White House Says Phone Wiretaps Will Resume For Now 262
austinhook brings us news that the U.S. government has resumed wiretapping with the help of telecommunications companies. The companies are said to have "understandable misgivings" over the unresolved issue of retroactive immunity for their participation in past wiretapping. Spy agencies have claimed that the expiration of the old legislation has caused them to miss important information. The bill that would grant the immunity passed in the Senate, but not in the House.
Resuming wiretaps (Score:5, Insightful)
Which just goes to show you that they never had any intention to stop wiretapping, just to throw a big tantrum over it and then go back to spying on Americans the good old fashioned way, illegally.
Well that answers the immunity question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How do they know? (Score:3, Insightful)
I call B.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
Riiiiiiiiight. If you can't illegally wiretap, how could you possibly know what you missed? Besides, there is a perfectly good FISA court still around; you can even wiretap and get a warrant 72 hours later.
Fear mongering sucks. We're a better nation than this.
Now he says that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, what a brilliant idea! Too bad Bush didn't suggest that BEFORE authorizing an illegal program and goading the telecom companies into going along with it. Had he done so he wouldn't need to get retroactive immunity for them.
I think everybody understands that in the height of an emergency tough decisions have to be made, but the next priority should have been to move for revision to the FISA legislation [wikipedia.org], not keep the thing secret for several years and then try to bail out the organizations involved once people found out the law was being broken. Don't like constraints of the FISA law? Conform to it, revise the legislation, or break the law and face the legal consequences. There is no other option for a person holding office who has sworn an oath to uphold the law. Well, there isn't supposed to be.
Bush Blows It (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush has his new Attorney General lying to back him up [dailykos.com], but they can't even keep their stories straight [washingtonpost.com]:
It's obvious that it's Bush's fault [salon.com] the PAA expired without extension:
The bottom line is that Bush's own Attorney General just admitted that he and Bush and the rest are repeatedly breaking the law:
What does it take to get impeached in this country? Will someome please blow Bush already, so we can finally get it over with?
Re:I call B.S. (Score:2, Insightful)
I believe the age of "Enemy of the State" is upon us, I believe they have been doing it for a very long time! But that is just me and from what I hear.
It is not just the US either, it is UK too http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/29/interception_communications_commissioner/ [theregister.co.uk] although they keep getting "wrong numbers" ahem! Bet it is those 0898 numbers they keep trying!
It is good in one way as it will help reduce crime (allegedly) yet in another it is an invasion of privacy and as we know what is meant for good is usually used for bad by certain people.
Bring back James Pond! Codename RoboCod....
They're playing to cover their own crimes (Score:5, Insightful)
Free Speech. (Score:1, Insightful)
There's a word for this: Fascism (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad part? There is no promise that any democratic administration would stop this.
Why? Because it's fascism, or, as one of the guys who invented fascism (Mussolini) caled it: Corporatism.
The American Empire is dying and it's a sad thing to watch it act, as WS Burroughs said in 1984, as the single greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams. [youtube.com]
RS
Re:Bush Blows It (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I call B.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well that answers the immunity question... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Obama is elected - "I haven't had enough time in four years to change anything, so elect me again".
At the next congressional elections - "We haven't had enough time with a Democrat as President, so elect us again".
(Note, this post is not a message against Obama, or for any other candidate. Just pointing out details regarding a candidate who everyone thinks will change things, but who is simply another politician, and an individual person, up against the whole of the political machine).
Re:I call B.S. (Score:1, Insightful)
Just by way of reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
We were not completely surprised by the 9-11 hijackers, the problem was we didn't act on what we did know. Even then we knew. We knew without the Patriot Act, we knew without wholesale spying on the American public, we knew without the Protect America Act. We knew and did nothing. So now the solution is to spy on Americans. Makes almost as much sense as being attacked by terrorists operating out of Afghanistan and responding by attacking Iraq.
Only a Republican would think it makes sense to fight terrorism by monitoring my 83 year old mom's phone calls.
