NSA Had Domestic Call Monitoring Before 9/11? 479
MarkusQ writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, according to documents filed in the breach of privacy suit on behalf of Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA asked AT&T to set up its domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the 'Global War on Terror' was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?" From the article: "...an unnamed former employee of the AT&T unit provided them with evidence that the NSA approached the carrier with the proposed plan. Afran said he has seen the worker's log book and independently confirmed the source's participation in the project. He declined to identify the employee."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Egg on James Bamford's face (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Egg on James Bamford's face (Score:4, Insightful)
- Any similarities to NKVD recruiting blanket all operators in some telephone exchanges in the 30-es and having a call record copy of all calls are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along.
- Any similarities to another character that used to say "Who is not with us is against us" with a thick southern accent are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along (before modding that as a flamebait, ask any Russian speaker for an English translation of Koba perls of wisdom. And fear the result).
- Any similarities between the Guantanamo military tribunal formula and the military tribunals under chapter 58 of the USSR criminal codex are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along (before modding that as a flamebait, read the relevant article and compare the required standards of evidence, right of attorney and defence and number of criteria for magistrate selection in both)
- Any similarities between al Qaeda and the fictional enemy of the state all encompassing organisation The Trust are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along.
- Any similarities between the names of Gulag, Gulagantanamo and Guantanamo are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along.
- Any similarities...
As one great American thinker of the beginning of this century used to say: Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.b>Not about the terrorists, eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not about the terrorists, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, since this is
Anyway, 'terrorism' (both domestic and Islamic) weren't a significant problem before 9-11 and they aren't a significant problem today, despite what the 6 o'clock news wants you to believe. Murder takes the lives of many more people (as in several orders of magnitude) per year. Suicide takes 4x more than murder, and car accidents take over 5x more. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and smoking-related respitory diseases together claim over 200x the lives that murder claims (which is itself claims several orders of magnitude more lives than terrorism.)
In terms of human lives, terrorism in America isn't even a blip on the radar. It certainly doesn't justify the expenditure of trillions of dollars on wars and "Homeland Security", nor does it justify the wholesale slaughter of our freedoms and even if it did a domestic call tracking program would do jack shit. Despite what the pundits want you to believe, there is no vast centralized network of terrorists. They have no need to keep in constant contact with each other over long distances, and ruthlessly and indiscriminately monitoring law-abiding American citizens (incidentally, none of the 9-11 terrorists were American citizens) will give us nothing but another step towards a police state.
Re:uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if there was some vast terrorist conspiracy random spying wouldn't be much use anyway. Indeed it might even be counter productive, were such an entity to exist they could create floods of bogus communications.
It's more the "false positives" than the "bogus". (Score:5, Informative)
The naturally occuring "false positives" would eat up the budget for the program (under any sane spending plan).
With almost 300 million people
1% false positives mean 3 million people investigated (and the people they know)
0.1% means 300,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
0.01% means 30,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
Now, even if you limit each investigation to just that person and the 5 closest people to him/her
Spying does not work randomly.
Re:uh, what? (Score:3, Informative)
Because its not really 'domestic' spying, in the form of listening to conversations between two people in the United States. It is monitoring the phone conversations in which one person is in the US and other out. As such, a domestic terrorist attack (in which both parties are in
Re:uh, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Small nitpick: 9/11 severely messed up the economy for a while, at least a lot more than murders and suicides. Whether that realistically justifies the money poured into Homeland Security is up for somebody else to debate, I'm not defending it. I'm just pointing out that terrorism has more consequences than just killing people. That's why the term terrorism is used in place of mass-murder.
Re:uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
So if your argument is that we should be putting more resources behind those things, I'd have to disagree. First of all, most of those deaths are caused by lifestyles in which we are fully aware of the consequences. Sure, not everyone gets diabetes because they eat poorly, or cancer becasue they smoke - but when you weed out those that do, your numbers become significantly smaller.
MOST cases of diabetes are not caused by lifestyle, just as smoke induced lung cancer is large, however it is nowheres near the #1 cause of cancer.... so based on that your argument is vastly flawed. if you were right by chance "signifigantly smaller" is still MUCH larger than the cost of terrorists. the fact is we will never rid terrorists, there have always been and always be people who will do these acts against those that they do not understand...just because there hasnt been an attack since 9/11 isnt cause of the money bush spent bla bla bla, you cannot make that corolation, thats like saying my house has not been attacked since i got my new computer... it must be the computer keeping me safe.
Yes, the number of people killed pales in comparison to the number of people who die on our highways, but people are dying on our highways because they're being stupid drivers, while people who die from a terrorist attack were ostensibly doing nothing wrong... they were killed because of their religion or their nationality, or as collateral damage from the killings of people for their religious beliefs or nationality.
this is so stupid i do not know where to begin.... people are dying on our highways because they are being stupid... did you really just type that?? the number of deaths of the driver who is stupid comes no where close to the people who die due to someone else driving stupid.... by your logic if i was drunk and hit you and killed you... its your fault for being there you must be stupid. come on buddy think before you type something. how does this post get modded with a 4???
