Intelligence Chairman Accuses Obama Aids of Hundreds of Unmasking Requests (thehill.com) 330
mi writes: When American spies capture our communications with foreigners, the identities of Americans on the other side of the conversation are generally protected -- if not by bona-fide laws, then certainly by rules and regulations. A transcript of the conversation should have their name replaced with labels like "U.S. person 1". The citizen involved can only be "unmasked" with a good reason. In 2011, Obama relaxed these rules, making it much simpler even for officials without any intelligence role to obtain the identities. Predictably, certain top officials of the Obama Administration abused their access to get this information: "The [House Intelligence] committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration," [Intelligence Chairman Devin] Nunes wrote. "Of those requests, only one offered a justification that was not boilerplate."
No surprise (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to know a little more. If the administration was investigating possible collusion between (some) members of the incoming administration and Russia, it seems to me that they have to unmask the Americans, to find out who it is.
The Obama administration is simultaneously being accused of not doing enough to act on intelligence that Russia was interfering with the elections, and also here of doing too much.
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I would like to know a little more.
Wouldn't we all, but we can't, due to the nature of the material.
Which makes it the perfect political cudgel, since hands may be waved and pearls clutched about what might be completely justified activity, and the only recourse is a review by a FISAish court, which will take time, and in the meantime those pearls get clutched harder and harder and the water gets muddier and muddier.
Next we'll be hearing that HC entrapped Trump into laundering Russian Mafia money all throughout the past few decades.
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Regardless of whether or not there were good reasons...
"Of those requests, only one offered a justification that was not boilerplate."
...is not justifiable. If there are good reasons; specify them in the request.
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For the most part, nobody outside the FBI, CIA or NSA has any real reason to need this information, and they're the ones who gather it. The FBI handles all domestic intelligence/counter-intelligence, so they need to know.
Very few people need or should have the names of US citizens that might be involved until the investigation is concluded. The National Securit
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed. Nunes' complaint, as is the complaints of many Republicans and Fox News types, seems to be "They caught our people doing bad things, and THAT'S WRONG!!!!!"
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Ummm, Susan Rice was National Security Advisor when this occurred. Considering the unmasking in question had to do with conversations between American citizens and Russian officials, and the unmasking is known to have happened only after those conversations were found to include possible collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, which is a possibly quite serious breach of national security... she was ENTIRELY qualified to make those requests.
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"..You are saying that an American citizen speaking with a Russian citizen must be evidence of nefarious collusion..."
This part I take issue with. If this were "American Citizen 1" speaking with "Russian Citizen 1" about what each had for dinner, captured in some sort of blanket surveillance of all communications between Americans and Russians, you're point is well taken. However, it's more likely that it was:
"American Citizen 1" speaking with speaking about matters that were well beyond what each had fo
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You are saying that an American citizen speaking with a Russian citizen must be evidence of nefarious collusion.
No if both the American and the Russian were merely private citizens. However if the American has high level security clearance (Flynn) is calling the Russian Ambassador's private line (Sergey Kislyak), you don't think it prudent to figure who both are?
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This was NOT just random conversations. This was T and the GOP talking and dealing with top Russian political figures, and most likely, most of this occurred in Europe
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Your narrative is utter BS designed to obscure your own party's failings. It's a big fat example of how modern liberals refuse any sort of personal responsibility.
The party ran a candidate that has been HATED for YEARS.
This hate was obvious to anyone that bothered to pay attention.
The fact that she went out of her way to antagonize those people didn't help.
It takes more than the right name to assume the throne here. Having a sufficiently charismatic husband is not good enough either. You have to be charisma
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Oh, and don't forget about Trump's National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. He effectively made promises to Russians re: sanctions prior to Trump being elected. He also took money from Russian interests, and he resigned in disgrace.
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. Possible collusion like speaking to a lawyer that just happens to be a Russian national. Not every Russian is a KGB agent.
