Citizen Eavesdrops On Former NSA Director Michael Hayden's Phone Call 390
McGruber writes "The Washington Post has the news that former head of the NSA Michael Hayden took a call while on the Acela train between D.C. and Boston. Hayden was talking to a journalist 'on background', which means the reporter is not allowed to cite Hayden by name. Unfortunately for Hayden, another train passenger overhead the call and live-tweeted it. 'Mattzie continued to livetweet Hayden’s conversations slamming the Obama administration, all the while insisting that he be referred to only on background. The conversation also seemed to touch on Hayden’s time as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President George W. Bush as well. "Hayden was bragging about rendition and black sites a minute ago," Mattzie wrote. Hayden has in the past defended the use of waterboarding against detainees held in various sites around the world, and dismissed torture as a "legal term."'"
This might help the situation (Score:5, Interesting)
This might help the situation. If government officials were subjected to the same scruitny and privacy violations the rest of the have-nots suffer, we might be able to straighten this train wreck of a country out.
Guys has some brass ones... (Score:5, Interesting)
Turnabout is Fair Play (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly what is required. We all need to out these people, all of them who work for the NSA and CIA, and subject them to constant surveillance, harassment, and ostracism. Perhaps an open source project to map and publicize the personnel of these agencies, as an exercise in democratic resistance to creeping tyranny. Heck, we can even enlist the assistance of kindly freedom-loving people around the world to ensure it will be impossible to shut down. The American government needs to understand the American people are onto them and deem them the enemies of freedom they are. Whether further, more stringent measures are required remains to be seen.
How the heck ... (Score:4, Interesting)
How the heck does a former NSA director come to be talking about such things in public?
It's like fight club, you don't talk about it in front of other people.
I should think sitting on a train conducting this interview would be an epic breach of both his secrecy agreements, and his common sense.
Re:Isn't it a bit rude.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't it a bit rude to actively listen in on other people's conversations, even if you *can* incidentally hear them?
Congratulations! You are now starting to understand the problem of indiscriminate surveillance.
On a side note: if Hayden has nothing to hide, he should be fine with people listening in to his conversations, right?
Re:Bragging about torture (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a really interesting question, because the Constitution doesn't do a thing to inhibit the rights of individuals at all. Every single thing in it is a restriction on the government it describes. So this should mean that those restrictions are in place for the protection of all people, everywhere.
SCOTUS would disagree, but logically it doesn't quite add up.
Re:I think we should "legal term" this guy (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking as a former Marine who *has* been waterboarded (as an exercise, not as part of an interrogation) I can say it's a thoroughly terrifying ordeal. It's probably the scariest experience I've ever had during my entire time in the Corps despite the fact that I *knew* no permanent harm was being done to me. And that's exactly why I support it. Fully. Without any reservations whatsoever. Terrifying someone's mind into complying with interrogation is orders of magnitude better than, say, ripping out fingernails, branding with hot irons, or other things that permanently damage and cripple the subject, don't you think?
And don't give me any crap about how we should just leave these people alone and they'll leave us alone. The world's too small and our ideologies are too diametrically opposed for that. Britain, France, and the U.S. tried leaving Nazi Germany alone and that didn't work out so well in the end.
Re:Bragging about torture (Score:2, Interesting)
Are our "inalienable" rights suddenly "alienable" because we're overseas?
You want to know the truth about your rights?
They don't exist.
Your belief in a "right to life" will not stop a bullet entering your skull and killing you. Your belief in a "right to liberty" will not stop a government agent from torturing you.
In the Declaration of Independence, the American Founders stated that they held certain rights to be inalienable. The King of Great Britain did not so hold. The debate was settled on the battlefield, which is a nice way of saying that people killed each other. Which is the usual method of determining which side has more power.
You can hold that rights are inalienable, or you can hold that there's a bearded guy in the sky who watches everything you do, or you can hold that the moon is made of green cheese, or you can hold your genitals and jump in circles -- and none of it will matter unless you have some power to back it up with.
Power exists. Political power, armed power, persuasive power, and others. You can use this power to set up a society based on the axiom that certain rights do exist, and maybe people will go along with it for a while. Perhaps even a couple of centuries. But eventually, people with or wanting power will realize that those rights are mere fantasies, at best statements of how we wish the world was. But there's only power. And words on old parchment only have power if people believe in them... and people these days, don't.
I don't like it either. But there it is.
Re:Bragging about torture (Score:4, Interesting)
Even more, the Spanish Inquisition documented the same torture methods that the US Government classified as "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- but the Spanish Inquisition was in no doubt that the methods described were forms of torture.