganda machine.
TV journalists are hired and rise through the network ranks based on how photogenic they are and on how much of a sycophant they are to both corprate executives, and politicians, not based on their ability as investigative journalists. The networks White House Correspondents and the Pentagon correspondents are just regurgitating the stuff the White House and the Pentagon want them to say on the TV that night. They are thinly veiled propaganda tools of the government. They don't do ANY independent investigation.
Most media outlets are now owned by large corporations thanks to consolidation, and most large corporations have no interest in investigative journalists who attack the government or stoke controversy that might cost them revenue or political good will.
One of the more disturbing invocations of state-secret privilege [wikipedia.org] by George W. Bush was on November 1, 2001, when he signed Executive Order 13233 [wikisource.org]. This order allows George W. to unilaterally prevent any access to his presidential papers for 12 years after he leaves office, unless he and only he authorizes it. Even if the sitting president authorizes it, he can still veto the release.
If its upheld, this should prevent future Congresses or courts from even seeing incriminating executive branch documents to investigate or charge him with illegal or unconstitutional acts, until 2020. Future Presidents can see them but can't release or act on them unless George W. authorizes it. You have to figure that a few weeks after 9/11, George W. was about to sign some orders to do some things that future governments might consider criminal or unconstitutional and his lawyers created this executive order so he could unilaterally obstruct any future investigations, even when he is no longer President. What might those acts be? Massive domestic spying on Americans without court approval, a prison on Gitmo outside the jurisdiction of any court, arresting American citizens without due process, authorization of torture by the military and CIA, secret prisons, launching an illegal war in Iraq based on a web of lies, dramatic expansion of the Rendition program to snatch people anywhere in the world, in violation of other nation's sovereignty to send people to secret prisons to be tortured?
Rendition is particularly apt in a discussion of state-secret privilege. It was used to kill a case brought by
Would these be these same bells (Score:2)
In other I'll-scratch-your-back news... (Score:2, Interesting)
"President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye."
Land of the free? (Score:4, Insightful)
I left the UK in 2001 (just before 9/11) to escape crippling taxes and what I saw as an increasingly oppressive government. I considered two possibilities; the USA and Italy. My wife persuaded (OK, ORDERED) me that Italy was the best bet. On the face of it, at the time, it was the lesser choice. But now...
Forget the taxes, I'm still better off - I'd be even better off in the States, but it's the other thing that concerns me.
Since I've been here I've watched (from a safe distance) a dramatic reduction of the rights someone living in a democracy should expect, both in the UK and the US. Why are you allowing it to happen?
What *really* gets me is - why is it happening? I've asked this question on
It's getting to the point where I'm seriously considering making a tin foil helmet.
PS. Yes, I know similar laws are being considered here, but we have one major advantage. We just say "AAh, F*ck off!" (And that includes the police).
That aid will take the form of . . . (Score:2)
Re:That aid will take the form of . . . (Score:2)
The sad part is, it fits. (Score:2)
Re:The sad part is, it fits. (Score:2)
Re:The sad part is, it fits. (Score:2)
My take on that part of the B5 arc was that Clarke and his government weren't so much controlled by the Shadows as they were willingly working with them because they thought they were doing the right thing.
E.g. Clarke and "the ascension of the common man." The diplomat who justified the non-aggression pact with the Centauri because "we will know peace in our time.
Can you hide crimes behind a veil of secrecy? (Score:2)
State Secrets Privilege was abused from the start (Score:2)
-molo
+1, correct (Score:2)
Yes, the *state secrets privilege* was established in the 50's precisely to limit liability claims against pet military procurement contractors, not to guard secrets. The current case would seem to be a tailor-made situation for the invocation of these dubious privileges.
Re:State Secrets Privilege was abused from the sta (Score:4, Informative)
Declassified case appendix which contains the allegedly sensitive documents, via Federation of American Scientists: http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/reynoldspetapp.pd
Also that kind of under-cover spy information has not been what the SSP has been used for. Read the Wikipedia articles about Siebel Edmonds for an example of the modern abuses.
-molo
No wiretaps involved here (Score:4, Informative)
The Bell suits all have to do with turning over call records, not wiretapping. Wiretapping is *live* monitoring of the contents of telephone calls, and the legal bar to performing a wiretap is considerably higher than "trap and trace" or "pen register" monitoring. The massive turnover of call records is equivalent to trap and trace and pen register, and according to the PATRIOT Act, all the authorities have to do to get an order authorizing these latter types of surveillance to to atest that such monitoring is "necessary to an ongoing investigation."