The Russian in question seemed to have more ties to the DNC than to the Kremlin.
It was an interesting sequence of events. That lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskya, was denied a visa to the US twice, as she wanted to lobby to have the Maginsky act overturned. Some time in 2016, the Obama administration (Lynch) granted her a special "probation" visa. It was an "extraordinary circumstances" waiver. It was to be a short stay, but she illegally remained in the country for months.
At the same time, the Obama administration (Rice) had been denied twice by the FISA court permission to implement surveillance of Trump's campaign members and Trump tower. Shortly after this lawyer met with Manafort and others, viola, the FISA court granted the request.
The meeting was arranged by the smear experts Fusion GPS, who were also responsible for the discredited "Pee pee dossier" on Trump. Looks like a set-up.
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She is no more credible to analyze documents than Rick Perry is to operate a nuclear reactor as energy secretary.
What are you talking about!? There's film of Rick on the job, at the controls of a nuclear power plant on YT!
https://youtu.be/v5MOatu5-DE [youtu.be]
Strat
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It's a matter of perspective.
Trump lies: "biggest crowd at inauguration," or "I invented 'prime the pump'"
Obama lies: "we will not support terrorists in Syria," or "Keep your doctor, Keep your plan", "We do not spy on American citizens", "I will close Guantanamo", "Tell Vladimir I will have more flexibility after the election"
See the difference, dumbass?
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If there's this big rejection of "leftist" ideas, why is it exactly that the ACA is still alive this morning?
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Compromise is hard even with people you tend to agree with. The ACA had similar problems being passed ("you have to pass it to read it" Pelosi).
That's not a feature of one party.
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Never the less, the survival of the ACA suggests, as some Conservative commentators have put it, the "Europeanization" of American health care. In other words, everyone seems to know that one way or the other a single payer health care system is likely the ultimate "fix" of Obamacare.
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We'll see. I have still yet to hear why the individual States can't do it on their own and why it must be the federal government.
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Largely because, historically, or at least since Medicaid was formed, there has been a notion of joint funding of health care, seeing as the Federal Government has far greater resources than the individual states.
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Which kind of eludes the idea that the costs are too great and will eventually lead to insolvency because there isn't a higher government above the feds to do any join funding. If it can't work on the state level I am highly skeptical it will work at the national level.
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Bullshit. The reason they didn't want to actually repeal it is because the second older Americans' insurance rates spiked because all the younger people pulled out or picked discount plans, there are lot of Republicans suddenly looking at serious problems when they have to seek re-election. Americans have made it pretty clear; they hate Obamacare, but they like the ACA, which shows you that branding is pretty important.
And no, they're not going to let Obamacare die either, because the end result would be th
Re:Not just party preservation. Ideology preservat (Score:5, Informative)
ACA is remaining because the majority in Washington are left of center, Republican and Democrat.
Only if you consider the Church of Ayn Rand to be the center. In the rest of the (real) world, the Democratic party is to slightly to somewhat right of center, and the Republican party is moderately to far right.
Re: Not just party preservation. Ideology preserva (Score:4, Informative)
What Pelosi really said (Score:3)
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If there's this big rejection of "leftist" ideas, why is it exactly that the ACA is still alive this morning?
Because the ACA isn't really "leftist". If it were, the premium payments for all of the additional insured people wouldn't be going to huge for-profit insurance companies.
Re:Not just party preservation. Ideology preservat (Score:4, Insightful)
What we're seeing is a slow, world-wide collapse of leftist ideology in progress.
What we're seeing is a slow, world-wide collapse of democratic ideology.. regardless of what side of the isle you happen to like. Even in "democratic" states like the US, we're seeing all sorts of legislation being proposed to knock of voter "fraud" which, completely coincidentally of course, also happens to disproportionately affect democratic voters. Its was bad day when your choices for president were Trump lying to your face and Clinton lying behind your back. Its going to be a worse day when your choices are Trump Jr vs Paul Ryan -- that is, no democratic nominee at all. Even if you don't like the left, its pretty hard to argue that having an opposing view around is helpful to temper the worst ideas.
