How much are you willing to compromise with the NSA on national security?

[kentuck]

Personally, I would have no problem with the NSA monitoring calls coming into our country...

..and calls going out of our country. They should be able to get the context in 30-60 seconds. They could dispose of all calls that were deemed irrelevant. If they had direct leads to someone in this country, prosecutable evidence, then they should be able to listen to those types of domestic calls, also.

But there should be no data base of everyone. There is no need to spy on the American people at large. Someone has to set limits with these folks. There has to be sufficient over-sight.

We can have no freedom and no democracy when we permit a small cadre of individuals to operate in secret with no oversight by the people or the people's representatives. A rubber-stamp FISA court is not oversight. It is only a mask of openness.

I, as a liberal, am not ready to say that we need no security and no surveillance. However, it should be limited and with strict oversight. The people must have faith in their government.

[WovenGems]

1. NFL

Check out how Hernandez got his goose cooked. Nothing in the virtual world is private, never has been. Nobody is tapping a phone, the phone company is giving the data to a central location. Kind of like CODIS, and nobody is saying boo about that.

[kentuck]

2. I have not followed closely.

Can you explain further?

[WovenGems]

6. Glad to

Text messages, GPS and cell phone tower pinging paint a pretty picture. A perfect timeline can't be overcome by even the best defense team.

[sabrina 1]

30. You are talking about a suspected murderer. Are all Americans under suspicion of murder?

Because that's the only way authorities can get a warrant, showing probable cause of wrong doing, to get information from a private citizen's communication records. That has always been the case, long before the digital age, and nothing in the law changed with new developments in technology.

[WovenGems]

33. True

And NSA data is no different. The system will help catch sloppy bad guys. But not the Dr.Moriarty's.
Hernandez is just a suspect but using a rental car with a GPS tracker isn't going to win awards for skillful planning.

[Pholus]

3. Agreed.

The permanent national database idea is behind all of my creeped-out feelings about this, especially when combined with the proclivity to love "anomaly detection" software looking for the spies among us.

As described in the bits and pieces coming out, the current system seems profoundly un-American, as the ability to leave our past behind and start over again is central to our mythos.

[daleanime]

4. "The people must have faith in their government."

We have little reason to and many reasons not to.

[sibelian]

5. Your question rests on the premise that I am interested in compromise of any kind.

As I am not a US citizen and therefore have no legal conduit through which I can affect what the NSA does, my position is: "Keep out of my personal information you nosey bastards."

I don't want cuddly spying. I want no spying.

[Recursion]

7. Wow, you're giving the NSA more leeway than the NSA does.

Personally, I would have no problem with the NSA monitoring calls coming into our country...

..and calls going out of our country. They should be able to get the context in 30-60 seconds. They could dispose of all calls that were deemed irrelevant. If they had direct leads to someone in this country, prosecutable evidence, then they should be able to listen to those types of domestic calls, also.

Then you're giving the NSA more leeway than they give themselves: if they find that one party on a call is a US citizen, they have to destroy the record of that call unless certain criteria are met.

But there should be no data base of everyone.

That's too vague to be meaningful to me. What does a "data base of everyone" mean to you?

If you mean anonymized records of call patterns, well, personally I think monitoring communications patterns is sort of exactly what we have an NSA for. If you mean recordings of calls and copies of emails, I agree, they shouldn't have that, and from every piece of information I have, they don't.

[kentuck]

9. I disagree.

The number of calls coming into this country and going out of this country would be a very small percentage of all the calls made in this country. They would be manageable and able to monitor.

"A database of everyone" means exactly that. Every American would be in the database and considered a possible suspect. In my opinion, their mission should be greatly minimized.

[Recursion]

11. Maybe I'm being too literal

"A database of everyone" means exactly that. Every American would be in the database and considered a possible suspect

I don't think such a database exists or can exist. We have an entire Census Bureau dedicated to figuring out who lives in the country and they ultimately have to make guesses.

What the NSA does seem to have is a list of every phone number from certain carriers (but not others) and what phone numbers that number has called. It takes a further specific warrant to find out who that phone belongs to (and, for example, my phone is recorded as belonging to a "Chuck Ulysses Farley&quot .

[kentuck]

15. "By law" and "supposed to" are meaningless words.

Trust but verify. Three hundred million numbers in a database is pretty much everyone.

[Recursion]

19. That's barely a third of the active phone numbers in the country

There are currently just under 900 million actively assigned phone numbers in the US.

And, I repeat, they don't know who owns what number, and can't without a warrant.

As to your subject,

"By law" and "supposed to" are meaningless words.

Not to me, and not to the government, either.

[kentuck]

24. By area code...

they know what area of the country you are in.

By phone number, they know what town you live in.

By GPS, they know what house you live in.

By your mailbox, they know your name.

