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Dear mother of Gawd, I am tired of arguing with rocks
I got better things to do. But I'm leaving for today with these thoughts.....
For a warrant you need probable cause. Without probable cause the warrant violates the 4th Amendment.
Your neighbors can't get your phone records from the phone company.. To be clear on this point, they can't write to the phone company and ask them for all the details of your phone calls. ie, who you called, and for how long and from where. The government can't do this either without a warrant based on probable cause. A warrant issued upon probable cause. And your neighbors certainly can't get a warrant on you, and neither can the phone co. But the govt can.
Issuing a warrant for these types of records, metadata, by the government, on everyone with a phone, obviously is in violation of this. Certainly, not everyone with a phone is going to meet the criteria of a warrant issued upon probable cause. There is no probable cause. It's just not possible or believable.
Then to store this data for future querying in criminal cases is fucking scary.
Good Lawd, I wish some people would wake up.
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pipoman
(16,038 posts)imagine the shrill cries if this came to light during a rethug presidency..
Oh, and after service of the warrant (issued by a legitimate court), it becomes public information..and the court which issues the warrant must allow for redress by those affected by the warrant..
lunasun
(21,646 posts)
L0oniX
(31,493 posts) GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)are able. Maybe it will cut into their revenues.
RC
(25,592 posts)The contortions they go through to defend the indefensible. The twists, cherry-picking, circular logic, assumptions, purposeful misinterpretations of the Constitution, based on bad law... Gee, the same way the current crop of Republican politicians do. Amazing that!
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)quinnox
(20,600 posts)
L0oniX
(31,493 posts) 
Gman
(24,780 posts)to set up roadblocks for the purpose of catching DWI's, people with drugs, etc. Again, no probable cause exists to be stopping people at random.
RC
(25,592 posts)You are correct. Their out is they usually let you know where and when they are doing this and you can avoid them, thereby thinning out the herd they have to deal with in the chosen area , leaving the more dumber ones and a few unlucky people.
This issue was brought up when the cops first started doing this. The illegalities got shot down because of the" greater good" of getting drunks off the road. Notice how the legal limit is getting lower and lower? The need to keep that revenue stream going.
And no I am not defending drunk driving.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)You can now be stopped,
detained,
forced to show ID ("Your Papers Please"
,
and SEARCHED
not just at the Border Crossings,
but while simply traveling across the interior of states,
ALL without Probable Cause.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)The record of who called whom isn't protected by the 4th amendment. After 1986, it was protected by a law, but that law has been legislatively weakened several times since then, most recently with the 2008 FISA amendment.
I'd like that law to be different too.
Coccydynia
(198 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)That's why I vote for a Representative who agrees, even though she can't vote. If DC had Senators, I'd vote for them too.
Coccydynia
(198 posts)assumes that just because it is law it is constitutional.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Now, a new court could overturn that. That would be even more interesting.
Records of who called whom do not have Constitutional protection. They do have statutory protection, and that protection has been dangerously weakened over the past 30 years, and I'd like that fixed.
Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)That is a fairly narrow case - a list of numbers numbers called from a particular phone.
The meta data collected here includes far more:
time of call
geographic location of the caller at the time the call was placed
calls received
geographic location of the receiver of the call at the time the call was received
length of the call
I don't know if the results of the analysis would end up the same, but there is not a direct application to any meta data other than a list of outgoing calls.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)That's the reasoning under which the pen register on the specific phone was allowed.
Now, since 1986, it's been illegal to simply pen register any phone you want, but that's a statutory rather than Constitutional protection, and like most statutory protections it's been chipped away to a disturbing amount.
Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)includes significantly more than the (outbound) dialing of numbers.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)I tried to let you know some time back that although we have had our differences concerning the ACA, (and I found you a formidable debater then,) it is so nice to have you on the side of liberty in this discussion. But the stuff here at DU doesn't always tree properly, so my compliment to you went off under someone else's posts.
According to what I have read over at Sibel Edmonds' site boilingfrogs.com, the NSA has the ability to take the meta data, and at any point in time, re-constitute it so that our very phone discussions are heard. This could happen next week, or in 2016. people think ity is jsut the recorded times they talked, and the phone numbers tht they ave diealed. But it is the actual discussions they can go in and hear.
I am pretty sure that right now, the NSA is utilizing the phone system and the social media inside Honduras to take care of those there that want to stop the oppressive Honduras government from staying in control. One of the NSA personnel kept saying "Honduras" when he meant to say Snowden! (During one recent set of TV interviews.)
I really don't want my life on hold to be re-constituted for the PTB. For far too long, I have been anti-war, including the NATO action against the people of Serbia, the Iraq War, Monsanto, pestiicees and now the fracking and Pipline. One of those earlier involvements got me a wire tap on my phone, which my dad took the time to have uncovered through a buddy of his at the FBI.
Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)It isn't clear (because of the secrecy) entirely what is being collected and stored.
The order permits the gathering and storing of meta data (not actual content). The order doesn't restrict what is done with that meta data - and there are tons of dots which can be connected just from the meta data. Even without more, I find the policy offensive and can make a good argument that it is unconstitutional
And, frankly, I find it hard to imagine that the NSA is limiting itself to just meta data. Once the collection and analysis process starts, people who are inclined to believe such collection and analysis is a good thing keep wanting more and more.
I'm glad that there is an opportunity to get some portion of this on the record and start unraveling it via the ACLU litigation.
cheapdate
(3,811 posts)that when we voluntarily divulge personal information to any third party, we waive our privacy rights and lose all Fourth Amendment protection over that information. In Smith v. Maryland that logic was extended to phone calls.
"The Court...affirmed the judgment of conviction, holding that "there is no constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy in the numbers dialed into a telephone system and hence no search within the fourth amendment is implicated"
- Smith v. Maryland, 1979
Congress compounded the problem in the 1980s with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which codified a lesser standard of protection for metadata. The EPCA has since been ammended by the Stored Communications Act, Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) (1994), the USA PATRIOT Act (2001), the USA PATRIOT reauthorization acts (2006), and the FISA Amendments Act (2008).
Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)As I noted, the metadata collected includes significantly more than numbers dialed into a telephone system.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)whistleblowers. I am more inclined to believe the whistleblowers. They have more to lose by telling the truth.
I don't think that the government is telling us the truth about the program. Russell Tice says that he held the papers in his hand for checking phone numbers for President Obama in 2004 and also at some point for Alito. He just has trouble if he lies.
Snowden also states that the program is not as limited as the government is claiming. And what is the point in getting information from so many internet services that are mostly in the US? Or is there a program that covers the rest of the world and could capture our information?
As for the claim that this program is legal, the court order and the guidelines I saw were very, very comprehensive. The case law concerns only the issue of the admissibility of evidence obtained of pen registers and determines that obtaining the pen registers in individual cases in which a crime was committed and a pen register obtained, was legal.
The cases do not deal with the many other constitutional issues that a program of this size and magnitude raises like the collection of metadata of journalists. Obama stated that they are collecting metadata. Then they get a subpoena for more information. But the metadata reveals a journalist's sources or the people a lawyer consults in preparing a case. The only reason people aren't upset is that they aren't journalists or lawyers. The mechanic down the block is not likely to have any need to worry about who studies the metadata revealed by his phone and internet connections. But if that mechanic needs to defend himself in court, he might want his lawyer to be able to call an expert that will not be used in court without the government knowing who was called.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)I wonder why everyone doesn't point this out. All laws I don't like=slavery.
Can't argue with that.
In case you missed it, this is sarcasm and it's not =slavery.
usGovOwesUs3Trillion
(2,022 posts)Also that 1986 case has no bearing on what is happening today, that case was about one person who was under suspicion for criminal activity.
This is about suspicionless spying on EVERYONE.
Time for change.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)So, for those 7 years, it was open season.
But the 1986 law has been whittled away piece by piece in subsequent laws. That's the problem with statutory protection of rights; that tends to happen as those rights become "inconvenient" for the government.
Iggo
(47,533 posts)
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)who would support, as you correctly point out, the weakening of laws that protect the people, and for the very worst of reasons, in the case of the FISA Amendment, to protect elected officials and their surrogates from prosecution for violating such a law.
Jake2413
(226 posts)it doesn't make it Constitutional. It is still an illegal search.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)Didn't The Democrats have large majorities in the House and Senate in 2008?
How did then Senator Obama vote on the "weakening" of our 4th Amendment in 2008?
...but most importantly,
[font size=3]HOW do we trust these SAME PEOPLE to now go back and "change" the law giving themselves blanket permission to SPY us?[/font]
ANSWER: [font size=3]We CAN"T![/font]
...but its LEEEEEEGAL doesn't carry a lot of weight these days.
The 1% are demonstrating a frightening capability to make "legal", and retro-actively "fix" whatever the hell they want,
and some people here are just GLAD to help them.
[font color=firebrick size=3][center]"If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for,
at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them."
--- Paul Wellstone[/font][/center]
[center]
[/font]
[font size=1]photo by bvar22
Shortly before Sen Wellstone was killed[/center][/font]
[font size=5 color=firebrick]Solidarity![/font]
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)They're not going to be persuaded - they either entertain themselves by pretending to "discuss" when what they're actually bullying people, or they're paid shills who are going to repeat their paid message over and over and over to drown other people out.
Do what I do. Call them out, publicly shame them, and drop them unceremoniously in your ignore list.
morningfog
(18,115 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)Just sleep it off. 
[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]
BlueCaliDem
(15,438 posts)
burnodo
(2,017 posts)most
Response to burnodo (Reply #16)
Post removed
MineralMan
(146,241 posts)Obama is not a Nazi, despite your juxtaposition of photos. Disgusting!
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)Being a paid shill for the majority of Americans who are on the side of "Yes we want our law enforcement to search communications networks to try to find terrorists (as allowed under the control of the courts in a system more than 50 years old)" is hard work! But for some bizarre reason, the OSN Fund (that's "Obama Secret Nazi" Fund) just doesn't seem to be handing over any cash recently.
I mean look. I've responded over the past week to people who:
A] Intimated that Kennedy was assassinated by the U.S. Military Industrial Complex.
B] Asserted that the Republicans and other "Corporatists" have really always secretly been on the side of President Obama.
C] Believe that people are paid to post on an internet discussion board.
Knocking these things down is hard. I mean, how much more credible a set of accusations could these possibly be?
So please deliver my paycheck to: Conservative Democrat, 1% DINO Rd., NY, NY 000001
Thank you.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
reusrename
(1,716 posts)I'm sorry, but I don't know how to write this post without sounding patronizing.
Of course we want law enforcement to go after criminals.
Everybody EXCEPT FOR THE CRIMINALS wants that!
How can you not see this?
The criminals are not the ones being rounded up. They are the ones with their hands on the levers of power.
We have all kinds of fraudsters and banksters and war criminals and torturers romping around free and we know who many of them are.
Anyone who complains is labeled a terrorist and then disrupted/detained/discredited/dissuaded or worse, and this would include the president if he were to complain to vigorously.
Wake up!
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)If "Anyone who complains is labeled a terrorist", half of the D.U. would be labeled a terrorist.
Sorry guy. That's just not true.
As for Acorn, only a small handful of lunatics tried to slap that label on them, but even the increasingly unhinged GOP "mainstream" won't touch the complete nut-case Infowars set.
Finally, your complaints, for the small element of truth they have, simply has nothing to do with the NSA.
The NSA does not grandstand about American political groups being terrorist. In fact, the NSA would prefer not to say anything at all. The NSA tracks real groups with real extremist ideologies and real violent tendencies, almost entirely overseas (since they are prohibited by law from spying on U.S. citizens who are not speaking to foreigners). However when those extremists call in to the U.S. to conspirators, those are the most important calls to track. Same thing for foreigners calling each other entirely within the U.S.