But as an inherently unsustainable ideology
You do realize that pure capitalism is equally unsustainable right? As with pretty much everything in the world, a balance is generally best. Well unless you're one of the guys at the top, then too far either direction is great as both ways give you nearly supreme power. But unless you're in the 1% (or maybe even 0.1%,) you're going to want to be in the middle where you can make your mark if you're lucky (not too far left) but not be entirely screwed when you're not (not too far right.)
The masses have rejected leftism.
No, the elite have rejected leftism, unsurprisingly. The masses have no idea wtf you're talking about and just vote for the guy who hates on Mexicans and Muslims the most (or whatever the baddie of the decade is if we're discussing other elections) when they see him on TV.
Those promoting leftist ideologies know this is happening.
Well this much is true.
The problem isn't that we're moving away from "leftism." The problem is that the right has sunk to slinging mud and the left hasn't got there yet.
Left: "Climate change is happening, here's shitloads of evidence."
Trump: "Nope fake news!"
Left: "Ok so where's you're evidence to the contrary?" Trump: "Fake news! Its all Hillary's fault!"
Left: "That doesn't even make sense."
Trump: "I know all the things. FAKE NEWS!"
Its hard to argue like that when one side just refuses to even generate a point, never mind a conclusion. And unfortunately the proles are dumb enough to like the reality TV stupidity without realizing that they're losing things like their health care (Yay they can now "choose" to have no healthcare, or a plan that costs 4x as much as it does under the ACA. Too bad they can't choose to just not get sick..) Or their right to choose if they have an abortion or not (because the political right is overrun by Christian fundamentalists who throw their will around even though the US is supposed to have separation of church and state,) and many many other rights and freedoms that all get thrown under the bus in the name of making the already-rich a little bit richer.
You are correct in that the world is moving away from socialist policies.. but I don't think your reasoning about the causes is correct, and unless there's some reversal, the long goal of the current political climate is toward oppression of the masses, rather than freedom for them, as more and more of the currently-middle class get pushed closer to the poverty line.
Re: Not just party preservation. Ideology preserva (Score:3)
Funny how I completely missed the collapse of the Scandinavian countries while living there. Not much of a facts person, are you?
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> Trumpy moron has no idea what leftism is.
You are why people defect from the party.
Re:Not just party preservation. Ideology preservat (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to break this to you, but Russia and China are not "left." They are capitalists working on building empires, run by dictators.
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The ACA is an attempt to apply capitalistic principles to universal healthcare. Many conservatives would back it if it wasn't called Obamacare.
This is the funny part, Obamacare really is Romneycare, but Republicans will oppose simply because it was Obama that introduced even though Romney did it first.
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So what. It is illegal for Trump to collide with Russians. Just speaking to them, as proven by Rice's spying on Trump's campaign, is illegal. He broke he law by talking to them. Talking to, for example, someone from Brazil is not illegal.
And putting Russian dressing on your salad! Illegal! Lock them up!
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no "Russian collaboration," there never was.
How can you categorically state there was no "Russian collaboration" when Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort all attended a meeting specifically to collaborate with Russian nationals on Trump's campaign? This isn't some smear campaign by the "liberal media", these are things Trump Jr. admitted to.
*aides (Score:5, Informative)
See subject
Re:*aides (Score:4, Insightful)
First thing I thought of when I saw the headline. Slashdot could really use some copyeditors.
Re:*aides (Score:5, Funny)
Campaign promises (Score:5, Funny)
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There was some FISA vote during the campaign that violated one of his campaign promises. I nearly didn't vote for him over that. I only flipped back after McCain had his senior moment with Palin.
The NPR coverage of him really demystified him too.