Re:uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
The loss of life is secondary to the terrorist, whose primary goal is to strike "terror" into the hearts and minds of his victems, which aren't just the people he kills, but the entire nation (or religion, or whatever) that he's attacking. The attack isn't just meant to kill someone (like murder), but disrupt travel, destroy infrastructure...
In that case, the government's best response would be to remind everyone that however horrible 9/11 was, a typical citizen has a much greater chance of being killed by lightning than terrorists. Then remind them that it is our patriotic duty to deny the terrorists the fear and panic they crave.
Instead it helps the terrorists out by creating a color coded index of how terrified we should be and keeping it 'yellow alert' or higher. Then it disrupts air travel with the war on nail clippers. Not yet satisfied we go to war with a country that wasn't involved and fail to allocate resources to clean up natural disasters. As a result fuel prices skyrocket and disrupt travel and shipping. As well, we create a whole new generation of terrorists.
Since that's just not enough, it repeatedly reminds us to be terrified of another 9/11 style attack.
Meanwhile, the new wiretap requirements for ISPs and the FCC working hard against the public good is doing a fine job of tearing up our communications infrastructure.
Since state and local governments have rights in the U.S., destroying roads and water infrastructure has been left to the state and local level.
I DO agree that we must stop terrorism in the U.S. now, so the sooner we ship Bush and Congress to Cuba the better.
too add (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:uh, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Mathematically, it does not work. (Score:5, Insightful)
And the answer is "no". Any system will have "false positives", "false negatives", "true positives" and "true negatives".
The "false negatives" mean you miss a plot. As long as the false negative rate is above a certain percentage of the actual plots, it will work.
More problematic is the "false positive" rate. This is when a non-plot is identified as a plot. Innocent people are investigated. This takes time / money / effort.
Given that there is an upper limit on the time / money / effort available, the government will waste resources chasing false leads.
People who do not understand that will look at the extreme rarity of "terrorist attacks" in the US (try to name 5 attacks in the US in the last 100 years without using Google) and conclude that the time / money / effort spent was successful.
However, looking at the budget, you will see that our government is BORROWING the money.
We are going bankrupt in an attempt to chase down a threat that kills fewer people every year than car accidents.
And we are surrending the Rights that our forefathers were willing to give THEIR lives for.
Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the so-called "War on Terror" is just an excuse! Before the illegal
invasion of Iraq, no terrorist groups were based there, but look now! This
was widely expected to happen. So the current Administration has increased, not
reduced, the risk of Americans to be victims of terrorists.
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course! (Score:2)
future govenrments ?
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing that is nuts, is that I want a revolution in this country, but just to put back the original constitution and the ways that this country was originally set up. It kills me that the people that set up our government 200+ years ago did it mostly right, but since WWII the federal government here has gotten completely (and unconstitutionally) out of hand.
Has there ever been a revolution that just reinstated what was already there? Or does it always start with a clean slate?
Re:Of course! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Insightful)
The Taliban and Bin Laden aided into power by the US and allies to fight a proxy war.
When someone considered a bad guy cops it, people usually say "what goes around comes around" or "you reap what you sow".
Isreal - put into power by US and allies.
Am I making my point ?
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Insightful)
It never ceases to amaze me. There are those that rightly point out Saddam and Bin Laden were assisted by the USA in its covert gaming of the international political spheres, from Gerald Ford through Carter and Reagan and Clinton. Its a policy that started with Eisenhower. And often these are the same people that put George Bush number one on their list of presidential demons for setting up a truely representational government in full daylight for all the world to see exactly what is going on.
It is their abject fear of such upfront actions that drives those covert and stupid mistakes. Would they could put one and one together.
Also speaking of wire-tapping phones, am I the only one here who remembers the late 90's here on Slashdot and all the paranoia over Clinton's Eschelon program? Those posts were classic, and the replies with phrases set to trip off the system were hilarious. Now we have not only duplicate articles saying we've never heard of monitoring calls before, but now we are shocked, SHOCKED, to find out it was going on before 9/11.
These people crack me up.
Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Informative)
Iraq war illegal, says Annan [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
now do some work and search for america vetoing the war was illegal, maybe you should also read up on different cultures to find out what is going on in the world around you
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
In some parts of the world, leaders lead from a position of moral authority, not from the threat of force.
Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Annan's "moral authority" is neither. (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's exactly Kofi Annan's willingness to treat despots and terrorists with the same deference that he reserves for the elected governments of democracies that strips him of any moral authority. It's his completely luke-warm, moreally rudderless handling of stunning UN-facilitated corruption in things like the Iraq oil-for-food program that indicate what a moral relativist he is. It's not "moral authority," it's
Re:What weapons were those again?? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What weapons were those again?? (Score:4, Informative)
He is a raving nutter and extreme leftie who was a minister under one of the most left wing government this country ever had and is best known for his support of Sinn Feinn, a mouthpiece organisation for Irish Republican terrorists and organised crime.
