Senator Dianne Feinstein: NSA Metadata Program Here To Stay 510
cold fjord writes "The Hill reports, 'Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) predicted Sunday that lawmakers who favored shutting down the bulk collection of telephone metadata would not be successful in their efforts as Congress weighs potential reforms to the nation's controversial intelligence programs. "I don't believe so," Feinstein said during an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press (video). "The president has very clearly said that he wants to keep the capability So I think we would agree with him. I know a dominant majority of the — everybody, virtually, except two or three, on the Senate Intelligence Committee would agree with that." ... "A lot of the privacy people, perhaps, don't understand that we still occupy the role of the Great Satan. New bombs are being devised. New terrorists are emerging, new groups, actually, a new level of viciousness," Feinstein said. "We need to be prepared. I think we need to do it in a way that respects people's privacy rights."'"
The unseen enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
will never go away citizen, we need to spy on you to keep you safe. Now pick up that can.
Well, at least they are honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it is here to stay (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, what federal government program has ever been rolled back?
Re:Of course it is here to stay (Score:5, Insightful)
The useful ones.
Re:Of course it is here to stay (Score:5, Insightful)
Social programs
"A lot of the privacy people... (Score:5, Insightful)
...perhaps, don't understand that we still occupy the role of the Great Satan."
On the contrary, I think they understand that very well.
Re:Of course it is here to stay (Score:5, Insightful)
Relevant Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Great Satan (Score:5, Insightful)
"We" are not the Great Satan, Dianne. That would be you and the rest of your despicable brood of self-righteous overbearing pax americana terrorists.
Re:The unseen enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder why this person even lives in the land of the 'free' when she so clearly despises freedom. She's obviously not brave, either. What is her purpose here, other than to sacrifice all of our principles in order to make idiots feel safe?
The only people convinced by idiots like her are those who believe the government is composed of perfect angels and would never abuse this information. In other words, people willing to sacrifice fundamental liberties for security; people who have forgotten the millions upon millions of people throughout history who have been murdered or abused by governments around the world, including the US government.
She makes me want to vomit.
Re:The unseen enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you evil totalitarian bitch, we understand perfectly well. We just don't care because we're not sniveling cowards and realize that civil liberties are worth being "less safe" for!
For reals??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop that (Score:5, Insightful)
"A lot of the privacy people, perhaps, don't understand that we still occupy the role of the Great Satan."
Maybe we shouldn't occupy that role?
Feinstein to go (Score:5, Insightful)
She forgot to end with (Score:1, Insightful)
Glory to Arstotzka!
Basically, Fuck You! (Score:5, Insightful)
What she is really saying is, "Fuck you Citizen! We are the Government and will do as we like. We are not concerned that nearly all Americans and 100% of foreign nationals are appalled by our actions. Go back to playing with your iPhones while us grownups take care of business".
Re:Being a Californian (Score:4, Insightful)
"It would do my heart good if she moved to another state so we can get back to business as usual around here...."
1) Why would you wish something so evil upon your neighbors?
2) Feinstein is business as usual for California, you keep electing her despite years of uninterrupted hypocrisy and disdain for the common citizen from her
Re:The unseen enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Being a Californian (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Terrorists will find other ways to communicate (Score:4, Insightful)
Never mind that none of these programs have stopped any attack or plot.
Terrorist on the loose (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, there is a very dangerous terrorist on the loose: her name is Dianne Feinstein.
Re:The unseen enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
civil liberties are worth being "less safe" for!
They are, but this is besides the point. We are not even "more safe" in any way. I think the best they could actually show is one guy convicted for sending $8.5K to some terrorist organization (that's after years and years of surveillance).
Other dozens (or is it hundreds?) of terrorist operations are stopped by regular police work or are made up.
Re:Of course it is here to stay (Score:1, Insightful)
Do keep in mind the cuts are down at the soldiering level, NOT at the multi-billion-contract-for-a-million-dollar-piece-of-hardware-because-my-friend/boss-owns-that-company level.