Pay attention to comrade Nunes (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the story you should follow, Americans. Not any of that other fake news.
the foreign service (Score:3, Insightful)
Unmasking private citizens who have not been accused of a crime should be a crime.
Unmasking a public or political official who is trying to sell out the country should earn you a $3 fine and a gift certificate to Chili's.
By the way, did the members of the Trump administration and his campaign team speak to anyone who wasn't Russian? And why do they seem to have such awful memories when it comes to these meetings when they're filling out (or amending) their security clearance forms? I mean, the Russians I know tend to be pretty memorable people.
Re:the foreign service (Score:5, Interesting)
Unmasking a public or political official who is trying to sell out the country should earn you a $3 fine and a gift certificate to Chili's.
Be very careful what you wish for. The US ability to collect technical intelligence is extraordinarily powerful. It should have very strong restrictions to protect the citizenry it is in place to serve, the violation of which should carry swift and harsh penalties as a deterrent to abuse. The officials in question had no business accessing the identities of any US person caught up in incidental collection, regardless of how bad the appearance of the alleged activity.
Before Obama relaxed the rules the responsibility and authority to deal with collecting intelligence on US persons (whether as part of incidental or targeted collection) was the Attorney General and I am relatively certain that the authority could not be delegated. A proper procedure would be after discovering potential evidence of a serious crime (you don't want to use this sort of thing for minor offenses) the matter should be referred to the intelligence folks at the Department of Justice who have special training and oversight to guard against abuse. They then make the determination on how to proceed and make a recommendation to the AG on whether the individual should be unmasked or not. An exception for something like an imminent terrorist attack or other crime which could result in loss of life should allow for quick action but still require review and adjudication by the Attorney General after the fact.
The kind of "bounty" program you suggest would do nothing more than invite abuse and promote a cavalier attitude among low level intelligence personnel. It is most definitely not in the best interests of the US government, the people in general, and potential victims of that abuse. Does that mean that some people will get away with crimes? Probably. But then our justice system is specifically designed to give the benefit of the doubt to the accused, as it should be.
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The officials in question had no business accessing the identities of any US person caught up in incidental collection, regardless of how bad the appearance of the alleged activity.
Total BS. What exactly do you think that the intelligence world is supposed to be doing? Nothing?
Their job is to find out what foreign nationals/spies/terrorists/etc are doing. More importantly, when they find that they are up to issues, then we can and MUST follow the trail and locate all those in AMerica that are working with them against our national interest.
In POF, it would be INSANE to have located issues like this, and then ignore them because it involved an American. When you catch somebody bein
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What you are saying is that you want parallel construction [wikipedia.org]. That is a very dangerous direction friend.
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That is based on the idea that the NSA is listening in to Americans. ILLEGALLY.
This situation is NOT THE CASE. The NSA was listening to the Russians, of which the majority of the capture was likely in Europe( IOW, Americans would go to Europe to escape NSA and not aware of how far we really DO listen).
In this particular case, the NSA was DOING THEIR JOBS and obtained all of this evidence LEGALLY.
The worst that has happened here is that somebody else was looking t
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What you are saying is legitimately scary. I hope one day you can see beyond Trump to see why this is a very bad thing.
Dragnet spying on Americans not suspected of a crime is a bad thing especially when FISA ignores court orders [theguardian.com]
The rights of American's should never be determined by a special secret court (FISA).
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That NSA was watching foreign spies and top political ppl?
Or that information on traitors that were caught was turned over to the current president?
Or that supposedly that ppl in the trump admin were unmasking 'Americans' illegally?
Sorry, but I worked on the USA PATRIOT act. I saw enough to know that we have a LOT of spies here (though far more CHinese than Russians; at least back in 2006 timeframe). I also know that terrorism was a serious issue back then, and I can only ass
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Good luck with that.
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The last thing I want is more traitors here. We already have the Russians and CHinese trying hard to destroy America. We do not need 'Americans' like manafort and trump to help them.