By your Facebook account, they know your closest friends.

They know a lot.

[Recursion]

26. GPS info isn't in trunk logs

Where are they getting GPS info from?

[kentuck]

27. And neither is Facebook info...

But they can get access to both if they want.

[RC]

46. Actually it kinda is.

From the codes for the different cell towers that received the signal from the cell phone. Even though only one tower is transmitting to the phone, every tower within range of that cell phone is receiving the signal from the phone. That is the way it needs to be done, so the towers can know when to hand off the cell phone, if it is moving out of one area into another. Simple triangulation tells the location within a few hundred feet.

[Recursion]

47. OK, fair enough that tower info is (or at least can be)

Conceded.

[Skidmore]

34. They know what town I live in when I mail in my

tax forms and the post office knows my name so it can deliver mail to me at my address. I can look up what area code anyone lives in on the internet. Before the advent of searchable zip code databases at the USPS site, I used to get a book from them to look up zip codes so I could do mailings. You can get people's addresses from the phone book unless they opt out. Most courts have searchable databases for cases (in the interest of transparency) which you can search as online. This stuff has been available for a while. Did you just notice?

[randome]

36. Random mail delivered randomly by this guy might set their minds at ease.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[uponit7771]

10. Naw...naw...no need for facts!!!

[kentuck]

12. So you would not be willing to compromise as much as I?

Could you explain?

[Recursion]

14. Speaking for myself, I would not accept that. An American calling overseas should not be listened to

barring a specific warrant. We do not lose our right to privacy when we call overseas.

The fact that we placed an overseas call, or a domestic call, has, to me, significantly less protection.

[kentuck]

17. So you are not willing to compromise as much as I.

I was suggesting a 30-second tidbit of conversation to determine the context and then dumping the call. But I appreciate your opinion and your explanation.

[uponit7771]

16. Recursion articulated my position well, the NSA is doign what it supposed to do. I don't think ...

...they are doing it as securley as I would like seeing an idiot like Snowden was allowed at secret docs

[kentuck]

18. We disagree.

I don't think they are doing what they are supposed to be doing, at all. They are not secure. They are operating in total secrecy basically. They have information collected which they should not have. They should be severely streamlined.

[uponit7771]

20. what information have the verified that they have. I'm not talking about our go to Iraq MSM

...accounts I'm talking about their official statements?

Regards

[kentuck]

22. ???

did not compute??

[uponit7771]

23. They have verified that they have some information, I'd like to know...Snowden revieled something

...we already knew

Prism hasn't been cooberated by any non partial party

Regards

[marions ghost]

43. Most people had no idea of the

extent of this surveillance. PRISM hasn't been "cooberated" -- oh OK it doesn't exist? Anyone who thinks that is naive at this point.

Are you really that trusting? I don't think sooooo.

[randome]

8. "Someone has to set limits with these folks."

Have you read the laws, the detailed regulations, rules and exceptions? The system, as set up, goes into immense bureaucratic detail to define as precisely as possible the conditions under which the NSA operates.

As for oversight of the NSA, do you have a better solution than what is in place now?

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[sabrina 1]

35. Yes, but apparently the Private Security Corporations, such as Booz Allen and the other over one

thousand for-profit spy corporations have not, nor do they have to not being elected officials or government controlled agencies such as the NSA. As usual, people are being led to believe that ONLY the NSA is involved, THEY have to be careful, so they farm out the Multi Billion Dollar 'gathering of data' to the hundreds, maybe thousands of Private Security Corporations (whose CEOs seem to go in and out of the government, to security positions coincidentally) who are not interested in protecting people's privacy they are interested in one thing, profits

[randome]

38. We don't know if contractors are involved in gathering or analyzing data.

That's something we should know. We should know a lot more about how the NSA is run. No argument there.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[sabrina 1]

61. We know that many of them, such as Clapper eg, former CEO of Booz Allen, is now Director of

Intelligence. Why is he in that position considering the potential for a huge Conflict of Interest? His lying to Congress eg, shows where his loyalties are. And there are others who have also been in positions like this in our Government which are directly related to their work for these Private Security Corps.

Then they get to 'advise' Congress on what is needed for our 'security'?? Billions of dollars, mostly! It's a joke, the whole thing. We've been conned for over a decade. I'm of the opinion the more I find out that this Great WOT is nothing but a giant cash cow for the Private Security Corps which have sprouted up all over the place like giant Mushrooms, (maybe that's what Condy meant?) since 9/11 knowing there was a goldmine coming their way if they registered as Security Corps.

And that is what I think they are so desperate to hide. They don't want to alert the public to the enormous scam they've pulling using National Security to con the money out of the Government.

[randome]

62. Consultants are hired all the time. It's happened to me a couple of times in the past.

The laws, rules and regulations are still in place to prevent unauthorized access. I would bet not even Clapper can randomly look up private information without certain sign-offs and passwords.