Tony Benn carries no weight with any political organisation or individual of any consequence, although he occasionally manages to get himself on television because producers can rely on him to say something provocative and/or stupid.
He may be old but he is certainly not wise and if he said "good morning" to me I'd check my watch. The man is widely regarded as an object of ridicule in the UK.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Invading another country, when not in self-defense, is a war crime ("supreme crime"),
by the Geneva conventions, and USA has signed those and are bound by them. War crimes
carries the death penality in USA. As an invader you are also required to follow
local laws, with some exceptions. Of course, the invader may make new laws, but they
may be illegal as well. Instituting new laws in order to loot Iraq is not legal, and
you might have noticed oil companies reluctance to invest there...
Notice how the Bush Administration tries to avoid beeing persecuted for war crimes:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemI
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Interesting)
One is not assumed innocent until proven guilty
One is presumed innocent until proven guilty
It's more than just semantics, as the words have two very different meanings.
Assumed: Taken for granted; accepted as real or true without proof
Presumed: Taken for granted as being true in the absence of proof to the contrary
It's that "in the absence of proof to the contrary" bit that drives the police & the prosecution to do more than just make wild claims. They actually ha
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
They may very well do so.
> And even if Bush were indicted, do you really think that anyone would try
> arresting him when the Marines would immediately be sent in to kick ass and
> retrieve the president?
It's unlikely that they'll indict while Bush and his croonies while he is in
office, but hey, there is no limit of stature for War Crimes. Note that the Bush
Administration has bullied many states into agreements of not delivering US citizens
(officials only?) to the International Court in Hague. This is an attempt to protect
themselves from persecution of their war crimes.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is because their concept is 'durable, fast, many'. And it has proven to be the most effective for concept of war.
A Grumman f14 tomcat, in its abundant version, can track 12 enemies, and can direct 6 missiles to 6 of them at any given time.
However a grumman f14 tomcat is expensive and difficult to manufacture, operate, maintain. Any loss is a big loss. On the other hand, whatever is in russian hands is expendable, and replacable by around 10 in short time. this is what they did in ww2, this is what they were gonna do in ww3, and this is what they can do now.
As for electronics, simulations, battle tests, deployment en masse against technologically inferior enemies (iraq, vietnam) is one thing, meeting a foe in match is another.
The match of a-10 in russian air force can use anything from cologne to a multidude of petroleum distillates for fuel. It can fly with severe punishment.
And in the deployments against vietnam, afghanistan and iraq, we have seen that, even ragtag guerillas with negligible weapons can deal good damage to their foes. A galaxy was almost shot down in iraq. How many galaxies are there in strategic airlift command ? 12 ? How many awacs are there in sac ? What if russians spend 12 flankers apiece and get 10-15 existing awacs one by one ?
An analogy from history : germans had excellent technology, experience and perfect training to go with it, they favored extreme quality against quantity. Russians, favoring acceptable quality to go with enormous quantity had set them right. Same was the concept of u.s. in ww2, and this concept proved right. But from 45 to today, u.s. uk and west allies took to the mistake of germans "they have high numbers, we can match them in quality" - no you cant.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe it's 2006 and there are still people who believe that in 2003:
1. Iraq posed a threat to the coalition
2. Iraq had functional weapons of mass destruction
3. Iraq had anything to do with Al Qaeda, terrorists or terror suspects
Of all the evil this war has caused, I think the worst is the new American Culture of Willful Ignorance that its backers have advocated since before the opening shots were fired.
Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
A similar thing happened with the assassination of JFK, MLK, RFK - denial and discrediting of facts that make people uncomfortable.
OR,
How did the 2000 'election' go unquestioned by the majority?
Why do the facts surrounding the unabomber attack not add up?
Why does the official story of 9/11 not make scientific or practical sense?
There are many other examples but I'm sure you get the idea.
The other day I heard a woman in the street being asked by her colleague if she wanted to read the newspaper he had. Her reply was "No thanks, I never read anything with bad news in it" and was proud of herself for her 'clever' approach. And I thought, "and that's why things are the way they are".
There's a passage in 1984 that explains how BB continued. It says 85% of the people didn't care or question - they were too busy with the sports games and the lottery. And, I think, that's where we're at now.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're referring to the cache Hoekstra and Santorum have been parading in front of the news services, they were known about and listed on intelligence reports back in 2003. They were degraded beyond the possibility of use even back then.
rawstory [rawstory.com]
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
And no, you cannot argue that old, non-functioning weapons are the same as functional weapons. That is just inane. Did you even read the linked article?
Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Interesting)
BZZZT! Wrong. What you did is to show fabricated and blatlantly false evidence to the UN, nothing more. Please check your facts.
It is funny that you're saying that, given that Al
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Strictly speaking, President Bush was authorized by the Congress of the United States to invade Iraq, so it was not illegal under US law. Furthermore, a case can be made that, although hostilities were ceased, we were still effectively in a state of war. Iraq was still shooting at aircraft in the non-fly zone for example. If we presented evidence that Iraq had violated the terms under which hostilities ceased, then arguably the invasion was was legal under international law.
