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NSA Had Domestic Call Monitoring Before 9/11?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jul 02, 2006 05:57 AM
from the they-have-the-high-end-magic-eight-ball dept.
from the they-have-the-high-end-magic-eight-ball dept.
MarkusQ writes "Bloomberg is reporting that, according to documents filed in the breach of privacy suit on behalf of Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA asked AT&T to set up its domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the 'Global War on Terror' was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?" From the article: "...an unnamed former employee of the AT&T unit provided them with evidence that the NSA approached the carrier with the proposed plan. Afran said he has seen the worker's log book and independently confirmed the source's participation in the project. He declined to identify the employee."
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Wired Releases Full Text of AT&T NSA Document 559 comments
ifitzgerald writes "This morning, Wired News released the full text of the AT&T NSA wiretap documents that are currently under court seal. From the article: 'AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released.
Based on what we've seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy.
As a result, we are publishing the complete text of a set of documents from the EFF's primary witness in the case, former AT&T employee and whistle-blower Mark Klein -- information obtained by investigative reporter Ryan Singel through an anonymous source close to the litigation. The documents, available on Wired News as of Monday, consist of 30 pages, with an affidavit attributed to Klein, eight pages of AT&T documents marked "proprietary," and several pages of news clippings and other public information related to government-surveillance issues.'"
[+]
AT&T Forwarding All Internet Traffic to NSA? 682 comments
An anonymous reader writes "SpamDailyNews is reporting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a brief that claims AT&T has been forwarding internet traffic directly into the hands of the NSA. The brief was filed under seal (a procedure that allows only the judge and the litigants to view the document) in order to give the court time to review the information. From the article: 'More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now.'"
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Egg on James Bamford's face (Score:5, Interesting)
James Bamford in his book Body of Secrets [amazon.com] and in his numerous interviews with the press defended the NSA and said they really did change their ways after the scandals of the 1970s (telegram interception). Could it be that there never was a period of "gentlemanly spying" between then and September 11?
Re:Egg on James Bamford's face (Score:4, Insightful)
- Any similarities to NKVD recruiting blanket all operators in some telephone exchanges in the 30-es and having a call record copy of all calls are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along.
- Any similarities to another character that used to say "Who is not with us is against us" with a thick southern accent are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along (before modding that as a flamebait, ask any Russian speaker for an English translation of Koba perls of wisdom. And fear the result).
- Any similarities between the Guantanamo military tribunal formula and the military tribunals under chapter 58 of the USSR criminal codex are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along (before modding that as a flamebait, read the relevant article and compare the required standards of evidence, right of attorney and defence and number of criteria for magistrate selection in both)
- Any similarities between al Qaeda and the fictional enemy of the state all encompassing organisation The Trust are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along.
- Any similarities between the names of Gulag, Gulagantanamo and Guantanamo are mere coincidence, nothing to see, move along.
- Any similarities...
As one great American thinker of the beginning of this century used to say: Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.b>Not about the terrorists, eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not about the terrorists, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, since this is
Anyway, 'terrorism' (both domestic and Islamic) weren't a significant problem before 9-11 and they aren't a significant problem today, despite what the 6 o'clock news wants you to believe. Murder takes the lives of many more people (as in several orders of magnitude) per year. Suicide takes 4x more than murder, and car accidents take over 5x more. Heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and smoking-related respitory diseases together claim over 200x the lives that murder claims (which is itself claims several orders of magnitude more lives than terrorism.)
In terms of human lives, terrorism in America isn't even a blip on the radar. It certainly doesn't justify the expenditure of trillions of dollars on wars and "Homeland Security", nor does it justify the wholesale slaughter of our freedoms and even if it did a domestic call tracking program would do jack shit. Despite what the pundits want you to believe, there is no vast centralized network of terrorists. They have no need to keep in constant contact with each other over long distances, and ruthlessly and indiscriminately monitoring law-abiding American citizens (incidentally, none of the 9-11 terrorists were American citizens) will give us nothing but another step towards a police state.
Re:uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if there was some vast terrorist conspiracy random spying wouldn't be much use anyway. Indeed it might even be counter productive, were such an entity to exist they could create floods of bogus communications.