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Talking to Russians is most definitely a crime when you neglect to list it on your Security Clearance check. In several cases, there were meetings with Russian government officials and representatives that were left off both the original Security Clearance and the revisedSecurity Clearance that they filed when different
Political purposes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Political purposes (Score:5, Interesting)
This unmasking was for political purposes which makes it far worse. The sitting administration was running an intelligence op against the candidate of the opposition party. All the The Russians! bullshit is just a continuation of that op against the electorate.
Nunes is hardly a reliable source to digest this information. There was an active Russian intelligence operation to swing the election and a lot of indications that they were collaborating with one of the campaigns.
That the Obama administration and intelligence agencies concealed as much of that as they did is remarkable, all they had to do is spill a few of these secret meetings and it could have changed the election. Instead they essentially let Russia succeed in swinging the election for fear of acting improper.
Can you imagine watching that election spin out of control from Russian interference, having the goods that could stop it, but not being allowed to say anything about it?
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The ENTIRE intelligence world wants NOTHING to do with Trump. Even now, they refuse to directly give Trump and most of his admin, ANY intelligence on Russia because they caught him being a traitor. Hell, even those that Trump appointed act odd about how they are giving intelligence to Trump. They KNOW that he is a traitor.
This was clearly not political, but instead, finding a number of traitors in our midst that now must be dealt with. Hopefully, they will be found guilty of giving aid to the e
Vague accusations from one of Trump's people (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also worth noting that the "Intelligence Chairman" in question is Devin Nunes. He was part of the Trump campaign, and had to recuse himself from the Russia probe because he was providing more information to the White House about the investigation than he was providing to the investigation.
I'm not saying that these accusations couldn't possibly be true. I'm saying the accuser isn't remotely credible. This is clearly yet another attempted smoke screen to help Trump cover his crimes.
I think it's fair to disregard the accusation until someone credible steps forward with real information.
Here Here (Score:3)
I have mod points, but your are already at 5. This state of affairs can't go on much longer. I'm an independent who has voted for Republicans in the past, I even gave a campaign contribution to McCain once. But the Republicans have almost become the enemy of the people by their actions over the last 20 years. I suspect this is because the balance between conservative and liberal has been broken by demographic shifts within our population. The Republicans are on the wrong side of that shift. So they ha
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Do have an actual rebuttal something here other than an ad hominem snarky reply. It wasn't Republicans chanting "Let-them-die"? Or are you a let-them-die advocate?
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There could be any number of reasons why people would be hesitant to comment. Do you really want to wade into that nonsense? Do you want to dignify the accusation with a response? Are you able to explain what really went on without releasing classified material?
It's been less than a day since a guy with very little credibility made some wild accusations. You're right that I haven't seen any credible people refute him yet, but I also haven't seen any credible people back him up. I think it makes a lot
Re:Vague accusations from one of Trump's people (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not a stretch. Our intelligence services are staffed by life-long civil servants (who are predominantly liberal), and journalists are overwhelmingly liberal, also. After the JournoList revelation, there is no doubt in my mind that the press was an extension of Obama's executive branch.
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Lolwhat? Out intelligence services are overwhelmingly staffed by liberals?! I want a piece of what you're smoking man. Our intelligence services have a well known and documented conservative bias, just like our armed forces and policing communities. But that doesn't fit your narrative, so we've got to have some 'alternative facts' I guess.
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In almost every branch of the federal government, employees who donate to democrats outnumber those who donate to republicans more than 10-1. This is no less true of the State Dept. Defense Dept employees (that covers the NSA) gave 84%, and DHS gave 75% of their contributions to democrats, so they aren't quite as liberal, as a whole, as the State Dept. The only exception is the US Postal Service, where the numbers are almost (but not quite) in parity.
Fact: Civil servants (including intelligence services) ar
Re: Vague accusations from one of Trump's people (Score:3)
It's no secret that most people do not donate to political cause they believe in, much less ones they don't. And given that FEC donation information is the best (possibly only) indicator we have of political affiliation, you need to show that a 90% skew in favor of democrats in all donations is somehow statistically insignificant.