But...
If it turns out the "evidence" presented was faulty, or unreliable and the Bush administration knew it, then the legal basis for the war evaporates.
Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Insightful)
As it was the congress who signed in to the geneva convention, approved it, and made neccessary connections with your own law, invading iraq was illegal according to u.s.'s own laws too.
Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly the one we invoke when, for example, claim the right to navigate certain waters. Or the rights of our uniformed soldiers to certain standards of treatment when captured by the enemy. The same international law that says we can retaliate when our territory is violated, but then enter another country's territory in hot pursuit. The same international law that says it's a crime for a country to harbor terrorist organizations and facilitate their financial and other dealings.
Exactly what body is going to prosecute, convict, and punish a superpower like the United States of America?
International law is for small states violating it partly enforced by the UN security council.
But for states large and small, it is enforced by mutual exchange and recognition of rights. I do not molest your ships on the high seas or press their crews into servitude, and you don't do mine. I don't parade your soliders stripped naked through the streets, nor do I subject them to summary executions. Likewise, you do not do those things to my soliders.
The entire phrase of "international law" is a trite thing. Let's not kid ourselves, international norms and laws only apply to weak countries.
There is some truth in what you say. The same can be said domestically: if a man is rich enough, he is beyond laws that bind poor men. But there are limits. Even the United States depends on the mutual recognition of its rights by other countries. And while we have for many years spent far more money on defense than the rest of the world put together, yet it is not within an order of magnitude of what we would need to enforce our will on the rest of the world.
Don't be to proud of the technological terror we have created. Right now, we can't even really handle Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. North Korea, in our present circumstances, is completely beyond our ability to handle useing "superpower" tools. Absent Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly Iran on the horizon, it might be possible. Military officers I've talked to think that the biggest issue in a military solution, the presence of artillery batteries so close to Seoul, could be managed with our military technology. But we can't do that and Iraq at the same time.
In reality military might only takes you so far in the world. There are other dimensions on which a country can be a superpower, particularly political and economic, that are key to sustaining military superpower status. We have lost our political standing in the world, and our position of economic leadership is very shaky.
Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also end of international cooperation on economics, law enforcement and military matters.
What you say applies to individuals. Any individual who sets himself outside the law is able to act with perfect freedom. However he is not shielded from the actions of others. Certainly, we have police and courts and such. But this in the public sphere is just like having carpenters and plumbers. You could do the work yourself, but it's more efficient to hire specialists. In the end its the wrath of your neighbors you must consider, even if it administered through a professional police force instead of a mob. Likewise the lack of an international police force doesn't mean there is no international law; only that it is enforced with a kind of hysteresis. You can get away things for a while, because other nations still see greater benefit in cooperation than confrontation. But eventually the state flips to open hostility, and you're cooked. You can't get back by small measures either, you have to give back far more to restore a favorable equillibrium than ever you needed to maintain it.
There is one nation in the world which subscribes to your theory of international law: North Korea. They may "win" the current nuclear affair, but the victory would, in US or European eyes, be worse than almost any scenario we could imagine for defeat. They're still a failed, pariah state, sustaining itself by handouts grudgingly given because it's less trouble than crushing them. We could follow the same policies and end up moving in the same direction.
Mature and successful people don't manage their affairs by trowing tantrums and threatening to turn their back on everyone else whenever they don't get their way in every small detail. They work with others, giving up a little here and there and finding ways to get back more than they give up -- sometimes finding ways for everyone to get more than they give up. Dealing with other people is a process of creative compromise.
The same process, when applied to nations, is called by the adminsitration's conservative supporters "international government". Which goes to show there is such a thing as unintentional perspicacity.
When the European countries were world powers, they understood this...
And then times changed, and not only their world power status evaaporated, but the very assumptions by which they exercised powers as well.
Case in point. Our recent governemnts have pursued a policy of economic globalization. This was a case of the conservatives of an economic bent deceiving the conservatives of a nationalistic bent. Once you integrate your economy with the rest of the world, you strengthen the tendency towards world government tremendously. You can no more run your affairs idependently of what the rest of the world thinks and expects, than you could chop your own legs off.
We are locked with China now in a relationship of mutual economic interdependence. We can no longer pursue a foreign policy of "national self-interest" independent of this fact. Oh, you can still call it pursuing your "self-interest", but only in the sense that it is self-interest not to get into a fight with somebody you detest when you're both sitting in a small and unstable boat.
The music in the terms "national sovereignty" and "national self interest" comes with the assumed obligato of "national independence". Which now exists less than at any other point in history since the emergence of the nation state.
No surprise here (Score:4, Interesting)
After all Echelon has been around much longer so this was only to be expected to happen.
The scary thing however is that it took so long to get out. Makes you wonder what else they have in hiding...
Re:No surprise here (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who believe in "The land of the Free" have dipped to deep into the kool-aid.
When you give you president dictatorial powers and have no oversight and no way of getting rid of a president during his term, you have put yourself at risk. Add to that the ever increasing polarization of the politics in this country and you'll understand that there are no difference between a one-party state and a two-party state.