There wouldn't be an obvious conflict of interest unless Clapper had some kind of financial stake in Booz Allen.

But like I said, we need more information about how the NSA actually operates.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[sabrina 1]

63. The are NOT just consultants. That's like calling Bush's Mercenaries 'contractors'. Clapper has a

giant conflict of interest and he should be removed from that position. There are plenty of Democrats who are far more trustworthy and who have NOT spent the past decade profiting from 'terror'. Why do we keep getting these old Bush loyalists in a Democratic administration? Are there no Democrats qualified for these positions?

Well a lot of people have been waking up and asking that exact question. And the answer seems to be 'it depends on what the position entails'. And when you look at it like that, you can answer the question. Occam's Razor applies as far as I am concerned.

[Yo_Mama]

13. Quite a bit, but there has to be meaningful oversight

And debate. Currently we have a created a system that's opaque, apparently poorly understood even by Congress, vaguely unconstitutional, and just waiting for extreme abuse.

If we cannot have meaningful oversight, then we should pull the plug on a lot of this.

There's another issue here - it appears we are spending a huge amount of money on the capacity to investigate but not spending enough on human investigators to actually use this data in a meaningful way. We might be better off diverting resources to human investigators.

[kentuck]

21. Agree.

We need to divert more resources to human intelligence (HUMINT).

[RC]

48. More and more, human intelligence is becoming an oxymoron.

[woo me with science]

25. ...

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Nowhere in the US Constitution does it say, "except for when you are scared of 'Terra.'"

[kentuck]

29. Good argument.

The best, in fact.

[markiv]

28. you ask that as though we had any choice

we dont

that's the issue

[kentuck]

31. That's why so many folks are raising hell.

The NSA is doing whatever they want under the guise of oversight when the Senate overseers and FISA judges are nothing but a rubber stamp. Some are trying to fight it. Others are simply surrendering.

[treestar]

32. The point wasn't to prosecute anyone

The point was to make some attempt to head off attacks. Recent terrorists are willing to kill themselves as part of the attack, so worrying about prosecuting them isn't a good use of time.

The best there was before 911 was two hijackers known to have been at an Al Qaeda safe house. It's possible the demand that the government discover and prevent terrorist attacks is quite unreasonable, but that appears to be the demand present day Americans make of their government.

In which case, most of them should be fine with these databases as data mining was thought to be a tool. Of course there is old fashioned spying which brought the two hijackers names out in any event. And had they been American citizens, I guess there are many on DU saying just too bad, no spying on Americans, therefore, if the terrorist is an American too bad, we just deal with the attack after it happens.

[kentuck]

37. I don't think people are ready to make that trade-off.

There cannot be 100% safety and security. It is the new reality in which we live. People are willing to give the government some authority to spy on these people but are not looking for a "security blanket" that will cover everyone and everything, in my opinion.

[treestar]

40. I was in the US in 2002-3 and that was not so

It was all about the government "protecting us." I recall it being annoying at that time that people were willing to give up essential liberty for security. But now I see what Franklin meant by "essential." He wasn't saying there was not some line to draw. We all give up some liberty for security; it's a matter of how much. The liberty for the government not to have a database of phone calls doesn't strike me as essential. I'm sort of shrugging at it. The phone companies have that information so who cares if the government has access to it? The government at least needs warrants.

[mike_c]

39. I'm not interested in compromising our civil rights....

The fact that we're even entertaining the notion is discouraging.

[kentuck]

41. You may be right, mike_c...

There may be no room for compromise on this subject? I may have to re-think my position?

[mike_c]

55. the way I see this debate....

First, we have constitutional privacy protection from unwarranted personal and property search. Second, we have a long history of respecting the privacy of personal communications, making it seriously unlawful to intercept and read someone else's physical mail-- the U.S. postal system has strong privacy protections requiring probable cause for any interception of personal communication. Together, these define an approach to personal privacy that has been part of the definition of American civil rights for generations. In effect, we restrained government from unreasonable searches and violation of private communications. This has long been part of the bedrock of American constitutional liberties.

As communication media have become more sophisticated, government agencies like the NSA and the CIA have easily circumvented those controls-- the nature of electronic communication media permits eavesdropping without having to steam open any envelopes. Despite the principles established by generations of respect for private communications, they have used that capability to "gather intelligence,"-- spy-- on other people whose secrets they want, initially foreign nationals because American courts jealously guarded the privacy of ordinary citizens absent probable cause, and more recently American citizens.

Now we find ourselves in a world where our principles have already been well and truly trashed by the time we find out about it. Fifty years ago, I think this sort of revelation would end careers and bring whole government agencies into strict oversight, as indeed the excesses of the CIA have done in the past. Instead today we find ourselves trying to figure out how to deal with a fait accompli, a done deal. The cat's already out of the bag and doesn't want to go back inside.