And, just in case this dust up has interfered with the intelligence community's ability to monitor the activity of Americans, the bake sale has been postponed until next week because the lady running it broke her hip and mom change her hair appointment to 11 am this week because Marge's family is flying in from Montana. And dad still can't figure out why his pineapple plants keep dying in the front yard. Now you're up to date.
Re:Tapping the future. (Score:3, Insightful)
Somebody should troll a terrorist attack, get caught, and then expose the whole mess of no fisa warrant.
Revolution 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I call B.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the issue, I think, is the paperwork. For instance, each application must be personally approved by the Attorney General (can you imagine poor Mr. Gonzales having to review and sign hundreds or thousands of such applications at a time?).
The surveillance carried out in support of the "war on terror" is orders of magnitude greater than was contemplated when the FISA court was created. So Bush & Co. simply decided to ignore the problem and proceed without bothering to get warrants from the FISA court.
Re:I just don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just by way of reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
subject lives in climate where pineapples can grow, similar to asian areas with high islamic radical populations. relatives in Montana which is known abode of militia groups. subject altering appearance at 11am.
action: subject to be reclassified as probable threat to national security.
Re:I just don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the previous rubber-stamp system left a paper-trail (albeit one they could claim was "classified for reasons of national security") as to who they were spying on and why, and thus had some amount of accountability, no matter how tiny.
The new system does not.
If there's anything this administration hates, it's accountability.
Now what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know what's worse, not having any input at all, or knowing that it won't be used in any decisions in the end anyway.
Criminal charges (Score:3, Insightful)
That definitely wouldn't be Clinton (too much of an insider) and it wouldn't be McCain (he's shown he's a good boy after all), and Paul hasn't got a snowball's chance. I can only hope that Obama wouldn't pull a Ford and pardon Bush "so the country can move on".
Re:I just don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
You get a warrant when you want to spy on SOMEONE. You don't get a warrant when you want to capture all inbound and outbound (from the country) telephone traffic and put it through your NSA analyzer supercomputer thingymajig looking for suspicious activity. You see, for something like this to work, you need a very large sample of data to compare to. You will never be given a warrant for little Felipe who wants to call mommy back in Italy to talk about spaghetti recipes. But you need that data as a base line.
Re:Resuming wiretaps (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well that answers the immunity question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I just don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the fact that the telecoms are having "understandable misgivings" after the collapse of the immunity bill tells us all we need to know about how their corporate lawyers view the situation. If we're lucky, the truth will get declassified in 25 years, but I doubt it.
Now theres a War on Liberals? (Score:1, Insightful)
Spying to find "terrorists" is just the pretext the government is using to wiretap the homeland (and why FISA, it should have been called HISA, Homeland Intelligence Surveillance Act), so they can find not terrorists, but rather innocent people who criticize the government on the Internet through blogs, IM, IRC, etc.
So that's where our tax money is going: paying the NSA to read all the rants on the government (most of them are the real truth to, how ironic!)
Re:Resuming wiretaps (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bush Blows It (Score:4, Insightful)
With which Democrats can abuse all those "Bush/Cheney" tyrannical powers without the Iraq War that gets you caught. But with the Iraq War that gets you paid.
Quite a racket. Which is why Americans should force them to impeach, or at least make it as costly as possible not to. Because Republicans will be in no position of any kind to offer the kind of "opposition party" these Democrats couldn't muster even the past 8 years with very solid minorities and blatant catastrophes.
The missing party, as usual. is the American people. And decent country would be out in the streets with pitchforks and torches by now, especially with economic collapse staring everyone in the face. Instead, we've got Slashdot and the Daily Kos. And President VP Cheney.
Spying is OK if accountable. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
There, I corrected that for you. Bush, like anyone else still afraid of "terrorists", is a huge pussy.
Re:Criminal charges (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond that, this isn't just about wiretapping phones. It sets a very dangerous precedent through which the executive branch can bypass the legislative branch's powers and act illegally with no fear of repercussions.