So when the NSA claims that those requests for records was legal, they're probably right. The question to be asked, of course, is *should* it be legal, and that's a whole different question. Congress had the chance to fix that, but they passed the renewed PATRIOT Act, so I guess that means that *they* thought it was OK.
And there may be actual domestic wiretapping going on, but we don't know that since if there is, that story hasn't yet broken.
Re:No wiretaps involved here (Score:2)
But there's still no wiretap involved.
Vote! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Vote! (Score:2)
Re:Vote! (Score:2)
You're missing the important distinction. The democrats would raise taxes to fund the illegal wiretapping, whereas the the republicans don't raise taxes and fund it by sinking our country deeper into debt.
What Will It Take? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a word [wikipedia.org] for that, you know...
Let's review:
In case you haven't been paying attention for the last seven years, it may interest you to know: You are being systematically fucked. The press has been bought off; they will do nothing to help you. There is only one person left who can do something about it...
But, you see s/he's too busy, and can't be bothered, at least not yet. See, there was the American Idol finale a couple weeks ago where whatshisface (or was it whatsherface?) won, thanks to your attentive help and eager phone calls. Oh! And, and missing the final episodes of Survivor, Will and Grace, The Amazing Race, and House were simply unthinkable! And then there was "March Madness" back in... uh, March, I guess...
"Public corruption? Senate scandals? Incompetent emergency management officials? Mendacious Attorney Generals? Fuck that! I need to know if Natalee Holloway is still dead... [dailykos.com]"
See? Very very busy. So if something important is going on, it will need to be really important before we get his/her attention and they start to act and save the United States. It will need to be shocking so that we grab his/her attention. And it will need to be big so that they understand the importance of acting now. In fact, it will need to be so big that it will swamp out all the other "important" stuff for months.
And so, the question we all need to ask is:
What Will It Take?
Schwab
In a previous post... (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep hearing that line from Star Wars, Episode 1 --- "...I will MAKE it legal!"
Re:In a previous post... (Score:2)
That, and "I *am* the Senate!"
Your tax dollars at work... (Score:2, Informative)
US gov't needs practice (Score:2)
So amend the suit... (Score:2)
Another step to totalitarism (Score:3, Insightful)
Dissolve any lawsuit against invasion of privacy through "State secret"
Get rid more and more of freedom of speech everyday.
Arbitrarily deport and detain people to lawless countries to interrogate them freely.
Use torture on presumably innocent people.
Best recipe for growing a fascist country. Good job Bush and good luck fellow americans!plaintiffs...seeking billions (Score:2)
Regardless of where you come down on the issue, the way the lawyers are going about this makes me want to puke.
No way to defend? No kidding. (Score:3)
No shit. That's the whole point. You fucked up. You're now liable for some serious legal action. GJ HF TTYL ^_^
Is it just me, or is it getting fucking old hearing about huge corporations avoiding responsibility for anything at all costs?
Will this even help anything? (Score:3, Insightful)
Several of the 9/11 terrorists were wanted as suspects and living under their real names for at least 9 months in Los Angeles. One even purchased a car in his own name and was listed in the Los Angeles white pages.
Even if a massive reduction in privacy would help save a couple lives, I'd personally rather not live a life without liberty. We're mocking the sacrifice made by hundreds of thousands of patriots who have died to protect our liberties by giving them up without much of a fight.
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:2, Redundant)
While I agree with your sentiment in the rest of your post, your grasp of history leaves a lot to be desired.
Unless you consider the War of 1812 to be a continuation of the Revolutionary War and hold the opinion that the US was still British territory until the Treaty of Ghent, which not even the British at the time would have asserted.
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:2)
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:2)
http://www.militarymuseum.org/Ellwood.html [militarymuseum.org]
although this is a very small footnote in the history of world war II
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:2)
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:2)
I woke up this morning, drank some coffee.. but since this got modded up I must still be asleep.
9/11 was done not by the US government but by Saddam Hussein! Wait that's not right either.
Couldn't there be some sort of middle-ground? Truth, maybe?
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:2)
Couldn't there be some sort of middle-ground? Truth, maybe?"
I like the way you think! I am interested in finding this truthy middle-ground.
How about a real investigation, where high-ranking folks like Bush and Cheney testify under oath?
