The NSA Wiretapping Story Nobody Wanted 144
CWmike writes "They sometimes call national security the third rail of politics. Touch it and, politically, you're dead. The cliché doesn't seem far off the mark after reading Mark Klein's new book, Wiring up the Big Brother Machine ... and Fighting It. It's an account of his experiences as the whistleblower who exposed a secret room at a Folsom Street facility in San Francisco that was apparently used to monitor the Internet communications of ordinary Americans. Amazingly, however, nobody wanted to hear his story. In his book he talks about meetings with reporters and privacy groups that went nowhere until a fateful January 20, 2006 meeting with Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Bankston was preparing a lawsuit that he hoped would put a stop to the wiretap program, and Klein was just the kind of witness the EFF was looking for. He spoke with Robert McMillan for an interview."
Not even Barack Obama (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, perhaps the reporter of that story got a few of the facts wrong. (George W. Bush != John McCain)
Seth
Re:Not even Barack Obama (Score:1, Insightful)
Ok, perhaps the reporter of that story got a few of the facts wrong. (George W. Bush != John McCain)
Obama did not have to defeat McCain - or whatever Republican got the nomination, for that matter - he only needed to defeat Bush.
Re:I question a key point from TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right on both parts, essentially. I think they also were monitoring calls originating in the US that were made to foreign numbers they believed to have ties with terrorism, too, but honestly it's hard to really figure out what the truth is and was with so much fear-mongering and hyperbole going on.
Oh, and the program itself wasn't really new, it's been around forever. Bush & Co. just tweaked the rules around a little bit -- a move that I think was less about invading the privacy of Americans (which they've been able to do for several decades now) and more a matter of removing a bottleneck. The whole secret wiretap deal has to be approved by a secret court, I think there's a 24 or 48 hour window in which they can start a wiretap and then seek approval by this secret court. Well, in the wake of 9/11, they were using this quite a bit, and I'm of the belief that they circumvented the court not because they wanted to be Big Brother but because they knew that most these wiretaps would NOT result in any information but felt that at the time it was best to cast as wide a net as possible, immediately, and later worry about narrowing things down from "possible" to "likely".
The secret court, of course, only would be able to review so many requests for secret wiretaps at once, and if you're looking at a list of 1,000 possibles and you think 100 of them are pretty likely, let's say it would take a week for a court (and you) to go through and decide which of those 1,000 were the ones you wanted.. well, I believe the idea was simply to not worry about the time limit due to the huge volume and keep all the wiretaps in place until some sort of review could be done, rather than potentially miss out on valuable information because of a paperwork bottleneck.
Not that I really care for the idea of secret courts or meetings or wiretaps or anything, but overblown fearmongering and fingerpointing pisses me off even more. Especially when it's hypocritical fingerpointing. It's not like the democrats in power were oblivious to what was going on (see also, criticism of the information on WMDs before the Iraq War from the democrats when in fact they had access and agreed with the intelligence reports at the time.. fucking i'll-have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too bullshit).
of course they didn't want it (Score:5, Insightful)
There doesn't seem to be any real interest now, so there definitely wouldn't be any then, in the with-us-or-against-us environment in the years immediately after 9/11. So how would a newspaper or media outlet gain by breaking the story? It'll just instantly lose all its government contacts, but not gain any new readership. Why would anyone publish it?
Re:Not even Barack Obama (Score:1, Insightful)
With regards to the back flip carried out by Obama when he became president (where he changed from opposing the wiretaps to supporting them), the logical explanation is that when he became president the NSA showed him details of the wiretapping and possibly also showed him examples of things the NSA has intercepted via the wiretapping that has in some way benefited the national security of the nation or helped in the war on terror. Having seen that this wiretapping is actually producing beneficial results, he would then be more inclined to keep it going so it can keep producing these results.
it's just me... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not even Barack Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
With regards to the back flip carried out by Obama when he became president (where he changed from opposing the wiretaps to supporting them), the logical explanation is that when he became president the NSA showed him details of the wiretapping and possibly also showed him examples of things the NSA has intercepted via the wiretapping that has in some way benefited the national security of the nation or helped in the war on terror. Having seen that this wiretapping is actually producing beneficial results, he would then be more inclined to keep it going so it can keep producing these results.
Or perhaps the NSA offered to post transcripts of every embarrassing conversation Obama had ever had.
Re:I question a key point from TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
You assume every administration doesn't wipe its ass with the Constitution in one way or another.
Re:Not even Barack Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
With regards to the back flip carried out by Obama when he became president (where he changed from opposing the wiretaps to supporting them)
There was no such flip. Obama ALWAYS supported warrantless wiretaps. How do I know? He voted for telecoms immunity. He had some bullshit excuse about it, but no excuse is possible. Believing Obama was ever against those wiretaps is fucking stupid. Check the voting record, understand that you have been duped, and move on.
Obama supported these wiretaps before [sfgate.com] becoming president:
Re:Its about time. (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems like every time we get into position to do something about government abuse of the people all coverage suddenly stops.