So if you want to go screaming "Wake up sheeple!" at people? Go right ahead. No one will accuse you of terrorism. But that isn't exactly a convincing argument against our having intelligence agencies.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
reusrename
(1,716 posts)It must be nice to have a national security state that actually makes some sense and does some good.
The world I live and breath in, not so much.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)#1 While there have been many things that have annoyed me or upset me in my life, I cannot think of a single concrete way in which the NSA has ever done anything to make me even aware of them, much less me be fearful of them. Now State troopers on remote sections of freeways in my rural neck of the woods where the sun is out, the pavement is dry, and there literally isn't another car in sight? Sure. If some DUer wants to post some screed about the terrible fascist police state of radar gun surveillance, I'll be amused enough to play along. But the NSA? Not so much.
And by the way, I doubt your experience is any different. Tell me a single horror story you've had personally dealing with the NSA. None of this "in theory" stuff. An actual concrete problem you've had.(*)
#2 If you read very closely about what was declassified, the way we caught Osama Bin Laden had very much to do with the NSA tracking the cell-phones of some of his top confidants. They were using those cell-phones because they didn't think we knew who they were and what they were doing.
So. That makes some sense. And it does some good.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
(*) This is the exact same question I ask of Republicans when they start going off on "government bureaucracy" damaging their ability to run their business. I ask for a concrete example. Nearly always they can't come up with anything.
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)You are obviously smart enough to notice them on your own if you are willing. If they had such wonderful success as to justify hundreds of billions of dollars for spying on U.S. citizens, they would be announcing them loudly and proudly. The 50 or so cases they disclosed have substantially been debunked as having not been dependent on snooping through the phone and internet habits of 300 million american citizens. The nefarious possibilities for abuse of this information immensely dwarfs the uses for law enforcement.
As a law abiding citizen my opinion is that this information is statistically way more likely to bite me in the ass if I were to attend an anti-GMO protest, gun rights protest, pro-life protest, OWS, etc.. than it is to save my life, a family member or friend's life.
I don't believe in this "we have to destroy our freedoms to save them" baloney.
randome
(34,845 posts)[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]
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)The NSA doesn't have an economic incentive to do so.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
reusrename
(1,716 posts)You remind me of those people who argued: "See, I told you the Iraq war wasn't about oil. We won and gas prices have doubled. I told you that you were wrong!"
It's as if they expected these monsters to share the loot with the American people, after they had gone to all that trouble to steal it for themselves in the first place.
randome
(34,845 posts)If the NSA had to issue a warrant to every telecom in the country every time, they would get nothing done. And the chance of interception, hacking and even employee malfeasance would bring into question all results.
We could certainly use some information on how this data is safeguarded but that's no reason for crying, "Spies! Spies!"
[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]
reusrename
(1,716 posts)We can start the list with torture and rendition and work our way down to murder, gun running and drug smuggling.
I know, in your fantastic reality we caught all those bad guys behind the Iran/Contra conspiracy and then they were all convicted and sentenced to prison, so we should be safe now, right.
In my CT reality they were all pardoned and are still running things.
And they caught that Lynndie England woman that was behind the torture in Abu Ghraib so there's no problem with any war criminals on the loose any longer.
In my CT reality we have "double tap" drone strikes under this administration in clear violation of Geneva which is a war crime under U.S. law.
In your fantastic reality "too big to fail" is somehow comforting for you, laws should not apply to the powerful.
In my CT reality these monsters are destroying the world and must be reigned in somehow. They will not police themselves, they don't even understand why they should have to.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)The subject is the NSA's actions under President Obama.
The subject is not Iran/Contra under President Reagan. Who is dead, by the way. So I don't think it's reasonable to say that he is "running things". Actually, President Obama's administration is running things, and fairly well I might add.
Again, I'm very familiar with this kind of 'move the goalposts and invent a strawman' technique, because when I talk to Republicans about what the "terrible government bureaucrats" have actually personally done to them, they do exactly the same thing.
The point is this. By trying to change the subject, you have implicitly conceded that this is not some issue of direct concern to you. The only thing that is offended is your ideology and your pride, not your lifestyle.
If you wish, I am perfectly able to debate other topics. But that should be on another thread. This topic is the NSA, under control of the FISA Courts, a system that has been in place for over fifty years. (There were some actions that President Bush took that I consider to be illegal - saying the Administration needed no court oversight - but President Obama fixed that a long time before this fake "scandal" came up.)
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
reusrename
(1,716 posts)Your world sounds perfect the way it is. Why mess it up by thinking?
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)Alas, the substitution of an Ad Hominem fallacy for actual argument seems to be the only way that some people can concede they've lost a debate.
Oh and by the way, this third level Otto flunky you seem to be fixated on is just writing screeds for dying newspapers, like political apparatchiks often do when they're out of power. He's hardly in "control" of anything.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
reusrename
(1,716 posts)Sure, I am fixated on all of the Iran/Contra conspirators. Whenever their names pop up during a national security story all of the hair on the back of my neck stands up. I admit that. I imagine that some others would rather pretend that these folks don't really exist. I think it is too troubling to think about, or something.
Remember when they appointed John Poindexter to be in charge of TIA, remember that fiasco? Surely you see the relevance of that story to this PRISM story, don't you?
reusrename
(1,716 posts)See page 3:
Of all the enemies Correa has earned, some of his fiercest reside not in Quito, but in the conservative think tanks of Washington. They include George W. Bush’s former Latin America handlers and a coterie of corporate-bankrolled right-wing radicals determined to unravel the South American socialist bloc.
Ezequiel Vazquez Ger, an Argentina-born economist, is among the most aggressive of Correa’s antagonists. Vazquez Ger works for a DC-based lobbying firm run by Otto Reich, a Cuban exile who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs under the second Bush administration. In 1987, Reich was singled out during the US Comptroller General’s investigation of Iran-Contra for having “engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities” on behalf of the Nicaraguan Contras. He is also suspected of helping the anti-Castro terrorist Orlando Bosch escape prosecution in Venezuela.