It's more the "false positives" than the "bogus". (Score:5, Informative)
The naturally occuring "false positives" would eat up the budget for the program (under any sane spending plan).
With almost 300 million people
1% false positives mean 3 million people investigated (and the people they know)
0.1% means 300,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
0.01% means 30,000 people investigated (and the people they know).
Now, even if you limit each investigation to just that person and the 5 closest people to him/her
Spying does not work randomly.
Re:uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
So if your argument is that we should be putting more resources behind those things, I'd have to disagree. First of all, most of those deaths are caused by lifestyles in which we are fully aware of the consequences. Sure, not everyone gets diabetes because they eat poorly, or cancer becasue they smoke - but when you weed out those that do, your numbers become significantly smaller.
MOST cases of diabetes are not caused by lifestyle, just as smoke induced lung cancer is large, however it is nowheres near the #1 cause of cancer.... so based on that your argument is vastly flawed. if you were right by chance "signifigantly smaller" is still MUCH larger than the cost of terrorists. the fact is we will never rid terrorists, there have always been and always be people who will do these acts against those that they do not understand...just because there hasnt been an attack since 9/11 isnt cause of the money bush spent bla bla bla, you cannot make that corolation, thats like saying my house has not been attacked since i got my new computer... it must be the computer keeping me safe.
Yes, the number of people killed pales in comparison to the number of people who die on our highways, but people are dying on our highways because they're being stupid drivers, while people who die from a terrorist attack were ostensibly doing nothing wrong... they were killed because of their religion or their nationality, or as collateral damage from the killings of people for their religious beliefs or nationality.
this is so stupid i do not know where to begin.... people are dying on our highways because they are being stupid... did you really just type that?? the number of deaths of the driver who is stupid comes no where close to the people who die due to someone else driving stupid.... by your logic if i was drunk and hit you and killed you... its your fault for being there you must be stupid. come on buddy think before you type something. how does this post get modded with a 4???
Re:uh, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
The loss of life is secondary to the terrorist, whose primary goal is to strike "terror" into the hearts and minds of his victems, which aren't just the people he kills, but the entire nation (or religion, or whatever) that he's attacking. The attack isn't just meant to kill someone (like murder), but disrupt travel, destroy infrastructure...
In that case, the government's best response would be to remind everyone that however horrible 9/11 was, a typical citizen has a much greater chance of being killed by lightning than terrorists. Then remind them that it is our patriotic duty to deny the terrorists the fear and panic they crave.
Instead it helps the terrorists out by creating a color coded index of how terrified we should be and keeping it 'yellow alert' or higher. Then it disrupts air travel with the war on nail clippers. Not yet satisfied we go to war with a country that wasn't involved and fail to allocate resources to clean up natural disasters. As a result fuel prices skyrocket and disrupt travel and shipping. As well, we create a whole new generation of terrorists.
Since that's just not enough, it repeatedly reminds us to be terrified of another 9/11 style attack.
Meanwhile, the new wiretap requirements for ISPs and the FCC working hard against the public good is doing a fine job of tearing up our communications infrastructure.
Since state and local governments have rights in the U.S., destroying roads and water infrastructure has been left to the state and local level.
I DO agree that we must stop terrorism in the U.S. now, so the sooner we ship Bush and Congress to Cuba the better.
Mathematically, it does not work. (Score:5, Insightful)
And the answer is "no". Any system will have "false positives", "false negatives", "true positives" and "true negatives".
The "false negatives" mean you miss a plot. As long as the false negative rate is above a certain percentage of the actual plots, it will work.
More problematic is the "false positive" rate. This is when a non-plot is identified as a plot. Innocent people are investigated. This takes time / money / effort.
Given that there is an upper limit on the time / money / effort available, the government will waste resources chasing false leads.
People who do not understand that will look at the extreme rarity of "terrorist attacks" in the US (try to name 5 attacks in the US in the last 100 years without using Google) and conclude that the time / money / effort spent was successful.
However, looking at the budget, you will see that our government is BORROWING the money.
