Member of President Obama's NSA Panel Recommends Increased Data Collection 349
cold fjord writes "National Journal reports, 'Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA and a member of President Obama's task force on surveillance, said ... that a controversial telephone data-collection program conducted by the National Security Agency should be expanded to include emails. He also said the program, far from being unnecessary, could prevent the next 9/11. Morell, seeking to correct any misperception that the presidential panel had called for a radical curtailment of NSA programs, said he is in favor of restarting a program that the NSA discontinued in 2011 that involved the collection of "meta-data" for internet communications. ... "I would argue actually that the email data is probably more valuable than the telephony data," ... Morell also said that while he agreed with the report's conclusion that the telephone data program, conducted under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, made "only a modest contribution to the nation's security" so far, it should be continued under the new safeguards recommended by the panel. "I would argue that what effectiveness we have seen to date is totally irrelevant to how effective it might be in the future," he said. "This program, 215, has the ability to stop the next 9/11 and if you added emails in there it would make it even more effective. Had it been in place in 2000 and 2001, I think that probably 9/11 would not have happened."' — More at Politico and National Review. Some members of Congress have a different view. Even Russian President Putin has weighed in with both a zing and a defense."
Re:WTF?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Change you can believe in! (Score:5, Interesting)
Obama is Bush 2.0, even though he led us to believe he was the anti-Bush. We all thought he was going to undo the draconian actions of the Patriot Act, to restore personal liberty and freedom, but that's sure not what we got, is it?
Re:Keep going (Score:2, Interesting)
There's no such thing as "US" tech companies.. They're all multi-national. In fact, for them "nations" don't exist at all. It's just banks and factories, located wherever they find the most benefit to the portfolio.
Dangerous self-licking ice cream cone (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole NSA spying debacle is nothing more than a self-licking ice cream cone if there ever was one, albeit a rather dangerous one for any democracy to be involved in.
In at least two court cases now the government has had to admit that its massive dragnet operation has, over the years, not prevented a single terrorist incident; the ones we did catch on time were thanks to tip-offs and good old fashioned detective work. Yet, why does the establishment seem to double down on this issue, even though it's clearly unconstitutional and public sentiment is against it?
Because of the money involved.
80% of the NSA consists of private companies that do almost all of the work and it's these companies that have such a massive stake in this gigantic data collecting operation. Normally the government should be able to simply tell them to stop, but the problem is that the tail is now wagging the dog: these companies don't want to see any drop in their profits, which is only their main interest and whole reason for being. So, they're fighting back using mainly legal methods, which these days includes the option to make donations to key politicians. Remember: money equals free speech these days.
The politicians involved, especially the members of the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (Feinstein, Chambliss, et al.), are the most obvious targets for these donations. Like all other members of Congress, they know that 94-95% of the time the candidate with the most money will win the next election, so they actually spend most of their time raising money while in return doing and saying most anything that their most important donors want. Our representatives don't work for us anymore: they work for their donors. Consequently, the government squanders untold billions on so many unnecessary "employment projects" every year, but this NSA mega-project to spy on everyone and everything is a particularly dangerous one.
That's why we must put a stop to it ASAP: by getting big money out of politics.
Lucky for us, this is actually easier than you might think. It would be very difficult in any other country, but the United States Constitution happens to include Article Five [wikipedia.org], which describes an alternative process through which the Constitution can be altered: by holding a national convention at the request of the legislatures of at least two-thirds (34) of the country's 50 States. Any proposed amendments must then be ratified by at least three-quarters (38 States).
Is anybody doing this yet? Yes indeed, and you too can get involved! WOLF-PAC [wolf-pac.com] was launched in October 2011 for the purpose of passing a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will end corporate personhood* and publicly finance all elections**. Since then, many volunteers have approached their State Legislators about this idea and their efforts have often been met with unexpected bi-partisan enthusiasm. So far, 50 State Legislators [youtube.com] have authored or co-sponsored resolutions to call for a Constitutional Convention to get money out of politics! Notable successes have been in Texas, Idaho and Kentucky.