Reich contracted Vazquez Ger in 2011 to help him oversee a portfolio of corporate clients that included Lockheed Martin, Exxon Mobil, and Bacardi International, the rum company whose lawyers drafted much of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act tightening the US embargo of Cuba. Before he partnered with Reich, Vazquez Ger served as a Latin American fellow at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a corporate funded think tank that promotes climate change denialism and sweeping deregulation policies.
To compliment their lobbying operation, Vazquez Ger and Reich have churned out a steady stream of op-eds for publications from Foreign Policy to Fox News to the Miami Herald, demonizing the socialist leaders of South America who have stifled the ambitions of multi-national corporations. During the past year, they homed in on Correa, assailing him for sheltering Assange while he cracked down on opposition media. In a June 2012 op-ed for the right-wing Newsmax website, Reich and Vazquez Ger cited Assange as a key reason why the US should refuse to sign any further trade agreements with Ecuador. “Signing or renewing trade agreements with Ecuador will only allow Rafael Correa to continue undermining US foreign policy,” they wrote, “trading with our enemies, and destroying his country’s democracy.” (Following threats from Congress over its alleged offer to shelter Snowden, Ecuador’s government unilaterally rejected US trade preferences).
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/exposing-dark-forces-behind-snowden-smears?akid=10640.260530.DcQy3h&rd=1&src=newsletter862157&t=4
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)REASON FOR ALERT:
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Poster says people who disagree with the OP are paid trolls. I disagree with the OP. I am not a paid troll or a bully, as the poster also claims. This poster has a long list of hidden posts, where he/she calls people trolls. This post should also be hidden.
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backscatter712
(26,355 posts)
Let them alert! I don't give a fuck if my posts get hidden. If Skinner wants to ban me, then he's sending the message that he'd rather have bullies, griefers and shills on his site than honest progressives.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)RC
(25,592 posts)It is all perfectly legal because a secret court and some DU'ers say so.
1984 is just a figment of some drug addled psycho's imagination. That can never happen, because the United States is the bestest, most honest
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Governments that build surveillance infrastructures also build propaganda infrastructures.
Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)The phone metadata is not your personal property. Therefore, there is no 4th Amendment violation.
It has been that way for well over a hundred years.
[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]
Coccydynia
(198 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)There is no evidence the NSA is capturing your email. None other than the word of a man who said he wasn't trying to hide from justice and then ran to Moscow to hide from justice.
The word of a man who was surprisingly unable to show evidence of his crazy claims.
[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]
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Some Content Receives Stronger Protection
https://ssd.eff.org/book/export/html/42
New unopened communications: If the email or voice-mail messages are unopened or unlistened to, and have been in storage for 180 days or less, the police must get a search warrant. However, you are not notified of the search.
Opened or old communications: If you have opened the stored email or voice-mail messages, or they are unopened and have been stored for more than 180 days, the government can use a special court order — the same “D” orders discussed — or a subpoena to demand your communications. Either way, the government has to give you notice (although, like with sneak & peek search warrants, that notice can sometimes be delayed for a substantial time, and as far as we can tell almost always is delayed). However, the police may still choose to use a search warrant instead of a D order or subpoena, so they don’t have to give you notice at all.
Notably, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has disagreed with the government's reading of the law, finding that communications are in electronic storage even after they are opened — meaning that the government needs a warrant to obtain opened messages in storage for 180 days or less.
randome
(34,845 posts)[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]
siligut
(12,272 posts)Not the method used to access it.
randome
(34,845 posts)Until someone shows me evidence that the laws and regulations are being abused, why assume the worst? We should have better things to do with our time.
[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]
Coccydynia
(198 posts)I'm wondering why email is
randome
(34,845 posts)But the courts have ruled for well over a hundred years that phone records are not your property.
[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]
Coccydynia
(198 posts)with meta data. I think that an excellent analogy. I saw the meta data as the envelope that holds your mail, but yours is more accurate.
The big difference is that the phone record could never be traced back to the actual call content. That is not true with meta data as it relates to emails. I think meta data is therefore different for email.
Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)declaring that phone records are not your property.
randome
(34,845 posts)I'm sure someone posted something relevant relating to the 19th century but I can't find it. In the meantime I'll refer to these 2 cases, 37 and 34 years old respectively.
[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]
Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)And the cases you are citing do not cover the breadth of information being collected under the Verizon order.
randome
(34,845 posts)Although I'm sure I saw something regarding that, I can't find a cite for it.
The 'breadth of information'? Do you even know what's on a Verizon metadata record? It isn't much, from what we've heard here on DU.
[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]
Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)It is more than is discussed in the cases you cited - which discussed the constitutionality of using a pen device to collect a list of (outgoing) numbers called.
The meta data includes both incoming and outgoing calls, tower relay data (which gives you relatively precise location information), and length of call and time of call. That is an enormous amount of information when it is not only information collected on a single person, but on everyone making calls - , in the hands of someone skilled at programming and applied math.
randome
(34,845 posts)Do you understand what would happen if the NSA did not have a copy of this data?
Every time they had a legal warrant to look up data, it would need to be issued to every single telecom in the country. Do you have any idea how time-consuming and useless that would be?
If the data came directly from the telecoms, there would be enormous opportunities for interception of the data, hackers and even telecom employee malfeasance.
It would be a completely unreliable system.
Data is easily copied and stored today because of advances in Information Technology. This is part of why this seems to have 'caught everyone by surprise', although it's no surprise to those of us in the IT business.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)who failed to teach you that convenience is not an excuse to violate civil liberties.
marble falls
(56,943 posts)Coccydynia
(198 posts)It's your words sitting on other people's mediums at other people's location. Where is the expectation of privacy?
spooky3
(34,387 posts)It's pretty clear in creating or responding to "expectations of privacy" and security.
Without these assurances, many people would not agree to have their address books, which likely contain passwords, credit card numbers, notes about their health, etc., that they consider private backed up on iCloud.
Coccydynia
(198 posts)slave labor to build their products? Or would this be the Apple that didn't participate until Steve Jobs passed away? Oh, wait, they are the same company.