Re:Criminal charges (Score:1, Insightful)
The Bush administration knows about this risk. They are busy shredding what little paper trail there is. Then, a day or two before Bush leaves office, he'll pardon everyone for everything. Just watch.
Re:Resuming wiretaps (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone, not just Americans, deserve basic human rights. You may think you can put a label on someone (EG "terrorist") and then they somehow become less human, so you can do whatever you damn well please.
What if, say, Japan or France or some other foreign nation decided that we were a "terrorist threat," and decided to begin wire tapping conversations going from America to Japan or France? Or originating in those countries? Wouldn't that make sense that you would be outraged that your conversations were being wire tapped by another country? What if you were French or Japanese?
Or how about another country takes you and puts you in their prison, without any kind of legal recourse. They just need to slap a label on you and call it good. Then torture you.
I thought we busted the Japanese for water-boarding in WWII...or was that the Germans? No, wait, it was both. We also busted them for slapping labels on people and locking them up without any legal recourse.
The reason these rights were instituted among men is because you are human, not because you're born in some arbitrary nation.
catch22 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How do they know? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it'd undermine their power grab (aka the warrantless wiretapping program(s)) by showing that warrants get the job done. Isn't it great how, every time someone tries to force the Bush Administration to follow the law, which is more than sufficient to get the job done, there is screams of "you're making us vulnerable to the terrorists"? Bush can't let the man behind the curtain show his face (that the law works, and power grabs are wholly unnecessary), and Bush and company are perfectly willing to sacrifice the security of the nation--you know, one of those primary functions of the Presidency--to cover their own asses. But, then, this story is at least as old as the Iraq War* and the bullshit about WMDs.
*Note: There might be older examples, but the Iraq War one was exceptionally egregious.
Re:News at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at it this way. His attorney general when he first announced the program has left the post in disgrace. Congress refused to pass an act providing retroactive immunity to the telcos who first participated in program. The ACLU and EFF have filed lawsuits because of the wiretapping program. People across the county have spoken out against the program. And still he announces that the warrantless wiretapping has resumed. Sounds pretty brazen to me.
On the one hand, I want to believe that he is doing it with the best of intentions but is just to stupid to realize the long-term implications of such a thing. On the other hand, I am very, very afraid that he knows exactly what he is doing. In either case, this program is a (tm) Bad Thing and needs to end, permanently.
Re:I call B.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
So I hate to see the Republican Fear Marketing slogan War on Terror used. It is really like the 1984 war with the Northeast (if I remember right). That continuous war that keeps the population under martial law and rallied around the flag. For what, for accumlation of power.
So the War against Terror is just like the War against Poverty or the War against Aids. Its not a war, its a slogan, lets not forget that. It should not invoke war powers for the Executive branch. Actually it did not, the war powers were granted to go to war against Iraq because they were claimed (falsely and brazenly and seemingly with full knowledge of that falsness) have weapons of mass destruction. Valerie Elise Plame Wilson was outed as a CIA agent because that lie was being exposed by her husband.
Lets not forget the War on Terror is just a marketing slogan and get on with the business of cleaning up the mess in Iraq and the mess in Afganistan.
Terrists exist, there are terrorist who are targeting the US and other countries as well, but giving up our Constitutional rights and protections isn't the way to go. The Executive has lead us into improsonment with no charges, lack of due process, torture, rendition, wiretapping,
Marketing slogans should be reserved for those selling soap.
Re:Well that answers the immunity question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I call B.S. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it interesting that rather than address the issue on the merits, you chose instead to make an ad hominem attack on all reporters, say they are unintelligent and shouldn't be trusted, and project an air of arrogance and disdain to further deflect any disagreement.