Those are getting bigger.
Support comes from the people. (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want people to support the metadata program and various and sundry other programs that various services and branches are or will be using, then you need for the people to want those programs. You can't just say, "It's for your own good," or "..we should support the President," and expect them to not have reservations.
How about we start by making news reporting in the US, more about actual, real, factual news, including not merely local, but national and GLOBAL news. Embedding reports with units during previous deployments has shown it brings support to our troops, if not why they are where they are. How about the US get a taste for what rough and bloody events happen in the real world? If The People want to be protected from that coming to their shores, they'll support the things that keep that away.
The People give the power, and if not done carefully, The People will take the power.
Which reminds me: We need more Statesmen, and fewer Politicians both in the US, and abroad.
Re:Stop that (Score:3, Insightful)
So the actual headline should have been "US government finally recognizes own evilness, joins Iran, North Korea in Axis of Evil."?
Textbook Catch-22 (Score:5, Insightful)
The senate intelligence committee behaves as if we've already lost our national identity to the "war on terror." Surely Feinstein understands that "privacy people" aren't going to be placated by such a statement and that their continuing discontent will only serve to perpetuate the perception of our formerly great nation as "the Great Satan." It's a vicious circle, and the only way out is to enact policies that live up to the two key tenets outlined in the last line of our national anthem.
As an aside, I don't think there's anyone left in this country who doesn't understand that we occupy the role of "the Great Satan." Republican constituents meet the idea with doggedly obstinate belligerence. Democratic constituents snivel the truism to comfort themselves while their two-faced ideologues advance the security state agenda after being elected to do the opposite. We all see it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
The Information Fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Feinstein's falling victim to what I like to call "The Information Fallacy." Let's say that we knew that terrorists were going to blow something up at some time. It would be hard to thwart this based on this information, right? But if we obtained more information and learned their names, their target, and the exact date they planned to attack, thwarting them gets a lot easier. So far so good, but it can lead people to figure that getting even more information would lead to finding even more terrorist plots (perhaps even ones we don't know about yet).
In an ideal world, albeit one where privacy isn't a concern, this might be true. In the real world, though, gathering tons of information from everyone just leads to a signal-to-noise problem. For every one "Let's blow this up" terrorist phone record there will be millions (if not more) of "How's dad doing?", "When should we meet for dinner?", and other mundane phone records. There might even be some that tick off the right keyword boxes but for the wrong reasons. "That backpack is da bomb" might refer to explosives in a carry-on or it might be the use of slang to indicate that the person's backpack is really nice.
Sadly, too many politicians are worried that reducing the information we gather is just going to let terrorist messages slip by. It might, but we should be doing more focused information gathering (with proper checks and balances to prevent abuse) to improve signal-to-noise, not general information gathering hoping that some signal pokes out from all of the surrounding noise.
Re:Well, at least they are honest (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be far more useful than it has been. So far, it's been useless, according to all of the Snowden documents. No benefit has been gained from it. Zero. Nada. Zilch. It's worthless.
Riddle me this, Batman: Why didn't the NSA stop the Target data breach? They surely could've seen it coming. They surely should've seen its traffic while it was in action. Why haven't they tracked down the perpetrator and thrown his ass in Gitmo? He's cost the economy something far more than a few billion dollars. He cost it confidence. That's a threat to national security and stability. Where is the NSA? Somewhere in a datacenter, doing fuck-all about the real security issues facing the nation, that's where.
"Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein" needs to address that before she starts parroting back crap the Ayatollah said 35 years ago. He's an old fart, and obviously incapable of rational thought. He's also been ineffective in reaching most of his goals for the last 35 years. Unfortunately, those same things can be said about Sen. Feinstein. It seems the old adage "physician, heal thyself" applies here.
Pay no attention ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"New bombs are being devised. New terrorists are emerging, new groups, actually, a new level of viciousness," Feinstein said. "We need to be prepared."