I forgot how benevolent these corporations were until I remember they had to receive retroactive immunity for their benevolent behavior.
Please, people agree to have their data stored in the cloud because if they click no, they don't get to hear their favorite song.
More importantly, they click yes because they think the data is secure, not that there data is their own.
spooky3
(34,387 posts)Thanks for playing.
Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)This has been talked to death also. When the FISA court rejects a warrant request on specific grounds, it is reworked and resubmitted so that it can pass.
I agree we should have more transparency into how this process works but there is no reason -from my standpoint, anyways- to think the NSA is out of control and spying on whoever the hell they damn well please.
No. Evidence.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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L0oniX
(31,493 posts)But then they are secret so we'll never know ...until it's too late?
randome
(34,845 posts)I would like to know what safeguards and procedures they have in place for the data they have. Mostly likely the data is maintained in a 'black box' that requires several sign-offs before it can be accessed.
We don't know and we should know.
But to automatically assume that some type of vast domestic spying is being conducted without evidence of any kind is a ridiculous waste of time and energy.
If you'll believe anything Snowden tells you -a Systems Administrator who never had access to the kind of data an Intelligence Analyst has access to- then you may as well take my word, too. My word is just as reliable (i.e. useless) as Snowden's.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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L0oniX
(31,493 posts)This is a redo of the same only now they have the past to learn from and this time they are so much more invasive. It isn't just on members of the SDS or war protesters and draft card burners like back then. It's everyone ...except themselves.
randome
(34,845 posts)[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]
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Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)How hard is that to understand?
randome
(34,845 posts)Or do you think putting metadata in a black box repository to be the same as 'surveillance'?
Most of the uproar over this is on sites like DU. I think the majority of people outside our bubble universe actually don't care.
No one is looking at any of the data unless there is a warrant or a number turns up in relation to a suspect. It's how law enforcement has always operated -investigation.
If laws or procedures are being misused or abused, we need evidence to take action against that.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)...
WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, after some of the laws they passed, like the PATRIOT Act and their secret interpretation of Section 215, which is—my view, of course, is same as Tom Drake’s, is that that gives them license to take all the commercially held data about us, which is exceedingly dangerous, because if you take that and put it into forms of graphing, which is building relationships or social networks for everybody, and then you watch it over time, you can build up knowledge about everyone in the country. And having that knowledge then allows them the ability to concoct all kinds of charges, if they want to target you. Like in my case, they fabricated several charges and attempted to indict us on them. Fortunately, we were able to produce evidence that would make them look very silly in court, so they didn’t do it. In fact, it was—I was basically assembling evidence of malicious prosecution, which was a countercharge to them. So...
AMY GOODMAN: Do you believe all emails, the government has copies of, in the United States?
WILLIAM BINNEY: I would think—I believe they have most of them, yes.
...
WILLIAM BINNEY: Actually, I think the surveillance has increased. In fact, I would suggest that they’ve assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about U.S. citizens with other U.S. citizens.
...
WILLIAM BINNEY: Right. And I think it’s to silence what’s going on. But the point is, the data that’s being assembled is about everybody. And from that data, then they can target anyone they want... That, by the way, estimate only was involving phone calls and emails. It didn’t involve any queries on the net or any assembles—other—any financial transactions or credit card stuff, if they’re assembling that. I do not know that, OK.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/whistleblower_the_nsa_is_lying_us#
the last page of a 4 part Democracy Now interview which starts here:
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_william
There are programs now that build that metadata into profiles, and those profiles are being used to concoct charges against anyone the PTB want. It is being done NOW. If that isn't a problem as some see it, then I don't what is. And if that isn't surveillance, then the word has been redefined.
No way in hell is there probable cause for 20 trillion transactions.
randome
(34,845 posts)Still no evidence.
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Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)If the NSA doesn't outright admit it, it isn't happening. That's some heavy denial. Very sad that you have no problem with this total surveillance apparatus being erected.
randome
(34,845 posts)Without a shred of evidence to support it.
All because Moscow Eddie told you so. The guy who said he wasn't trying to hide from justice and then ran to hide from justice in Hong Kong then Moscow.
The guy who doesn't understand what a secure FTP server is.
The guy whose resume is a lie.
I'll be more than happy to light my hair on fire when someone gives me some evidence to justify that.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)and Business Insider isn't exactly CT, and they certainly aren't alone. But you heard that everything's all cool in the BOG, so of course that's the gold standard.
You dismiss evidence, and then say there's no evidence. Nice job! Big fail.
randome
(34,845 posts)... that the NSA collects everything on everyone.
I am not trying to hide my head in the sand. I do not consider myself a supporter of the NSA. The best that will come of this Snowden debacle is the NSA will become more transparent and less secretive.
That's a good thing.
It's too bad Snowden ruined his life, gave away national security secrets and jeopardized the lives of undercover agents to make this simple point.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)Just for fun, google up what Russ Tice has to say about this in the last week or so. But maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about either... According to the ostriches, all the whistleblowers are crazy fuck ups, I know how the song goes already.
randome
(34,845 posts)But today he talks about NSA's 'capabilities'.
No one is denying the capability exists for huge sweeps of the Internet. But, again, there is no evidence that this is occurring.
All I'm asking for is evidence. Not even proof. Just evidence.
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Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)I don't care about his sources. I don't care about his reliability or any skeletons in his closet.
I want evidence.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)It's still going on, only the name has changed. And of course, much bigger scope than before. When Clapper said it was ended he was LYING, only the name of it ended. "Plausible deniability" and all that.
sibelian
(7,804 posts)Statute, please? And which system is to be employed to correct this misapprehension which has presumably been enshrined in law?
Why is phone metadata to be treated differently from any other data generated by personal activity?
Do you suppose that the Post Office should be keeping lists of who you write letters to?
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)You do not own your phone number. It is owned by the provider from whom you obtained it.
Just as an aside, nor do you own time.
That covers it, right?
sgtbenobo
(327 posts)So, I guess this just where the NSA is going to safeguard all of our kittens and porn.