So we're talking about whether or not to let the cat stay out of the bag, or about "reasonable limits" on the cat's time out of the bag, rather than telling the cat to get the hell back into the bag it was relegated to when this nation was founded. I think that whole conversation is misplaced. At the very least, we should have a vigorous and public debate about changing the limits of privacy before government agencies simply do their worst. There is a reason they do this in secret, and forthrightness about what they're doing isn't it.

Think about it this way. If your kid gets caught shoplifting, do you read him the riot act and make it absolutely clear that you won't tolerate that sort of behavior, or do you negotiate with him about how much shoplifting you can live with? Does his recent history of successful stealing change the discussion?

[closeupready]

42. I'm not willing at all. Government is of the people, by the people, for the people,

period.

[Warren Stupidity]

44. The NSA should be dismantled. The CIA should go too.

A complete reform of intelligence services is in order, along with a complete restructuring of our system of classification of secret documents.

We are supposed to be a democratic republic. An informed electorate is supposed to be selecting people to represent them. That is not possible anymore as we have built a vast security fortress for the last 70 years, within which a secret security state operates essentially independent of any meaningful democratic oversight. We no longer have an informed electorate. Our representatives, except for a small handful who cannot divulge anything they know, are as ignorant as we are. Consequently we no longer have a functional republic. Instead a power elite immune to democratic processes runs our government and has run it since approximately 1947 unchallenged and immune to any electoral legislative or judicial process.

The last attempt at reform, the post watergate Church hearings, resulted in some adjustments and attempted to reign in some of the worst abuses. All of those reforms have been undone and the situation has gotten exponentially worse.

For starters we need an official secrets act with a mandatory sunset provision on all secret classifications of no more than 25 years. I'd push for ten years. At expiration, what our government has done in our name will be in the public record.

There should be no intrusion into the private affairs of any person without a warrant in full compliance with the obvious and clear meaning of the 4th amendment.

[whatchamacallit]

45. I'm not at all convinced the destruction of my right to privacy

is in service of my security, so no compromise. What the fuck happened? They've turned us into quivering bowls of jelly...

[L0oniX]

49. I will never trust this government again. Too many dirty deeds and lies and secrets.

[Recursion]

53. So you're a "no" vote for universal healthcare, I take it? (nt)

[mike_c]

57. ^^^ this makes DU suck ^^^

This is one of the most dishonest rhetorical devices available. Someone expresses a position on issue X, and someone else replies "so you're a fascist nazi on Y and Z."

The DUer said nothing about universal healthcare. Zip. Recursion simply made up shit and put words in his/her mouth, connecting a reasonable statement to an extreme position that was never part of the discussion. This makes DU suck.

[Recursion]

59. Bullshit. He said he would "never trust this government again". I saw no exception for healthcare.

If the government is not trustworthy, why aren't we Republicans?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

50. A secret government, or a government of secrets, doesn't equal democrocy.

[bunnies]

51. My opinion doesnt matter.

Neither does yours. As long as corporations control the government, "it" will do whatever the hell it wants.

[GoneOffShore]

52. There is no need for the surveillance state. It exists solely for the benefit of corporations

And an overweening government.

The East Germans had the STASI. We have the NSA.

Neighbors spying on neighbors, spying on each other.

Read The Handmaid's Tale. Watch "The Lives of Others". While you can.

[snot]

54. I think fundamental rights of ALL persons should be protected,

whether US citizens or not. And I have yet to see convincing evidence that that our good ol' system under the Fourth Amendment is not sufficient -- i.e., a warrant seeking particularized person(s) or property (including info) and based upon probable cause.

On the other hand, there is PLENTY of evidence to suggest that the growth in surveillance is driven by 1%-er's drives for wealth and power.

See, e.g.,

http://williamblum.org/aer/read/118

and

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html

So, yeah, no compromise.

[librechik]

56. how adorable! You really think we get to choose?

our necks have been in the noose for years. We only cry out as we feel the tightening.

[backscatter712]

58. I'm not willing to compromise.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin.

[kentuck]

60. I am willing to change my position...

if the arguments and evidence suggest otherwise.

I don't believe computers and phones are the best way to collect information. I think human assets on the ground are still the best forms of intelligence we can have.

The "war on terror" was a creation of George W Bush and Dick Cheney to cover for their failings in protecting our country on 9/11, in my opinion. It is not a war you can ever win.

There are some excellent arguments for surveillance only under the auspices of the 4th Amendment and due cause. That does not mean no surveillance at all but only under very strict conditions.

I have not seen similar excellent arguments for surveillance under the present rules of the NSA and our government?

[LWolf]

64. No compromise. nt