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
We keep hearing about the boogeyman terrorists who are coming for us .. these terrible people with these terrible plans. But really, we've done orders of magnitude more damage to ourselves than anyone external possibly could have done. And we continue to bludgeon ourselves about the head and shoulders, deflecting any semblance of reasoning with "because terrorism"
Re:The unseen enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't it feel kind of like fear is winning when people are willing to give up liberties for the illusion of safety.
It kind of makes me think of a bully going "look I made you flinch". Until one day he's trying to make the kid flinch and the kid says "You know what? Win or loose if you want fight, I'll make you wish you never tried."
Only when it's policies and laws it's a lot harder to go back from the scared kid to being the kid that doesn't flinch.
Re:Being a Californian (Score:4, Insightful)
How does a democrat in ca who basically votes republican when possible, stay in office? I know how it works elsewhere, but those rules don't seem to apply. So how does she spin this at election time?
Or is she just the incumbent and that's good enough?
Re:Terrorists will find other ways to communicate (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind that none of these programs have stopped any attack or plot.
That you know of. And, for the record, I'm not a fan of collecting against citizens w/o a warrant.
I am certain that should one of those programs (NSA or TSA) ever stop a terrorist plot, even by accident, such success would be trumpeted for years to come. The vague and general references to hundreds of terrorist plots is an indication that there is nothing real to talk about.
Re:solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
the debate is about WHEN and HOW...the government has the right to access your personal data with proper warrant
what is proper warrant for the different kinds of digital communication?
THATS THE QUESTION that none of the privacy trolls here on slashdot want to discuss.
I think the issue is rather that the anti-privacy advocates do everything in their power to avoid that question, since the answer is pretty cut-and-dried - warrants shall be issued describing the particular place to be searched, and the particular thin to be seized, pursuant to Amendment IV of the United States Constitution.
Don't like it? Amend the Constitution, or deal with it and operate within existing law. Feigned ignorance is no excuse.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Well, at least they are honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorists More Incompetent than Emo Teenagers (Score:5, Insightful)
So which is it? Is our police state so incomptent that it can't stop disturbed teens from shooting up schools, or are the terrorists so incompetent that they can't manage similar (or worse) carnage? And other than 9/11, it's not like we were swimming in attacks before they went all Stasi on us.
The Constitution is the law here, and the only criminals we need to be focused on are the ones in our own government. They gave away the freedoms that Al Qaeda could never take from us and that makes them worse in my book.
facepalm (Score:2, Insightful)
*facepalm* California, you need to get rid of this senator ASAP.
Not only does it not follow that a president wanting this, should cause Congress to agree with him, but on the contrary, it's the Senate's job to check presidents.
I could theoretically respect a senator who took simply took the position "domestic spying is a good idea," and I might even respect them more if they said something like "we ought to take seriously, the idea of repealing some of the Bill of Rights, as much of that stuff no longer reflects the values of Americans." (I'd oppose such a person, but realistically, I'd also probably lose debates to them, as their statement would be pretty damn accurate.)
But when she uses "a president wants it," as the reason for giving presidents more power, she's pretty much admitting she's neglecting her duties as Senator, even working against those duties.
Re:Well, at least they are honest (Score:4, Insightful)
It should be far more useful than it has been. So far, it's been useless, according to all of the Snowden documents.
You seem to be confusing the actual purpose of this program with the snake oil sold to people (which they are increasingly reluctant to buy). I do not doubt that this program has been immensely useful for its actual purpose.
Re:The unseen enemy (Score:4, Insightful)
civil liberties are worth being "less safe" for!
They are, but this is besides the point. We are not even "more safe" in any way. I think the best they could actually show is one guy convicted for sending $8.5K to some terrorist organization (that's after years and years of surveillance). Other dozens (or is it hundreds?) of terrorist operations are stopped by regular police work or are made up.
More importantly, the whole point of terrorism is not to make the victims more or less safe, but to acheive a poltical goal. In this case, the goal (well, at least one of the goals) was to prove that the U.S. doesn't actually support freedom. Giving up those freedoms is essentially surrendering without even putting up a fight. It's also simple cowardice.