1 Visitor control center
A $9.7 million facility for ensuring that only cleared personnel gain access.
2 Administration
Designated space for technical support and administrative personnel.
3 Data halls
Four 25,000-square-foot facilities house rows and rows of servers.
4 Backup generators and fuel tanks
Can power the center for at least three days.
5 Water storage and pumping
Able to pump 1.7 million gallons of liquid per day.
6 Chiller plant
About 60,000 tons of cooling equipment to keep servers from overheating.
7 Power substation
An electrical substation to meet the center’s estimated 65-megawatt demand.
8 Security
Video surveillance, intrusion detection, and other protection will cost more than $10 million.
I waive my private parts at your aunties. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.
Carry on
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)sgtbenobo
(327 posts)You'd be amazed at how much you can get away with in The United State of Utah.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)Just a little, over your misuse of 'waive' unless you're prepared to part with those beloved private parts.
Why do I doubt that was simply a clever pun on your part(s)?
sgtbenobo
(327 posts)God-damned spell check! :|
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)There's ever so slight a chance that once or twice in my life, I've stood in line for humble pie too. Probably more often that I should've.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)we are broke.
On the Road
(20,783 posts)who appears to have a grasp of the subject matter.
As far as silly people go, I would think that those who wave their private parts at anyone would be high on the list. Along with people who are unable to spell "wave."
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)store the times, dates and numbers they call, how long they are on the phone etc and hack into their emails and FB pages and even if I don't read it (lol) they can call the police if they find out and get me arrested.
Why can't we all do this if no one owns anything?
A nation of Peeping Toms. Who knew that stalking and Peeping Tomming (I'm sure that's not correct, but you get the idea) was legal now?
Yay for stalkers and peeping toms! What a country!
randome
(34,845 posts)Hacking is illegal. It's illegal for the NSA, too, unless they have a warrant. Again, show me the evidence that the NSA is engaged in domestic spying or is hoovering up the Internet. All we have to go on so far are claims and interpretations.
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rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Just sayin.
like this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023134820
randome
(34,845 posts)There is nothing in these slides that indicates that PRISM is for domestic spying. So far as we know, it applies to foreign communicants only.
We could all use some verification of that. More transparency and less secrecy for the NSA all around. But there is still no evidence that supports the ridiculous idea that the NSA is spying on everybody regardless of where they are located.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)makes me worry. Why wouldnt our government spy on us? Especially if they can rationalize that it's legal. Given an unlimited budget and secrecy they are apt to do most anything. And Congressional oversight is a joke. The FISA court is a joke.
The danger if you are right and I am wrong is that I am wrong. The danger if you are wrong is that the authoritarians would have a extremely useful tools for suppression. I recommend erroring on the side of caution. And it's not paranoia when you can see them trying to squeeze us dry.
randome
(34,845 posts)But I won't start actions or take up arms or do anything unless I have a good reason for doing so.
You know this will result in more transparency for the NSA, right? I mean, the writing's on the wall for that.
Which group do you think Congress is more likely to listen to?
Group A: "We demand more accountability for the NSA. We want real, verifiable changes."
Group B: "Stop spying on us, you goddamned fascists!"
My guess is that Group A will be more productive. Unfortunately, there are some on DU who sound more like Group B.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Greenwald and try to pretend that nothing is wrong at the NSA.
You have posts that show that's where you stand.
randome
(34,845 posts)Snowden provided no evidence. It's human nature to look at the character and motivations of someone who makes claims that cannot be supported with evidence.
All this would go away and Snowden would be hailed as the greatest hero of our time if he had only supplied evidence of his claims.
He claimed he could personally spy on the President's email. Makes you wonder why he didn't snatch an email to prove it to us.
He claimed the NSA had 'direct access' to the world's Internet providers. All the companies involved say that's bullshit.
He claimed the NSA can watch our thoughts form as we type. Any evidence they are doing that? No.
He claimed the NSA is downloading the Internet on a daily basis. Any evidence? No.
He said he "saw things" but he has never said what that means.
He was a Systems Administrator, not an Intelligence Analyst, so he was never in a position to "see things" in the first place. If he somehow gained access through hook or crook, why didn't he get something to support his claims?
Why didn't he get anything to support his claims? That's an honest question.
There is a reason China didn't want him, Russia doesn't want him and now even the Wikileaks attorneys don't want him. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002310173
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)fingers back in your ears, close your eyes, and repeat one thousand times, "My government is good, my government looks out for me, I love my government."
Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)That requires a warrant.
It isn't just personal property which requires a warrant.
randome
(34,845 posts)I suppose wiretaps are considered 'spying'. The courts have ruled differently for that than for business records.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)You've gone from insisting that the government has to trespass on your personal property in order to require a warrant to the test being whether or not the line is a third party business record.
randome
(34,845 posts)Established in previous court cases. I'm not insisting on anything, just pointing that out.
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Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)your personal property. By your reasoning it should not require a warrant because the phone line outside of your house is not your personal property. But that wiretap requires a warrant. So your reasoning (insisting a warrant is not needed because the meta data is not personal) is faulty because otherwise no warrant would be needed to tap your phone line.
randome
(34,845 posts)All I know is that third party records have been ruled to not be your property but tapping a phone line is considered 'spying' that cannot occur without a warrant.
What do you want from me? An admission that the law and society is not always logical and consistent? You got me there.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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Ms. Toad
(33,975 posts)is not the dividing line between what is constitutional and what isn't - otherwise wiretapping would not require a warrant.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)Why that is so difficult for people here to understand, amazes me.
randome
(34,845 posts)"You can have my metadata when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!"
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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RC
(25,592 posts)They were intimidated to give it up.
Jailed Qwest CEO claimed that NSA retaliated because he wouldn’t participate in spy program
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/13/jailed-qwest-ceo-claimed-that-nsa-retaliated-because-he-wouldnt-participate-in-spy-program/
The other phone companies then fell in line.
randome
(34,845 posts)If Nacchio felt that strongly about it, he should not have given in.
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[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
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RC
(25,592 posts)Just because he was convicted for insider trading, does not mean that was his "crime". So was Martha Stewart.
Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio "crime" was not falling in line by breaking the law, by giving up Qwest's meta data wholesale, just because a secret agency, back by a secret court, wanted it.
Why are we still talking about this still going on under the Obama Administration, if is so legal and on the up an up? Why do so many here have a differing opinion than you on this? Why are you interpreting the 4th Amendment with the same blind eye as used by the gunners on the 2nd Amendment?
FourScore
(9,704 posts)Thank you, boston bean, for slicing through the BS like a knife through chocolate icing!
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)individual who seemed to think the ownership of the data is the phone company's to give up.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)So you will shut up about it....and to them silence is consent.
It is not the first time I have seen this...the first time actually was under Papa Bush in Gulf War 1...the same type of intimidation for anyone who did not "support the troupes"
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Pure and simple.
It's bully behavior.
Which is we need to be damned fucking loud in calling them out.
They're not here to discuss. They call it discussion, but it's not. A real discussion involves respectful back-and-forth, but what these guys do is nothing but coordinated shouting-down. We refute them with facts, and they gish-gallop the same bullshit again and again.
Call them out, call their discussions the bully-sessions they are, call the griefers and shills what they are, then drop them in your ignore list. Publicly.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)and you're right. they're not here to discuss.
Number23
(24,544 posts)
Running around announcing you're putting people on ignore, which you do endlessly, is "discussion" to you? And you encourage other people to call people "griefers and shills" and astonishingly, it's the people being CALLED the names that are the bullies to you?
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)So will you kindly blame my behavior on him, please?
"Troupes" are not "troops". The former refers to a group of performers, having more to do with fine arts; the latter, to soldiery or groups of baboons for instance, not to be confused for one another. Usually.
THE DREADED ENGLISH MAJOR STRIKES AGAIN!
Feel free to pelt me with rotten tomatoes. As a former performer, I developed agile defensive moves.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)As long as it is not done to avoid a point or to insult...
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)And their r realy tims whin my amo runz lo.
It's not really meant to mock, but sort of a heads up notice when I think maybe something's overheating. To this date I've blocked no one and hope I never must. I did flag one comment but only after the guy had flagged mine first, when my response had been much milder than his rant. I still don't appreciate that they let his objection stand while denying mine, though I have to agree with them on one thing: I obviously enjoyed telling the guy off.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Corruption Inc
(1,568 posts)The same "rocks" think concocted TV courtroom dramas are the most important thing in the world too. Trying to talk to them is like trying to talk to republicans, which, is what I think they are.
Marr
(20,317 posts)We all have universal healthcare-- who knew?
L0oniX
(31,493 posts) 
ctsnowman
(1,903 posts)to see/hear Bill Maher use that one.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)We're still being manipulated by fear just like in the pre Iraq war days. They lied then and they are lying now. How much ...we don't know ...it's a secret.
ctsnowman
(1,903 posts)to see a post from you I didn't agree with. 
RC
(25,592 posts)carrying Handy-Wipes with us all the time. Keep the suitcase clean and reduce the damage.
treestar
(82,383 posts)And no number of references to case law that you don't know about will convince you to learn more.
GeorgeGist
(25,306 posts)racism is over.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)wouldnt do it. That's fine. You live in denial. But why are you trying so desparately to spew the propaganda being put forth by the Corp-Media. Why do you side with the lying Republicans like Clapper and Mueller?
There are clearly two sides. One side is asking for transparency and freedom from an oppressive government and the other side is siding with the authoritarian state and shout down cries for transparency.
Our founders fought the authoritarian conservatives for the 4th Amendment. Be damned if we are going to let some authoritarian conservatives take it away from us.
How can a Democrat favor the secrecy of an authoritarian state?
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Democrats inherited their mommie and daddy's money, and home and businesses. And all of sudden, it was not such a good idea to be on the side of the worker - because paying a living wage to the workers would cut into their personal profit. And they enjoyed the good life, and because they had cried at Bobby Kennedy's televised funeral, they still considered themselves Dems.
They don't realize they act ever so much like Republicans, well, they couldn't be a Republican, could they - they voted for a man who is an African American so that must mean they are Dems, right? Even though they would no longer know an old school, truly democratic principle if it came up to them and bit them on their arse.
And you can hardly blame them for mortgaging the company they inherited to play with that money on the dot com bubble or housing bubble, and if the money got lost and they had to declare the company they inherited a bankruptcy, which of course ruined the workers' pensions, while they got their Golden Parachutes, well, what else could they do? They are not of the worker's class, so they shouldn't be the ones who suffer.
Under Obama, their investments and financial holdings are way way up. Because they can benefit from the Wall Street give-aways and transfers of monies from Main Street to the Financial Firms, that just proves even more so how their voting for Obama was a wise and wonderful thing to do. Which further cements in their hearts and minds the idea that they are Democrats. Although I doubt they think about it all that much - too many vacation places to go and too many swell places and stores to spend all that money.
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)
Um, did you know your transparency page is showing??
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)They say you have to be a terrorist for them to actually do so, but what state, given such power, hasn't slipped into pure authoritarianism or worse?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023057822
On May 22, 2013 the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, one of several Armed Services Committees, met to discuss the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2014. The main subject of the hearing was Sec. 1061, otherwise known as Enhancement of Capacity of the United States Government to Analyze Captured Records. This enhancement provision of NDAA 2014 would effectively create a new intelligence agency, one with the authority to analyze information gained under the Patriot Act, FISA, and known spying programs such as PRISM.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)per Clapper.
Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)http://ecowatch.com/2013/transcanada-caught-training-police-nonviolent-keystone-xl-protesters-terrorists/
In the midst of recent national controversy surrounding government surveillance of the public, a recent Freedom of Information Act request to the Nebraska State Patrol has exposed evidence that TransCanada provided training to federal agents and local Nebraska police to suppress nonviolent activists protesting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline by arresting them on “anti-terrorism statutes.” The presentation slides, obtained by grassroots landowner advocacy group Bold Nebraska, target Tar Sands Blockade activists by name.