Re:No surprise here (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to disagree with that argument: In recent memory, government worked fairly well (not great, but relatively sane) when 2 parties held control of a branch of government (Reagan vs Democratic Congress, Clinton vs Republican Congress), and sucked when a single party controlled all branches of government (George W Bush, Carter). The reason for this phenomenon seems pretty obvious to me: When one party controls all branches of government, the Constitutional checks and balances are ineffective because everyone with the power to stop a branch of government is part of the same organization. In other words, there's really one-party rule going on, even if it's officially a two-party system.
That can lead to a lot of the polarization you're worried about. If one side can't be heard except by screaming as loudly as possible in public, that's exactly what they're going to do, and the other side will start screaming to drown out the screaming of the group not in power. Hence a shrill political debate, and increased polarization as politicians take more extreme positions in order to get noticed.
Re:No surprise here (Score:5, Insightful)
The flaw is even worse than you think, because it can't be remedied through "proper" voting. No matter what your political affiliation, you have no choice but re-electing a caste of professional politicians, which differ only on superficial and relatively inconsequential issues like a constitutional amendment explicitly banning gay flag-burning.
Vote for minor party? Only if you want to throw away your vote, for the complete lack of enforcement of gerrymandering laws means even the most incompetent of incumbents win over 90% of the time. Even the recent supreme court ruling tacitly condoned it by only complaining about instances of potential racial gerrymandering. Apparently, cheating is fine, as long as you aren't a bigot when you do it.
Spread the word? Anything you say can be countered by a bombardment of disinformation and distractions that prevent effective dissent. One would think that the alternative media/internet get around this, and it can--but they're going to change that. Plans for complete regulation of the internet are already in the works under the guise of "tiered-service". As John Devorak says, we're in the golden age of the internet--enjoy it while it lasts, because it's soon to end.
-Grym
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad thing is that Bush can win points with the average Joe by pointing and saying, "Look, even my enemies are saying it! I tried to bring security to this country 7 months before 9/11 even happened but the NSA just didn't get the system up and running by then. Imagine only that it was and that the tragedy on 9/11 would have been averted."
BTW, I know that the FBI already had the evidence of something wrong by August 2001 but couldn't connect the dots. I think this whole phone tracing thing is just going to add a mountainous workload on top of thing and ain't going to predict diddly shit while we all have our rights infringed.
Conspiracy theory anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
I just hope I get to live untill I'm 80 with my mind still intact, then I can see all the evidence from this bullshit as stuff is released in Britian and maybe even see some things from the US if a gov
No, I'm sure our government had a good reason. (Score:5, Funny)
I have NO doubt that our government was just doing the prudent thing. 9/11 is proof that it was necessary. You guys are just too cynical.
YES... (Score:2, Informative)
The EU recommends European citizens use cryptography in all communications to protect them from commercial theft and invasion of privacy, of which ECHELON is suspected of doing. But this advice really applies to everyone, as UK intercepts communications on behalf of the US, and visa versa, to avoid the constitutionally illegal act of spying on ones own citizens, although this in itself has recently emerged as a bit of a legal grey-are
Same with FBI (Score:2)
There just went a portion of Bush's legal defense (Score:5, Interesting)
Check FISA at Cornell University and you see statutes giving the President to use pen registers and trap and trace devices. If you didn't know, those things constitute the technology used to record numbers a phone has been dialing, and numbers that have called a phone. They also give the President the power to search and seize without a warrant and to use electronic surveillance without a warrant. Here is the exact statute. There are three identical sections with "electronic surveillance," "pen register or trap and trace device," and "search and seizure" being replaced by the other in each one.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize the use of a pen register or trap and trace device without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days following a declaration of war by Congress.
Even then, the statute may be interpreted many ways. "for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days" could mean that the authorization must be repeated every 15 days, that individual authorizations may last no longer than 15 days, that the power lasts 15 days once the President has used it, that the power may only be used for 15 days after Congress has declared war, or any number of interpretations, many more plausible than others.
It depends on to what extent your judicial interpretation philosophy incorporates "originalism," thinking about what Congress intended, "starre decisis," looking at prior court decisions, and "strict constructionism," which limits judicial interpretation to the meanings of the actual words and phrases used in law, and not on other sources or inferences.
There was a huge debate over whether the authorizations of military force constituted declarations of war for the reasons given above. The Democrats, they say, did not mean to give the President war powers and thought that the authorizations did not constitute declarations of war because they had been used as a means of allowing deployment of armed forces without giving the president war powers since at least the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed an "escalation of military forces" in the Vietnam War. The Republicans mock them for this, and the debate was even brought up in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld if you watch the oral arguements on C-SPAN like I did.
For all this, how much has this of President Bush's arguements been brought up in the mainstream media? I have seen 2 paragraphs in an Associated Press article and nothing more. Regardless of the debate being all worthless now that he is discovered perhaps to have begun the program before 9/11, the debate is something I feel needs to be known. Just don't berate the Democrats for wanting to debate whether the Iraq War's a war. If the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution had been a declaration of war giving Richard Nixon wiretapping powers, the Supreme Court would not have ruled against him in East District of Michigan v. Nixon.