Every week, we sacrifice several times the number of lives lost to terrorism for the convenience of driving large boxes of metal at ridiculous speeds, but we run and hide under the bed and call in the drones the second anyone breathes the word "terrorist."
Re:Overwhelmingly Democrat in California (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always been generally right-leaning, and I am REALLY up in arms about the NSA stuff.
What I don't understand is when I read quotes from people like Feinstein, who's one of the furthest left people in Washington, saying things that liberals used to make fun of Bush for saying - terrorism FUD, basically.
And liberals seem to be aligned with me on revulsion to the domestic spying programs, and yet they continue to vote for people like Feinstein who make the right noises at home, but then go right along with all the spying programs.
If we don't hold our friends AND enemies accountable in politics, what else do we expect?
We get the governance we deserve...
Re:Of course it is here to stay (Score:4, Insightful)
EPA. FDA. Meat inspections. Potable water inspections. IRS auditing of multimillionaires. OSHA. FERC. Customs inspections. Port security. VA psychological benefits. Pretty much any program that doesn't aid the PTB or the mega-corps.
Re:solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
The government can collect and store digital information about me. But it must be stored in an secured and encrypted repository with access controls that are fully auditable (e.g., who looked at it, when and why), and every piece of data is tagged with its source and collection method (e.g., intercepted in transit between client and server, scraped from a web page, provided by an ISP). Then when the government wants to search my digital information for signs of criminal activity, they go before a judge and ask for a warrant, just like any other warrant for a physical search. And when it's granted and executed, I (and my lawyer) get a copy of the warrant, a list of the data retrieved and the metadata, and a copy of the audit logs up to and including the search that was conducted. Oh, and no gag orders on the warrants. Think the government will go for that? Think they'll give up their "super-secret tools" to appease us voters?
Re:Overwhelmingly Democrat in California (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't surprise me at all. The "institutional left", (which is well represented in DC but probably not representative of the left-leaning public) has reached the point now where they'll seize any excuse for a larger, more powerful, more well-funded government, even crossing traditional lines to become defense hawks.
I expect the Democratic Party (at the federal level) to increasingly support any government program with a budget, even the military, to the increasing frustration of the voters, as the money starts to run out. At the state and local levels, acceptance that the budget can't be infinite is coming much faster and earlier, and politicians (on both sides) are discovering that cutting budgets isn't actually the end of the world, but that hasn't started trickling up to the federal level yet.
Re:Overwhelmingly Democrat in California (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a left/right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always been generally right-leaning, and I am REALLY up in arms about the NSA stuff.
It's not really a left/right issue. It's an issue of how you feel about the 4th amendment and how much you trust the government to protect your civil liberties. I don't have any ideological objection to the government being empowered to look for dangerous criminals but I have a HUGE problem with them gutting my Constitutional rights in pursuit of these same criminals. It's NOT SUPPOSED to be convenient for the government to watch me. That is the entire point of the 4th amendment and a few others as well. Terrorists are criminals and I expect them to be treated as such under the law, particularly when the party under suspicion is a US citizen.
I think the problem is that circumstances have organized such that the executive branch no longer has meaningful oversight. Congress is unwilling to take a stand because anyone who does gets voted out of office for "being soft on terrorism". The judiciary has largely punted on the issue so far by claiming no one has standing to challenge. (It's unclear how you prove standing against a classified program that you can go to jail for talking about) Worst of all we have a surveillance program with zero accountability to the electorate. We have a secret program, doing secret activities, "overseen" by a secret (rubber stamp) court, with secret findings than are never required to be made public. Exactly how am I as a citizen supposed to make an informed evaluation of the actions of the NSA? Maybe what they are doing is fine (yeah I doubt it too) but I have no way to know.
Re:Great Satan (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, yes -- that small vicious group that call themselves "The Congress". Vile bastards, those... Claiming to 'represent the people', yet imposing insult after insult upon the very people they claim to represent.