Re: Vague accusations from one of Trump's people (Score:4, Informative)
And to be clear, we're talking out tens of millions of dollars. So, not "a handful."
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=political... [lmgtfy.com]
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=political... [lmgtfy.com]
You can ignore the Breitbart link, if you like. Seriously, what search terms were you using????
Here, I'll pick one out of the list for you: http://thehill.com/homenews/ca... [thehill.com]
That wasn't hard.
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You can't say that about "intelligence services" in general. The more militant end is certainly more conservative, but the analysts and more importantly the DC bureaucrats are most definitely on the left leaning end. It's this latter group that are the "civil servants" he was referring to. Then there is the entire State Dept, which is massively left leaning. Obama's DNI (Director of National Intelligence) absolutely rammed through the "sense of the community" letter that stated Russia was behind everyth
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The mental hoops you're leaping through to not admit "your" team fucked up is amazing. You've got to the point in your tortuous argument where you are arguing that the intelligence services are "predominantly liberal". This is tragically hilarious. They're anything but that.
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See my post above responding to AC. You are incorrect.
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Funnier because it's based on a Hillary quote.... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Every major news org" is owned by a handful of people. And every US intelligence org didn't conclude squat. The ODNI report claimed "17 agencies" but in reality it said that maybe hacking was something Russia would like to do, it certainly didn't tell us that anyone actually did anything. And it was signed off on by a couple of political appointees. Oh, you also have that opposition report in which nothing of substance could be verified, which contained a /pol piss fanfic, and which allegedly came from
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Not really. I'm not arguing that a logical argument is invalid because of the person making it. I'm claiming that facts are in question because of the credibility of the person claiming them. It's not fallacious reasoning to be dubious of an untrustworthy person's unverified claims.
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Yeah, this -
> Obama Administration members used unmasking on political figures
is by definition impossible. There's no reason to unmask if you already know who the colluding scumbag is. So that didn't happen.
So stupid to make up lies that are that logically inconsistent.
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Sorry, I'm going to want outside confirmation (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same Devin Nunes that was accused of bias in the Congressional investigation into the Russian hacking around the Presidential election. As a matter of fact, he is not acting as chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at the moment (although he is still the named chairman) as he is currently under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for disclosing classified information to the public.
Also, lets look at what happened with unmasking towards the end of the Obama administration: Certain individuals around Donald Trump, especially Michael Flynn and a few others with exceptionally close connections to him, were unmasked after the routine capture of communications between Russian officials and US citizens was discovered, communications which helped oust Flynn as National Security Advisor, as well as being central to the current expansion of official investigations into possible illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 Presidential election.
Putting the above two facts together... until I have some outside, non-partisan source that is backing Nunes, then this looks like a blatantly transparent effort to probably paint the unmasking likely discredit whoever found and revealed the above mentioned conversations, in an effort to paint the entire Russia investigation as illegitimate. And, as a matter of fact, reading a number of sources, it becomes clear that is the EXACT intent of this move. They cover it up by claiming there was 'no justification' because the forms were mostly 'boilerplate'... Yeah, well, at LOT of forms are boilerplate, that's why boilerplate exists in the first place. Just because something is boilerplate doesn't mean that there was no justification. It just means that the justification is used enough that drawing up a standard filler for it is worthwhile. So until there's actual evidence of wrongdoing, Nunes is not exactly an unbiased person in this case, and he has proven before that he is willing to use his biases and act unethically against his political opponents in an effort to retain as much power as possible. If some non-partisan source can confirm what he claims, that's when I'll give these allegations any chance of actually being true, and the actions discussed as being illicit.
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She was an idiot that leaked classified information when she saw some buzzwords that tickled her Russian conspiracy fancy because she hates Trump and would do anything to put an end to him.