A statute in FISA does not make a difference in constitutional law. President Bush wants the statutes to make legal what he does with no regard to the Constitution, but when statutes prohibit his actions, he can cite constitutional authority. If it's legally a war, he'd say it's the first case, and if it's not he'd say it's the other.
This apparent legal paradox has arisen in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld---if he's a POW he's under the Geneva Convention, and if not he's a criminal entitled to a trial. The Bush administration argues he's not a POW because he was not fighting for an organized g
LoL. Can you people even remember last week? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Carnivore first hit slashdot during the Clinton Administration. The oldest reference I found on slashdot is about Earthlink refusing to install it in 2000 [slashdot.org] - which means it had been in development for several years before that.
2. The legendary "Echelon" - the NSA program for monitoring all telecom traffic has been bandied about for many years - Slashdot posted several articles about it in May of 1999 [slashdot.org] but the news about it first broke in 1998. The program itself is probably 50 years old [heise.de].
Re:LoL. Can you people even remember last week? (Score:4, Insightful)
So it's OK if he just adds to the pile?
When I saw the headline I myself thought that meant the program was enacted during the Clinton administration, but with the date of February 2001 it seems Bush had been in office for less than a month and already his administration is trying to expand executive power, with no other excuse beyond the one that has become so clear in the years sense: his belief that the executive always had this power.
"Clinton did it too" is not a valid excuse.
Clinton is no excuse? (Score:2)
Neither is ignorance nor selective recall.
If you don't understand why something has happened how can you correct it?
Re:LoL. Can you people even remember last week? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, it is arguable that our freedoms have always been under attack both from within and without, that is by domestic terrorist, non-domestic terrorist, and corru
Re:LoL. Can you people even remember last week? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Funnier and funnier. (Score:3, Insightful)
So you say. Even if true, it hardly changes the point. Your "points" are incredibly dishonest and biased.
I blame Bush for what he has done. Seems pretty simple and straight forward. You want to give him a pass, and your reasoning for that
Could it be? (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of gasping about how they *planned to do this horrible thing* even *before* 9/11 like a little school girl you should go out and work on the political side that made this even possible. Instead of railing against Bush for using the tools at his disposal you should work on modifying those tools.
Re:Could it be? (Score:2)
Herman Goering Said.. (Score:4, Insightful)
freedom to keep silent (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:freedom to keep silent (Score:2)
All our data are belong to them (Score:5, Informative)
Well, guess what. It's still up and running.. It simply moved over to the pentagon, that's all. [nationaljournal.com]
These COCKSUCKERS DONT WANT TO PROTECT (Score:3, Insightful)
Use tag "flamebait" (Score:3, Funny)
Regardless of your feelings on NSA wiretaps, both domestic and international - you already know what all of the commennnts on this story will look like. Why even bother? An article like this one simply meant to stir up feelings and add nothing new to the discussion would ina comment be marked "flamebait", so why not tag it as such?
To tag, simply click on that small triangle next to exiting tags. Below is a text entry box for your tag (flamebait), after entering simply press the "Tag" button next to it and your tag is added. If enough people use the same tag it makes the front page and helps people understand just what they are going to see in the comments inside.
More Intelligence is Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though we of course had more than enough info and spying programs to catch and stop them. The FBI tried to stop the hijackers [google.com] in flight school, but the FBI refused to act. One FBI whistleblower has been gagged [google.com] for years because she's tried to tell too much about how badly broken is our counterterrorism system. Amidst mountains of intelligence, Bush has been unable to even find Bin Laden for longer than it took FDR and Truman to beat Germany and Japan in WWII.
We don't need more mountains of intelligence, especially spying on every American's every transaction. We need regime change to one that will actually protect us, the way we elected them and pay them to do. Every threat we've faced - terrorists, recession, hurricane, and smaller - has been bungled or worse by the Bush regime. Giving them more power is like giving the school bully a gun. They'll just pistol whip everyone to make stealing our lunch money that much more efficient.
Of course (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course. This was created to satisfy the extension of traditional telephone wiretapping requirements. You remember Carnivore and the related laws, right? No large Internet provider can cost-effectively satisfy a wiretapping subpoena for -only- the data requested. That filtering requires equipment vastly more powerful than the routers they use. I looks to me like AT&T cut a deal: We'll give you access to the total data stream but in return you agree that filtering for the lawfully authorized data is solely and permanantly the Federal government's problem and expense.
From the perspective of fiscal responsibility to the shareholders, its the right choice.
WHO does number TWO... WORK FOR?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps it's :
The Masons
Illuminati
Skulls & Bones
Trilateral Commission
Bilderberg Group
Neocons
Opus Dei (Heheh)
NSA
But seriously... who or what do people think Bush is working for and what evidence do they actually have?
There is no news here. (Score:3, Interesting)
My head spun at that moment. Apparently CNN didn't think it that odd that the NSA would have those records.