We are going bankrupt in an attempt to chase down a threat that kills fewer people every year than car accidents.
And we are surrending the Rights that our forefathers were willing to give THEIR lives for.
Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the so-called "War on Terror" is just an excuse! Before the illegal
invasion of Iraq, no terrorist groups were based there, but look now! This
was widely expected to happen. So the current Administration has increased, not
reduced, the risk of Americans to be victims of terrorists.
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
Invading another country, when not in self-defense, is a war crime ("supreme crime"),
by the Geneva conventions, and USA has signed those and are bound by them. War crimes
carries the death penality in USA. As an invader you are also required to follow
local laws, with some exceptions. Of course, the invader may make new laws, but they
may be illegal as well. Instituting new laws in order to loot Iraq is not legal, and
you might have noticed oil companies reluctance to invest there...
Notice how the Bush Administration tries to avoid beeing persecuted for war crimes:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemI
Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you honestly think that the Hague would indict an American for war crimes? And even if Bush were indicted, do you really think that anyone would try arresting him when the Marines would immediately be sent in to kick ass and retrieve the president?
Because of the nature of Realpolitik, only figures from nations that can't actually put up a fight would be tried for war crimes.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
They may very well do so.
> And even if Bush were indicted, do you really think that anyone would try
> arresting him when the Marines would immediately be sent in to kick ass and
> retrieve the president?
It's unlikely that they'll indict while Bush and his croonies while he is in
office, but hey, there is no limit of stature for War Crimes. Note that the Bush
Administration has bullied many states into agreements of not delivering US citizens
(officials only?) to the International Court in Hague. This is an attempt to protect
themselves from persecution of their war crimes.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is because their concept is 'durable, fast, many'. And it has proven to be the most effective for concept of war.
A Grumman f14 tomcat, in its abundant version, can track 12 enemies, and can direct 6 missiles to 6 of them at any given time.
However a grumman f14 tomcat is expensive and difficult to manufacture, operate, maintain. Any loss is a big loss. On the other hand, whatever is in russian hands is expendable, and replacable by around 10 in short time. this is what they did in ww2, this is what they were gonna do in ww3, and this is what they can do now.
As for electronics, simulations, battle tests, deployment en masse against technologically inferior enemies (iraq, vietnam) is one thing, meeting a foe in match is another.
The match of a-10 in russian air force can use anything from cologne to a multidude of petroleum distillates for fuel. It can fly with severe punishment.
And in the deployments against vietnam, afghanistan and iraq, we have seen that, even ragtag guerillas with negligible weapons can deal good damage to their foes. A galaxy was almost shot down in iraq. How many galaxies are there in strategic airlift command ? 12 ? How many awacs are there in sac ? What if russians spend 12 flankers apiece and get 10-15 existing awacs one by one ?
An analogy from history : germans had excellent technology, experience and perfect training to go with it, they favored extreme quality against quantity. Russians, favoring acceptable quality to go with enormous quantity had set them right. Same was the concept of u.s. in ww2, and this concept proved right. But from 45 to today, u.s. uk and west allies took to the mistake of germans "they have high numbers, we can match them in quality" - no you cant.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe it's 2006 and there are still people who believe that in 2003:
1. Iraq posed a threat to the coalition
2. Iraq had functional weapons of mass destruction
3. Iraq had anything to do with Al Qaeda, terrorists or terror suspects
Of all the evil this war has caused, I think the worst is the new American Culture of Willful Ignorance that its backers have advocated since before the opening shots were fired.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're referring to the cache Hoekstra and Santorum have been parading in front of the news services, they were known about and listed on intelligence reports back in 2003. They were degraded beyond the possibility of use even back then.
rawstory [rawstory.com]
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Informative)
And no, you cannot argue that old, non-functioning weapons are the same as functional weapons. That is just inane. Did you even read the linked article?
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Strictly speaking, President Bush was authorized by the Congress of the United States to invade Iraq, so it was not illegal under US law. Furthermore, a case can be made that, although hostilities were ceased, we were still effectively in a state of war. Iraq was still shooting at aircraft in the non-fly zone for example. If we presented evidence that Iraq had violated the terms under which hostilities ceased, then arguably the invasion was was legal under international law.