Who says that the truth is in the middle? (Score:2)
Why is it that the truth is in the middle between two seemingly extreme viewpoints? Why wasn't there facilitation of 9/11 by the Bush administration? There are a lot of unnervingly unanswered questions. Why wasn't Saddam responsible?
Okay... Sorry... That's just stupid.
Still, my point is that the middle between two opposed viewpoints shouldn't be where we assume the truth lies. It just allows someone who is willing to say or do anything shift the frame
Re:Who says that the truth is in the middle? (Score:2)
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe you forgot that the United States was invaded by Great Britian in 1812? The Aleutian Islands were invaded in june of 1942.
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:4, Interesting)
For the record, I am not a G.W. fan by any means, but there is plenty of real evidence to be used to bash Bush without resorting to hysterical fabrications.
Bush? You mean President Clark? (Score:2)
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:3, Interesting)
He's responsible for the actions of the military. Here's therefore guilty of war crimes. His own lawyer told him so (2 years ago, IIRC).
Re:Still Think the US isn't Headed for Fascism? (Score:2)
This is very true. He is not right minded, but it doesn't change the underlying fact. If we were not there, they would not be here.
Also, I suspect that many other middle easterners hold the same feelings Bin Laden did. If you are American, do you enjoy it when Europea
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:2, Insightful)
that said, i do want to address some things:
But you need to understand something: We are at WAR.
war against what? an abstract concept of "terror"? that concept is being ever expanded to encompass, at latest, journalists and whistleblowers.
The definition of war in the constitution is clear, war must b
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:2, Insightful)
So you don't care if we lose some constitutionally protected rights in the war on terror, because otherwise the scary boogeymen terrorists will blow us all up and then we wouldn't have a constitution anyway, right?
Place a lot of trust in the government, do you? Wouldn't it just be better then to tear up the constitution and structure ourselv
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:2, Interesting)
> calls? It doesn't affect my daily life one bit - but an attack not thwarted most definitely would!
That's the point. Why make sweeping changes that will get everyone up in arms when you can do it little by little, one basic right after another. By the time mainstream America finally gets the gumption to protest about it, it's too late. The USA 'democracy' is brought down, not by terrorists, but
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:3)
Sure, it doesn't affect your life, but what about the lives of the current administration's (whomever that may be at any given time) political opponents? And no, this isn't tinfoil-hat talk: it's been done before by other administrations, and is a large part of why we have the wiretapping laws to begin with!
F
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:2)
With that off my chest, I will try to answer the question. You should be concerned about this because once the infrastructure to spy on
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:2)
Names, please? Name one terrorist caught or one attack averted due directly or indirectly to the NSA having these phone records.
Can I have an estimate of how many lives have been saved so I can weigh that against the loss of privacy and/or potential abuses?
That's ok, I'll wait for the answer...
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:2)
Names, please? Name one terrorist caught or one attack averted due directly or indirectly to the NSA having these phone records.
Can I have an estimate of how many lives have been saved so I can weigh that against the loss of privacy and/or potential abuses?
That's ok, I'll wait for the answer...
Here's one example:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/milleni um-plot.htm [globalsecurity.org]
You can Google for the rest yourself.
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:2)
In fact, dozens of FBI agents already knew that 9/11 was being planned long before it happened, but the "big wigs" decided to ignore them. So it seems then, that what we need isn't more information and mo
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:2)
What the hell do phone records have to do with that story? He was only caught because he freaked and tried to run. You can keep googling and get back to us, because you won't find any stories showing NSA analysis of these phone records have caugh anyone.
Also, the phone records were elegedly recorded after 9/11/2001. This st
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:2)
Sorry, do not pass go, do not collect $200, as my mother used to say. The event you have linked to occurred before September 11, 2001. LONG before, in fact. Which just weakens your case: These people can be, and WERE, caught, without the extreme measures that our current government is attempting to use.
In fact, dozens of FBI agents already knew that 9/11 was being planned long before it happened,
And how was it that they found out? What measures of surveillance did they use?
Carnivore and other means of elect
Re:Uncle Sam will get to collect all he wants. (Score:3, Insightful)
without a warrent? how do they do that?
If they want to actually listen... it's a waste of time but hey, what do I care? Knock yourself out.
May I listen as well? Its a waste of time but I'll be keeping a record just in case I ever need it for your protection.
My point: I hardly think the Government is interested in what I am asking my wife to make for dinner tonight, or whether I need to pick u
Re:show me the proof (Score:2)