Secrecy (Score:5, Insightful)
-- Robert A. Heinlein
Frontline Illuminates (Score:3, Interesting)
The Darkside http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/v iew/ [pbs.org]
Rumsfields War http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pent agon/view/ [pbs.org]
War Behind Closed Doors http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq /view/ [pbs.org]
Pretty much sums it up. These People saw Nixons spanking as a terrible stripping of presidential manhood, and set themselves about to "RESTORE" it. Complete with wiretaps and torture on demand. Dick and Don are in it for the long haul. I don't think they realize what lies at the end of the road they are building. (We would be lucky if it is another good ole fashioned presidential spanking. Can you impeach an entire cabinet?.)
They haven't changed much in the last 20 years. I expect them to act with the same lack of integrity and political chickanery they always have. This is your fathers Nixon administration.
The only good thing to come from any of this is Jon Stewart's Dead-On single syllable impressions. Waaaaunnnggh! Waaaaunnnggh! Heh,Heh,Heh!
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:3, Insightful)
"See the NSA already started to take the civil liberties away and they wanted more so they planned out 9/11."
MIHOP == Made IT Happen On Purpose.
As if, a president so incompentent as to do nothing when the security agencies started seeing red isn't enough. He has to part of a criminal cabal to do it their damned selves.
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:2, Insightful)
The dogs were carefully watching the henhouse but the weasels still got in. So what good are they?
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming the cause is what we are being told, the appropriate reaction would have been:
As it stands, we still have some liberties left. We can still indulge in public protest (as long as we do it in "free speech zones" and nowhere near a funeral and have a permit), we still have our homes (well, unless the state wants them for higher taxes), we still have free speech (unless we want to broadcast it, in which case we have free speech minus seven words, if we're rich.) And we still have the right to regulate intrastate commerce on a state-by-state basis. Of course, the USSC has defined "interstate commerce" to be "anything that *could* be interstate commerce if you took it over the state borders", so this is mostly an exercise in "hope the feds don't have a different opinion", but states can at least try to make state law on goods and services.
As for the perjorative "MIHOP"... Even though it really does look like the twin tower buildings were dropped using standard demolition techniques, and even though building seven fell, hours later, without ever being hit by an aircraft and also looked like it was dropped in exactly the same manner as the two towers, and even though there are no signs that the Pentagon was hit by anything as large as an airliner, and even though airline fuel doesn't burn hot enough to soften steel enough to cause a collapse... I see that the idea that we might have some kind of problem other than what we're being told is still treated as a kook idea. I find this even more fascinating (and worrying) than I do the events themselves, which after all, have killed far fewer people than the administration's incursion into Iraq.
Was this something other than it appeared to be? We have some very troublesome evidence that doesn't fit the "a plane hit it, so it fell" scenario. We have a lot of missing gold from the vaults of the buildings. We have the removal of a single jet engine (which appears not to be an airliner engine anyway) from a hole in the Pentagon that was far too small for any of the wing materials of the putative airliner to have entered, and no holes (or even any damage) out where the wings would have caused the engines to impact; We have a knee-jerk war reaction against two countries that were not the majority source of the people we were told were the hijackers. The actual source of most of them, Saudi Arabia, remains untouched and a firm business partner. I'm not really on the "MIHOP" bus, but then again, I'm not really on the "it was just a hijacking with intent to fly into buildings" bus, either. I'm jusst mostly on the "my fellow citizens sure are an uninformed and spoon-fed bunch of people" bus.
Spend some time looking through the MIHOP sites on the net. I'm not saying you'll be convinced by any one site, but you sure will be entertained — and there are some startling facts worth thinking about.
Re:Our "incompetent" president (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:5, Insightful)
In a sense, there is no such thing as a strong piece of evidence. Only a strong pattern of evidence. It bugs me when people talk about "confirmation bias" as if it is some kind of logical fallacy. It's not. At least in part it is not: it's the inevitable consequence of living in a world of uncertainty and contradictory evidence.
The thing about the MIHOP people is that they start with the strong belief that Bush is evil. Given that, it's easy to believe he knew about 9/11 but let it happen so that he could use it as an excuse for all the evil things he wanted to do. Things that would strike the neutral observer as ordinary incompetence become part of a sinister plan. The same thing happened a few years ago with the Republicans who were sure that Clinton arranged murders and other outrageous pieces of skullduggery.
The thing is, if this particular piece of information is confirmed, it will actually provide strong support one of the MIHOP standpoints central assumptions: the Bush Administration needed an excuse to justify things it wanted to do. Maybe not enough for the mythical unbiased observer to buy the whole MIHOP package, but enough to buy several signigifant pieces of it.
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:4, Insightful)
Fascinating. You have a blanket label for anyone who thinks Bush is evil. I don't think "purpose" has any bearing on the definition of evil. Incompetence raised to a high enough level is, in many ways, indistinguishable from deliberate intent. You don't have to be Darth Vader to personify evil. The most evil people I know tend to be ideologues who feel their dogma is more important than the means to institutionalize it. They are both zealous and incompetent leading to evil in deed if not in character. At a certain point it's hard to tell the difference. Evil is as evil does, to paraphrase an old truism. A little evil mixed with a lot of incompetence, shaken, not stirred, makes a disastrous cocktail regardless of intent.