But...
If it turns out the "evidence" presented was faulty, or unreliable and the Bush administration knew it, then the legal basis for the war evaporates.
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly the one we invoke when, for example, claim the right to navigate certain waters. Or the rights of our uniformed soldiers to certain standards of treatment when captured by the enemy. The same international law that says we can retaliate when our territory is violated, but then enter another country's territory in hot pursuit. The same international law that says it's a crime for a country to harbor terrorist organizations and facilitate their financial and other dealings.
Exactly what body is going to prosecute, convict, and punish a superpower like the United States of America?
International law is for small states violating it partly enforced by the UN security council.
But for states large and small, it is enforced by mutual exchange and recognition of rights. I do not molest your ships on the high seas or press their crews into servitude, and you don't do mine. I don't parade your soliders stripped naked through the streets, nor do I subject them to summary executions. Likewise, you do not do those things to my soliders.
The entire phrase of "international law" is a trite thing. Let's not kid ourselves, international norms and laws only apply to weak countries.
There is some truth in what you say. The same can be said domestically: if a man is rich enough, he is beyond laws that bind poor men. But there are limits. Even the United States depends on the mutual recognition of its rights by other countries. And while we have for many years spent far more money on defense than the rest of the world put together, yet it is not within an order of magnitude of what we would need to enforce our will on the rest of the world.
Don't be to proud of the technological terror we have created. Right now, we can't even really handle Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. North Korea, in our present circumstances, is completely beyond our ability to handle useing "superpower" tools. Absent Iraq, Afghanistan and possibly Iran on the horizon, it might be possible. Military officers I've talked to think that the biggest issue in a military solution, the presence of artillery batteries so close to Seoul, could be managed with our military technology. But we can't do that and Iraq at the same time.
In reality military might only takes you so far in the world. There are other dimensions on which a country can be a superpower, particularly political and economic, that are key to sustaining military superpower status. We have lost our political standing in the world, and our position of economic leadership is very shaky.
Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also end of international cooperation on economics, law enforcement and military matters.
What you say applies to individuals. Any individual who sets himself outside the law is able to act with perfect freedom. However he is not shielded from the actions of others. Certainly, we have police and courts and such. But this in the public sphere is just like having carpenters and plumbers. You could do the work yourself, but it's more efficient to hire specialists. In the end its the wrath of your neighbors you must consider, even if it administered through a professional police force instead of a mob. Likewise the lack of an international police force doesn't mean there is no international law; only that it is enforced with a kind of hysteresis. You can get away things for a while, because other nations still see greater benefit in cooperation than confrontation. But eventually the state flips to open hostility, and you're cooked. You can't get back by small measures either, you have to give back far more to restore a favorable equillibrium than ever you needed to maintain it.
There is one nation in the world which subscribes to your theory of international law: North Korea. They may "win" the current nuclear affair, but the victory would, in US or European eyes, be worse than almost any scenario we could imagine for defeat. They're still a failed, pariah state, sustaining itself by handouts grudgingly given because it's less trouble than crushing them. We could follow the same policies and end up moving in the same direction.
Mature and successful people don't manage their affairs by trowing tantrums and threatening to turn their back on everyone else whenever they don't get their way in every small detail. They work with others, giving up a little here and there and finding ways to get back more than they give up -- sometimes finding ways for everyone to get more than they give up. Dealing with other people is a process of creative compromise.
The same process, when applied to nations, is called by the adminsitration's conservative supporters "international government". Which goes to show there is such a thing as unintentional perspicacity.
When the European countries were world powers, they understood this...
And then times changed, and not only their world power status evaaporated, but the very assumptions by which they exercised powers as well.
Case in point. Our recent governemnts have pursued a policy of economic globalization. This was a case of the conservatives of an economic bent deceiving the conservatives of a nationalistic bent. Once you integrate your economy with the rest of the world, you strengthen the tendency towards world government tremendously. You can no more run your affairs idependently of what the rest of the world thinks and expects, than you could chop your own legs off.