You seem to be willfully diverting the question from the merits of the administration's remarks to an untruthful characterization of the reporting, a typical tactic of administration apologists. So let's summarize:
1) The administration says something
2) It gets accurately reported
3) You call reporters unintelligent, an ad hominem attack on the messenger,
without actually showing they did anything wrong
4) You assume an air of arrogance and disdain to deflect any questioning of your unjustified statements
5) In the end you have contributed nothing to the discussion of what actually happened
Maybe next time you can actually address the issue rather than mischaracterizing its reporting? What's actually a bit sad is that your comment was modded +3 insightful for making that little bit of flamebait.
Re:I call B.S. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bush Blows It (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I call B.S. (Score:1, Insightful)
They're probably collecting information on political enemies, just like Hoover was using the FBI to do. I wouldn't doubt they're as far up George Soros's ass as they can get, because his name is dropped as a bogeyman every time there's a study that contradicts the Bush world view.
Re:For all you legal experts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How do they know? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Spying is OK if accountable. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:For all you legal experts (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a vast difference between "we must operate within the boundaries of the Constitution and the law" and "we should do nothing".
Re:Impeach now (Score:3, Insightful)
If we ignore this, not only will our next leaders continue it, but Bush will go unpunished.
He's by far the worst president the USA has ever had. Not just in what he's personally done, but in the lack of respect for law that he's instilled into the office and various three-letter-agencies.
If, on the other hand, he was stripped of power, even a day before the end, not allowed to pardon anyone, and made liable for criminal lawsuits... Ideally, he'll get tortured in Gitmo, that would be the ultimate payback for the sell-out.
Re:I just don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
But hey maybe your right. Maybe they're looking for who funds the terrorists, oh wait they already know that (cause Bush and the Royal Family are BFF). They're looking for terrorists in this country. Ohh no wait, that wouldn't work, it would be stupid to communicate over phones or hotmail. No trained terrorist would be that dumb and you don't need the data itself anyway. You just need the points of interest then you can monitor those points (such as cell phone numbers). But then theres disposable cell phones, and OMG the most diabolical of all... snail mail, newspapers, etc. etc.
John Nash might find the red spys, but the NSA is just looking for dirt on anyone who doesn't agree with their agenda. Its been done before, thats why we have FISA in the first place.
Speculate all you want, but its just as likely they're looking for Rainbow Ponies as Terrorist in the 'Tubes.
LAST TIME - Pay Attention (Score:5, Insightful)
It's wholesale data-mining.
Spying in the Death Star: The AT&T Whistle-Blower Tells His Story
Mark Klein = Patriot
Former AT&T technician
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/05/kleininterview [wired.com]
In room 641A at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco, California is a SPLITTER that duplicates ALL traffic and diverts it by the way of a proprietary black box to an unnamed acronymed agency.
Mark Klein called it a "Big Brother Machine".
It can't be more clear than that.
For all the folks that still don't get IT, good God!, go back to sleep, and or, quit posting drivel.
Re:Resuming wiretaps (Score:4, Insightful)
So does that make the CIA an illegal organization then? I mean, it's their job to spy on foreign countries.
That's a strawman. Firstly because it's the NSA that's conducting surveillance, not the CIA. Secondly because I said the Constitution requires a warrant to conduct a search, not that spying is illegal. Having judicial oversight is the designated balance between the government not being able to perform its duties to defend the country and the government growing into an oppressive tyranny. I have no problem with legal intelligence gathering. The rules are spelled out, and there's a process that allows for changing them.
If the Constitution applies to ALL people of the earth, shouldn't we be invading all these other countries and removing their current, illegal governments? Shouldn't these people be voting in elections and sending the winners to Washington to serve in Congress? Shouldn't we be taxing their populations? Shouldn't we be using our military to guarantee these rights to the peoples of the world?
We have been using our military to "spread democracy" for 60 years, and the CIA to overthrow democracy and install dictators, and then often have to send in the military to remove them. It's why so many people around the world hate us. If an oppressed group of people need and seek outside help, then I have no problem with international forces coming to the rescue. We just need to follow our Constitution by declaring war with a clear and well-defined goal and follow the Geneva Conventions.
Also, "inalienable human rights" was in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. Tell me how I'm the confused one again?