However, if the State Legislators are also corrupt, why are they helping us? Well, maybe they aren't as corrupt as you think. And even if they are, the important thing is that they seem to be just as fed up with the Federal government as we are -- so much so that they seem quite happy to help out with this effort. After all, it's a pretty simple proposal that speaks to both Democrats and Republicans.
It looks to me like this is going to happen. The only question is whether it will be sooner or later. As an ex-pat I can only donate, but if you live in the US you can also contact your favorite State Legislator and ask for a meeting. It's easier than you might think and as a result maybe we can change t
Re:WTF?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Concern about civil liberties is not a partisan matter. Statism is the enemy, not the RP, and the DP is at least as bad as the RP on civil liberties (not to be confused with civil license).
Nice dodge. The patriot act was rammed down the throats of Americans, Republicans block any move to provide basic human decency to Guantanimo Bay detainees. Republicans and Tea Partiers only care about one civil right, the 2nd Amendment. Democrats don't care about any of them, but at least they don't wage huge campaigns against civil rights as campaign platforms.
There is no "right" to use the govt to force one group of people to economically support another group. That's vote buying with tax dollars, not freedom. Besides no one of any consequence is even talking about eliminating all govt charity programs.
Tell that to the corporate interests who get to write laws by buying votes, supported by conservative nominees to the Supreme Court. Corporations have more legal rights than real people and less possible penalties. They still get to legally purchase votes.
Weapons protect you and your lifestyle. If you don't understand that, then you are a child.
Ahh so there are no way to protect civil liberties other than weapons. Apparently someone had quite a few tantrums as a child. Nice strawman though.
No one of any consequence is even talking about expanding the military by trillions of dollars.
Guess you missed the Republican nominee for president campaigning for it?
The social safety net is not strained. Spending on govt handout programs is dramatically up across the board in the last 7 years. The govt runs adverts to try to get more people to sign up for the programs. Of course, every dollar spent on handouts is taken out of the private sector and taking money out of the private sector reduces job opportunities so the best way to keep from straining the safety net is to quite spending so damn much money on it. If govt spending is not reduced, then the country will soon be bankrupted, there will be widespread civil unrest and a police state will be instituted in order to restore order. It may be hard for some to accept, but that is exactly what Obama and his backers want. Obama isn't intent on releasing a bunch of convicted criminals from prison for nothing - every would-be dictator recruits a private army from low-level street criminals, people devoid of conscience, willing to brutalize the law-abiding and live off them like parasites.
No, you are so wrong. If austerity worked then you would see Europe rebounding, except you don't. What you see is that the GDP fell 2% because of less government spending based on a study that got the correlation wrong. Growth falls when government spending falls. Every reputable economist sees this because they can read the numbers in reports and can tell what a line on a graph means by reading the tabular data. You morons and your stupid ass trickle down theories have failed 6 ways from Sunday and yet you keep doubling down on your failed crap Randian fantasies. Obama isn't perfect, but to suggest that a civil rights, community organizer would have been worse than someone who spent time as an executive at a company that specialized in outsourcing jobs and tranferring wealth from the poor to the wealthy is naive at it's best and willfully stupid at it's most likely outcome.
Re:WTF?! (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no "right" to use the govt to force one group of people to economically support another group.
That is a tricky hypothesis, because it implies that government force in an economic context equals one group supporting another group. Not always the case. When laissez-faire does not result in long-run GDP growth rate maximization relative to a well regulated market, it is the laissez-faire case that is more accurately described as one group economically supporting another.
An example of an unregulated market distortion resulting in one group economically supporting another is pharmaceuticals. Aggregate customer demand is highly inelastic (price tolerant), time sensitive, and poorly informed. The profit maximizing behavior for the pharmaceutical industry is to misrepresent the product and collude to raise prices. Government regulation forbidding such misrepresentation and price fixing increases market efficiency and hence increases long-run GDP growth. The relative increase in long-run GDP growth under the regulated market case is the measure of reduction in the incidence of sick people economically supporting pharmaceutical stockholders under the laissez-faire case.
That is just one example, there are many cases where a well regulated market results in faster sustainable GDP growth than does laissez-faire. In such instances, the long-run outcome for all market segments is greater in the long-run under the well-regulated case, and hence laissez-faire is nothing short of theft.