Nobody in the US fucking cares. If this kind of thing happens in Spain or France (two nations with terrible records on privacy) then you'll see people rioting in the streets and throwing bricks through telecom windows.
Re:I question a key point from TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow... Double Hearsay that we're supposed to believe without any evidence because... uh... we assume that Bush personally ordered individual cops all over the country to arrest people!
A better explanation is that eihter: 1. you're just lying because you know it will get upmodded on Slashdot; 2. The cop was lying to you to make himself sound more badass; 3. Even if the cop wasn't lying, his police chief issued the order and was not operating under orders that came from Cheney's deathstar, despite what you would like to believe in conspiracy land.
How can I say this? Well, if I haven't heard about all these muslims being arrested on Olberman's show, the daily show, the daily kos, huffington, moveon.org, or I hate Bush so much I don't mind if innocent people die to make me feel self-righteous.com, then it likely never happened. Considering all the stuff they make up, I'm sure they'd jump on anything that actually happened.
It's only going to get worse. (Score:3, Insightful)
While I do think there are benefits to this type of surveillance the risks for abuse are far too great. It's all too easy to take this sort of thing way too far, and unfortunately I think it's going to happen whether we like it or not. The government will simply be far more secretive about it. I think Obama is the sort of guy who will engage in these kinds of activities just as intensively as Bush, the difference is he'll be a lot more careful about keeping it quiet.
The real concern I have is how people have grown extremely tolerant of what the government is doing now that we have a democrat as president. People who were rabidly anti-Bush for engaging in these activities, among other things, now blindly adore Obama and everything he does. That's the real danger, to blindly follow any leader and embrace everything he does because you believe he's on your side. When there are so-called journalists out there comparing Obama to god [youtube.com] I think there's cause for concern.
Re:Not even Barack Obama (Score:2, Insightful)
Bush. Obama probably talked more about the shortcomings of Bush than he argued against ... whoever that was. This election was not a vote for Obama, it was a vote of disapproval of Bush.
Re:I question a key point from TFA (Score:1, Insightful)
How can you complain?
You got exactly what you voted for.
Thanks
The Reality (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are a student of history, you might have at some time noticed a disquieting trend from the earliest civilizations to what we have today: technological advances don't create a more "civilized" society. In fact, it empowers those who have the means to use it to cause people to become less civil towards each other. Should you doubt this you could take a little tour through the sewer that is 4chan [4chan.org]. Does anyone with even an iota of civil behavior in them believe for an instant that 4chan is a reflection of the proper use of one's first amendment right of freedom of speech? If you do I would submit that you, in fact, are part of the problem and if that is what you are, your opinions and views are made moot by association and are therefore not part of any solution. The unrealistic paradigm that simply because you CAN say (or do), a thing you SHOULD is the hallmark of uncivilized thinking. ("Do As Thou Wilt" is not "the law", it is the anti-thesis of law - and civil behavior - sorry to disillusion those of you out there with a Crowley Hardon and completely misunderstand this).
Fact of the matter is: so long as you are willing to tolerate a government that will listen, record, observe, make note of, and in far too many instances eliminate those who would oppose it, you're part of the problem and you have no right to bitch, no ground to stand on and object, no reason to do so in the first place and should go back to masturbating with your shiny little WIRETAPPED iPhone because THAT, My Fellow American, is the lie that you're willing to subscribe to.
Kudos and Good Luck to Mr. Klein and the EFF for stepping up to the plate.
Re:I question a key point from TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the reason why it's hard to find out the truth is because the government has attempted to cloak the entire process under a "states secrets" privilege. When you decide, as the elected officials of the country, to hide every aspect of your executive plans from your electors, the judicial system, and Congress, you should not be surprised if "hyperbole and fear-mongering" enters the vacuum.
This is all supposition on your part. Reassuring supposition, but as absent of proof as the most paranoid theories. If it were the case, there's a very simple procedure the administration could have followed: it could have gone to Congress and asked for the "paperwork", as you call it, to be reformed. That paperwork is there for a reason: it is so we can keep track of who follows the law, and we are nation under the law, not under men.
As it is, we know that there was a new "President's Surveillance Program", that differed substantially enough from previous practice to be described as such. We know, thanks to Mr Klein, that there was an installation in San Francisco whose abilities far exceeded those required for lawful interception. We have a group of telecom companies who seemed so unsure of their own legal position that when asked for the simple, legal authorization documents to clarify the lawfulness of their actions, they lobbied for (and got) blanket retroactive immunity, using the argument that they might owe billions in fines (a possibility that could only have occurred if the numbers of those wiretapped were counted in the hundreds of thousands).
What's a more sensible attitude in the face of apparent law-breaking by the highest levels of government, working in concert with our largest corporations? A genial "well I guess they had their reasons," shrug or a demand that the other branches of government use their power and the responsibility to uncover that illegality?