But it's convenient to have a one-dimensional bucket to dump anyone disagreeing. A label and put down all rolled into one. Like labeling any exit strategy for Iraq as "cut and run" when most people are smart enough to realize no one is really suggesting that.
If Bush supporters represent the brightest and best this country has to offer, or even the biggest fraction of the whole, we're really fucked.
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
Fascinating. You have a blanket label for anyone who thinks Bush is evil.
"X is a MIHOP person -> X starts from the presumption that Bush is evil" -/-> "X believes Bush is evil -> X is a MIHOP person."
As further evidenced by that hey!'s reply.
This almost isn't a logical fallacy because the clause "X believes Bush is evil" is made up out of whole cloth, existing only in your criticism and not appearing at all
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as I can tell, despite being as execution-happy as we are, Bush isn't eligible for the death penalty under US law. Can the Hague pass down death sentences?
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.indiareacts.com/archivefeatures/nat2.a
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/15503
http://www.sundayherald.com/39221 [sundayherald.com]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4
http://www.newamericancentury.org/ [newamericancentury.org]
Re:Well it couldn't get any worse... (Score:3, Informative)
Is there any evidence from TFA that the Bush Administration ordered the NSA to do this?
How about the fact that Adm. Poindexter was appointed to do this? How about the Total Infromation Awareness Requests for Proposal under US DARPA, NSA, CIA etc? I read the proposals at the time.
Such evidence may appear in the future, but as of now, I don't think we can honestly assert that Bush ordered the NSA to monitor all domestic traffic.
The only shred of evidence to deny that Bush ordered this is the "Plausa
Re:Legal and Constitutional (Score:3, Insightful)
Evidently, every law abiding citizen in the United States.
Re:Legal and Constitutional (Score:4, Interesting)
Advovates of expanded executive power like to talk about the President as "Commander in Chief", as if this were somehow a superior and broader function than the Presidency; and they like to talk about the President's "inherent powers". Some countries do have a system in which they elect dictators with practically unlimited powers, but not us.
The president's "inherent" powers are very few. It's a queer term in any case; no president I can think of ever used it before the present one, although Nixon did unsuccessfullly use the grounds of "Executive Privilege" to try to hide evidence of his wrongdoing in the Watergate affair. It would be more correct to describe most of the president's powers, not as "inherent" but "contingent". "Contingent Power" seems like a contradition in terms to some, but even the classic paradigm of power invested in the president can be seen as contingent: the power to take extraordinary actions while defending the country against invasion.
For example, the executive branch might comandeer property in the heat of battle. But it cannot raise taxes to support the defense. In both cases we're talking about siezing private property; the difference is that it's a practical impossibilty to vote on what goes on in battle, but a system of taxation necessarily inolves so much coordination that clearly Congress can be consulted.
And that's the rub. It's possible for the same action (siezing property in our example) to be constiutional or unconstitutional depending on specific circumstances. It also follows that by changing circumstances, we can change the scope of the president's "inherent" powers.
And thus, we have FISA.
Many of the things convered by FISA would fall into what we'd think of the president's "inherent" powers of defense. However, FISA does two things. First, it regulates the scope and manner in which the President exercises those powers. The president is not above the law; in the heat of battle he may stretch it or even break it with some excuse, but he certainly has no power to allocate funds to a program which flies in the face of it. Secondly, it provides mechanisms of accountability which are practical for the President to use in cases where it was impractical before. And this bears on the theory of "inherent powers". In cases where the President once could simply decide to intercept a private person's communications, he must now get a FISA warrant. The existence of the FISA mechanism, particularly the ability to get retroactive warrants, means it's no longer enough to brief congress in the time and manner you see fit. Nor is it in the power of the Congressional leadership to bless this as "legal" without changing the law.
Re:Moderation Abuse, Yet Again (Score:2)
Personally, I would have moderated it 'overrated', because it was modded up, and contains a factual error, namely:
Like it or not, the by all accounts is not true by a long stretch. I know it is just a rhetorical device, but I tend to take this kind of phrase literally.
Re:Stupid choice of words (Score:2)
Because the actual date is less important than the fact that it happend before Congress said "ZOMG! You're now supreme dictator for the duration of the crisis!"
Re:So What Do We Do Now? (Score:3, Insightful)
That is a very good question.
Some weird stuff has happened in this country over the last 10 years, the strangest of them all is that the Republican Party now is entirely controlled by a gang of socialist thugs. I don't know how that happened, but the Republican party is now the party that stands for big government spending:
Re:So What Do We Do Now? (Score:3, Insightful)
How on earth did the Repulican party become a socialist institution?
Well, in the first place, it's not socialism, it's fascism.
It's been longer than 10 years. It really started going into overdrive with Reagan, but