We are locked with China now in a relationship of mutual economic interdependence. We can no longer pursue a foreign policy of "national self-interest" independent of this fact. Oh, you can still call it pursuing your "self-interest", but only in the sense that it is self-interest not to get into a fight with somebody you detest when you're both sitting in a small and unstable boat.
The music in the terms "national sovereignty" and "national self interest" comes with the assumed obligato of "national independence". Which now exists less than at any other point in history since the emergence of the nation state.
Re:Illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
now do some work and search for america vetoing the war was illegal, maybe you should also read up on different cultures to find out what is going on in the world around you
Re:Illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
In some parts of the world, leaders lead from a position of moral authority, not from the threat of force.
Re:What weapons were those again?? (Score:4, Informative)
He is a raving nutter and extreme leftie who was a minister under one of the most left wing government this country ever had and is best known for his support of Sinn Feinn, a mouthpiece organisation for Irish Republican terrorists and organised crime.
Tony Benn carries no weight with any political organisation or individual of any consequence, although he occasionally manages to get himself on television because producers can rely on him to say something provocative and/or stupid.
He may be old but he is certainly not wise and if he said "good morning" to me I'd check my watch. The man is widely regarded as an object of ridicule in the UK.
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Insightful)
The Taliban and Bin Laden aided into power by the US and allies to fight a proxy war.
When someone considered a bad guy cops it, people usually say "what goes around comes around" or "you reap what you sow".
Isreal - put into power by US and allies.
Am I making my point ?
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Insightful)
It never ceases to amaze me. There are those that rightly point out Saddam and Bin Laden were assisted by the USA in its covert gaming of the international political spheres, from Gerald Ford through Carter and Reagan and Clinton. Its a policy that started with Eisenhower. And often these are the same people that put George Bush number one on their list of presidential demons for setting up a truely representational government in full daylight for all the world to see exactly what is going on.
It is their abject fear of such upfront actions that drives those covert and stupid mistakes. Would they could put one and one together.
Also speaking of wire-tapping phones, am I the only one here who remembers the late 90's here on Slashdot and all the paranoia over Clinton's Eschelon program? Those posts were classic, and the replies with phrases set to trip off the system were hilarious. Now we have not only duplicate articles saying we've never heard of monitoring calls before, but now we are shocked, SHOCKED, to find out it was going on before 9/11.
These people crack me up.
No surprise here (Score:4, Interesting)
After all Echelon has been around much longer so this was only to be expected to happen.
The scary thing however is that it took so long to get out. Makes you wonder what else they have in hiding...
Re:No surprise here (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to disagree with that argument: In recent memory, government worked fairly well (not great, but relatively sane) when 2 parties held control of a branch of government (Reagan vs Democratic Congress, Clinton vs Republican Congress), and sucked when a single party controlled all branches of government (George W Bush, Carter). The reason for this phenomenon seems pretty obvious to me: When one party controls all branches of government, the Constitutional checks and balances are ineffective because everyone with the power to stop a branch of government is part of the same organization. In other words, there's really one-party rule going on, even if it's officially a two-party system.
That can lead to a lot of the polarization you're worried about. If one side can't be heard except by screaming as loudly as possible in public, that's exactly what they're going to do, and the other side will start screaming to drown out the screaming of the group not in power. Hence a shrill political debate, and increased polarization as politicians take more extreme positions in order to get noticed.
Re:No surprise here (Score:5, Insightful)
The flaw is even worse than you think, because it can't be remedied through "proper" voting. No matter what your political affiliation, you have no choice but re-electing a caste of professional politicians, which differ only on superficial and relatively inconsequential issues like a constitutional amendment explicitly banning gay flag-burning.
Vote for minor party? Only if you want to throw away your vote, for the complete lack of enforcement of gerrymandering laws means even the most incompetent of incumbents win over 90% of the time. Even the recent supreme court ruling tacitly condoned it by only complaining about instances of potential racial gerrymandering. Apparently, cheating is fine, as long as you aren't a bigot when you do it.