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Nothing like governemnt working against citizenry (Score:3, Insightful)
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w any media critical of the current president is labelled "fake news" and given hostile treatment by the White House. Not exactly the free press were supposed to have
Compared to a press that doesn't investigate the White House and never questions the presidents narrative or position? Either the press is doing the job and the White House don't like it (which is good) or the press weren't doing their job and the White House liked it (which is bad).
Better for Americans (Score:3)
Side stepping that "Obama aids" misspelling is beneath any post...
Isnt this sort of criticism from the same people that suggest that NSA and the like have access to every American's emails, bank accounts, computers, GPS data and so on? -you know because the terrorists win if not and what do they have to hide?
Of course it is not a great idea for non-security related officials to be able to make hundreds of baseless requests but at the same time some of the involved agencies needs to be more transparent with the people they are protecting. ergo, the people. -the logic being the elected officials represent (some of) the people.
So is it Obama's fault that someone this one individual made so many requests without justification? Or MAYBE it's the person handing it over not requesting/confirming/checking and or validating there is justification. After all you could be well within your rights to request something but that still needs to be authorised to avoid these situations.
It's not like this is a blatantly biased article or cheap political click bait on a tech site.
Keep up the deflection (Score:5, Insightful)
We know for an absolute fact Russia was trying to, and successfully did, influence our election. The Senate committee, the House committee and the intelligence services [apnews.com] all agree [businessinsider.com] on that unassailable fact.
Yet instead of being concerned or even upset at this interference, Nunes is trying to deflect from this fact to one of, "But people's names were revealed!", as if trying to figure out who was colluding with Russia is a bad thing.
Another thing which is even more disturbing is the continued insistence, and outright denial, by the con artist that Russia either did anything during the campaign, or if they did, that they did anything wrong. This raises the very real question of why the con artist is trying to protect Russia? Why has he abjectly refused to say a single bad word about that country despite it deliberately bombing hospitals in Syria and coordinating the chemical weapon attack in Syria, not to mention its seizure of the Crimea from Ukraine, its invasion of Ukraine and its support for terrorist groups inside Ukraine? If this were Iran doing this the con artist would be bombing away, but because it's Russia, he lets them literally get away with murder.
Further, had Hillary Clinton won and these exact same facts come out, you can be absolutely sure Republicans would be laser focused on who did what and trying to pin the collusion on her. But when it comes to the con artist, they are doing what they can to deflect from the crimes and protect him. Hypocrisy at its best.
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Same ol' shit (Score:2)
Meanwhile this administration and everyone in it fully supports monitoring all of your communications...probably to an even more sick degree than previous administrations.
This government isn't governing. Plain and simple. They should fucking do something other than release news every other day about something the other admin
LOL (Score:2)
There is little doubt that T/GOP were not only working with Russia, but that the intelligence world has it well documented.
This is Kevin Nunes here (Score:5, Insightful)
That means that this is an attempt to generate a fake Benghazi type scandal.
Let us know when a responsible person comes to the same conclusion.
more bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Nunes is a bigger lying piece of shit than even "mi" is, and that's saying an lot.
Re: Nunes is not actually Chairman of the Intel Cm (Score:2, Insightful)
Read the article. Who gives a shit about the messenger, if the message is true?
This is potentially massive corruption and a gross violation of the Constitution. It doesn't matter what administration did it or who is bringing it to light... It's fucking criminal.
Re: Nunes is not actually Chairman of the Intel Cm (Score:5, Informative)
Who gives a shit about the messenger, if the message is true?
Looking at some recent tweet storms regarding leaks, it seems Trump does.
Re: (Score:2)
Looking at some recent tweet storms regarding leaks, it seems Trump does.
So what does that prove -- that idiots do?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because who the messenger is is usually a critical piece of information in determining if the message is true.
Re: (Score:2)
Not just the credentials, but the character. You need to ask yourself, "Can I trust that this guy isn't lying to me?"