You're confused because you inferred a quotation where the was none, notice the lack of such notation in my original post. The discussion is regarding the legality of certain government actions. The Declaration of Independence says why we needed a new government. The Constitution defines that government, in such a way as to honor those inalienable human rights. So any discussion of what the government can and can't do must therefore refer to the Constitution.
Re:Impeach now (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not to say nothing can or will be done. The Democrats have finally started making hay out of wreckage of the Bush administration--letting the surveillance bill lapse because it contained retroactive immunity for the telecoms is a good start. That allows lawsuits to proceed against them that, over the next few years, will make clear the scope of the domestic spying that was going on.
To the extent that anything will change, it will be because a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress will look for a lot of legislative achievements in the first 100 days, riding a still-fresh wave of disgust, that have to do with (very loudly) making certain things illegal, restoring and strengthening FISA, and cleaning up the civil service. More than impeaching or imprisoning Bush, suing and jailing the civil servants who carried out his orders will put the fear into those who happily break the law under colour of executive authority.
Re:News at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not like any lawsuit can do anything to him. He's got immunity. And it's not like he cares what people speak out against.
Courage requires risking something. Bush's merely an obstinate simpleton, something a coward can easily be. As long as he doesn't risk getting smacked in the face about it.
Re:For all you legal experts (Score:3, Insightful)
I have never seen anyone show such blatant disregard for the constitution. The fourth amendment. [wikipedia.org]
This is nothing like "requiring the police to get warrants for using radar guns to check if someone is speeding," because they're observing something in public. Listening to your private communications, without your knowledge, and without judicial review, is something entirely else. You expect that to be private. It would be no different if the NSA decided to open all of your mail and read it, without having their actions reviewed by a judge, and without telling you.
How would you feel then? Personally, I'd start to feel like it resembled Nazi Germany or Cold War Russia.
What we ought to be asking is, why hasn't the supreme court acted?
Hey, who is on the supreme court [wikipedia.org] these days, anyway?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How do they know? (Score:3, Insightful)
Impeachment (Score:4, Insightful)
I beg to disagree, Impeachment is as important now as it ever was, and should be pursued (IMHO) even after the present administration has left office.
Why? Because the basic purpose of impeachment is not political theater, throwing the bums out, or any of the other nonsense that is commonly cited. Impeachment is about investigating plausible claims of wrong doing by high ranking officials and if the claims are true meting out appropriate consequences. We are in a very risky point in our history, but not because of the offenses against our constitution presently being perpetrated, but rather because of the precedent we setting by ignoring them. The third amendment
is interesting in that it is the only part of the Bill of Rights that the present administration hasn't been plausibly accused of violating. And yet we do nothing.
So turn the question around: if we aren't going to impeach now, when would we? And what sort of message does that send to future administrations, of either party?
--MarkusQ
Re:I call B.S. (Score:3, Insightful)
We're a better nation than this.
I think it has been proven time and time again, that, in fact, we are not.
We like to think we are, we congratulate ourselves for being it, and maybe once upon a time we were. But our morals and ethics have faced the biggest test they have had in a long time, if not ever, and we failed. Pretty spectacularly.
I think the fact that we were debating if "waterboarding" constituted torture, on C-SPAN, clearly indicates that ethics, morals, and justice are just so much rhetoric until those notions are put to the test. And we caved to our baser notions in what can only be a speed record.
We have laughed at the French for the speed in which they surrender(ed) when put to the test; I wonder if the US will be known for generations for the speed in which our character collapsed when we were faced with a test.
Re:Resuming wiretaps (Score:3, Insightful)
People just don't have the basic moral character that we like to think they have. Rattle them a little bit and suddenly they'll gladly sign off on tortureing someone to death if it could hypothetically lower the risk of an unspecified something happening to any American at any point in the future. Who are these people? Oh, my fellow Americans. How I love thee.
Re:How do they know? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is about a coverup for administration crimes, nothing else.
Re:News at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)