Spread the word? Anything you say can be countered by a bombardment of disinformation and distractions that prevent effective dissent. One would think that the alternative media/internet get around this, and it can--but they're going to change that. Plans for complete regulation of the internet are already in the works under the guise of "tiered-service". As John Devorak says, we're in the golden age of the internet--enjoy it while it lasts, because it's soon to end.
-Grym
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad thing is that Bush can win points with the average Joe by pointing and saying, "Look, even my enemies are saying it! I tried to bring security to this country 7 months before 9/11 even happened but the NSA just didn't get the system up and running by then. Imagine only that it was and that the tragedy on 9/11 would have been averted."
BTW, I know that the FBI already had the evidence of something wrong by August 2001 but couldn't connect the dots. I think this whole phone tracing thing is just going to add a mountainous workload on top of thing and ain't going to predict diddly shit while we all have our rights infringed.
No, I'm sure our government had a good reason. (Score:5, Funny)
I have NO doubt that our government was just doing the prudent thing. 9/11 is proof that it was necessary. You guys are just too cynical.
There just went a portion of Bush's legal defense (Score:5, Interesting)
Check FISA at Cornell University and you see statutes giving the President to use pen registers and trap and trace devices. If you didn't know, those things constitute the technology used to record numbers a phone has been dialing, and numbers that have called a phone. They also give the President the power to search and seize without a warrant and to use electronic surveillance without a warrant. Here is the exact statute. There are three identical sections with "electronic surveillance," "pen register or trap and trace device," and "search and seizure" being replaced by the other in each one.
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize the use of a pen register or trap and trace device without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days following a declaration of war by Congress.
Even then, the statute may be interpreted many ways. "for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days" could mean that the authorization must be repeated every 15 days, that individual authorizations may last no longer than 15 days, that the power lasts 15 days once the President has used it, that the power may only be used for 15 days after Congress has declared war, or any number of interpretations, many more plausible than others.
It depends on to what extent your judicial interpretation philosophy incorporates "originalism," thinking about what Congress intended, "starre decisis," looking at prior court decisions, and "strict constructionism," which limits judicial interpretation to the meanings of the actual words and phrases used in law, and not on other sources or inferences.
There was a huge debate over whether the authorizations of military force constituted declarations of war for the reasons given above. The Democrats, they say, did not mean to give the President war powers and thought that the authorizations did not constitute declarations of war because they had been used as a means of allowing deployment of armed forces without giving the president war powers since at least the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which allowed an "escalation of military forces" in the Vietnam War. The Republicans mock them for this, and the debate was even brought up in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld if you watch the oral arguements on C-SPAN like I did.
For all this, how much has this of President Bush's arguements been brought up in the mainstream media? I have seen 2 paragraphs in an Associated Press article and nothing more. Regardless of the debate being all worthless now that he is discovered perhaps to have begun the program before 9/11, the debate is something I feel needs to be known. Just don't berate the Democrats for wanting to debate whether the Iraq War's a war. If the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution had been a declaration of war giving Richard Nixon wiretapping powers, the Supreme Court would not have ruled against him in East District of Michigan v. Nixon.
A statute in FISA does not make a difference in constitutional law. President Bush wants the statutes to make legal what he does with no regard to the Constitution, but when statutes prohibit his actions, he can cite constitutional authority. If it's legally a war, he'd say it's the first case, and if it's not he'd say it's the other.
This apparent legal paradox has arisen in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld---if he's a POW he's under the Geneva Convention, and if not he's a criminal entitled to a trial. The Bush administration argues he's not a POW because he was not fighting for an organized g
LoL. Can you people even remember last week? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Carnivore first hit slashdot during the Clinton Administration. The oldest reference I found on slashdot is about Earthlink refusing to install it in 2000 [slashdot.org] - which means it had been in development for several years before that.
2. The legendary "Echelon" - the NSA program for monitoring all telecom traffic has been bandied about for many years - Slashdot posted several articles about it in May of 1999 [slashdot.org] but the news about it first broke in 1998. The program itself is probably 50 years old [heise.de].
Re:LoL. Can you people even remember last week? (Score:4, Insightful)