“This is clear evidence of the collusion between TransCanada and the federal government assisting local police to unlawfully monitor and harass political protestors,” said Lauren Regan, legal coordinator for Tar Sands Blockade and executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center. “These documents expose the truth that the government is giving the nod to unlawful corporate spying. By slinging false allegations against peaceful activists in this presentation, TransCanada puts them at risk of unwarranted prosecution.”
Although TransCanada’s presentation to authorities contains information about property destruction, sabotage and booby traps, police in Texas and Oklahoma have never alleged, accused or charged Tar Sands Blockade activists of any such behaviors. Since August 2012, Tar Sands Blockade has carried out dozens of successful nonviolent direct actions to physically halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas and Oklahoma. All of these acts, as well as every pipeline protest in Nebraska, have maintained strict commitments to nonviolence.
“Try as TransCanada might to slander Tar Sands Blockade and our growing grassroots movement, we know who the real criminals are,” said Ron Seifert, a spokesperson with Tar Sands Blockade who was pictured in the slideshow. “The real criminals are those profiting from this deadly tar sands pipeline by endangering families living along the route and pumping illegal levels of air toxins into fence-line communities.”
(More at the link. Of course, Occupy are considered terrorists or low-level terrorists by DOJ.)
And of course:
"We had terrorist in the Texas State Senate opposing SB 5" ~Bill Zedler, (R) Texas
http://twitpic.com/cz83k7/full
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Environmentalists will be the first to be rounded up and taken away. So if being A Good Dem also means caring about the environment, (And in my very old school primer of what being a Dem means, the environment always was a top priority) then for that reason alone, people here at DU should oppose PRISM, FISA, etc.
Uncle Joe
(58,255 posts)Thanks for the thread, boston bean.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)and no court has told them they are wrong.
Good Gawd, your elected government doesn't agree with you.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)because no one can file a court case on a secret program....until it is no longer secret. Like now.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)but you still can't go to court without standing.
"until it is no longer secret" No, actually until you can show harm to you, you have no standing.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)How do you determine standing or harm when the whole thing is secret? Obviously the law as written isn't secret, but the interpretation of the law has been. My Senator Mark Udall has been waving his arms about this for years, but is unable to speak publicly because everything is classified. He says we still don't know what is going on and the NSA is releasing deliberately misleading info on the subject.
But by all means, let's just blindly trust our elected officials who either don't know or can't tell us what is going on, and the NSA which doesn't want to.
ETA: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023127107
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)For some things, you do have to trust, you don't get to run the government because you want to. Our elected officials get to run it. Congress actually holds secret hearings, they call it oversight, into what the spy agencies are doing. They don't invite you or me. They don't even invite Snowden or Greenwald.
If the majority of Congress decides a law is wrong or is being abused, they have the right to change the law.
Then I'm still going to have to trust them to oversee that new law.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)The "majority of Congress" doesn't even know what is going on. The minority of Congress that supposedly does know doesn't even know all of it. And can't take notes on it, consult with attorneys who might know, talk about it with their colleagues or aides...nada.
So how, exactly, is the "majority of Congress" going to decide if a law is wrong or is being abused? How would the "majority of Congress" come to the decision that they need to change the law?
And how, exactly is a court going to be able to rule on the rightness or wrongness of behavior in the absence of a case with evidence and testimony?
How?
The courts have most emphatically not ruled on the legality of this, and Congress is most emphatically not overseeing it.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)The whole Congress has been given briefings on a continuing basis by the Obama administration. Many members don't go, but that is no ones fault but theirs.
Even under Bush, the Congressional and pertinent leadership was briefed.
If you're a member of Congress and you didn't know about the National Security Agency's phone records program before , President Obama has this to say to you: Where have you been?
The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, chimed in later: "We provided detailed briefings and papers on this to explain the law, to explain the process it was governing," he said on NBC News last Saturday.
And then Monday on Fox News, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who's on the House Intelligence Committee, told his colleagues to stop whining: "You know, these members of Congress who said they didn't know about it — they could have gotten a briefing whenever they wanted to."
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)and Clapper has already lied under oath to Congress. Did you read the link I sent you? It provides some insight on the type of briefing Congress has received.
And these are the "good" guys.
Yeah, I totally trust them all and all their successors.
You sir are a "rock" and I don't have time for this. Bye.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)or where anyone other than the Snowden/Grenwald group have claimed that FISA does not provide oversight.
That court is 35 years old and it increased oversight of the intelligence agencies.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)since the Congressman in question is a Republican and I suspect the D-R divide is the only thing that matters to you, but here is your "Congressman claim(ing) Clapper lied under oath" and an accompanying article from the Guardian, which I trust far more than I trust anyone on this side of the pond on this issue. But you could listen to Clapper himself when he claimed he gave the "least untruthful answer" he could, under oath, to Congress.
And anyone who thinks the rubber-stamp FISA court (appointed by CJ John Roberts no less) constitutes actual oversight is hopelessly naive. IMHO.
Welcome to ignore.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)your claims, doesn't. The one that does is a bat shit crazy RW t-bagger Libertarian nutcase. He might even be a member of the Liberty Caucus.
You didn't really think that your ignore would hurt my feelings, did you?
Oh, you can't see what I wrote anyway.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)and ask me if I am for real. lol
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)The 1% supports spying on the masses. And all the intelligence agencies have to do to keep shit from Congress is tell them is Secret. The intelligence agencies give Congress only what they want Congress to see.
We are on the rocks because too many "trust" the 1%.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)because the majority doesn't see things your way.
I always thought Churchill got it right
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)So you can't discuss an issue without using logical fallacies?
We dont live in a democracy. Our government is intended to be a constitutional based, democratic republic. In any case it depends on citizens keeping our representatives honest. If we dont keep a tight rein on them, it will quickly become an oligarchy.
So you want to kick back and welcome the oligarchy?
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts); I can discuss without using logical fallacies, I do wonder about you.
The use of the word democracy has evolved over the years to encompass democratically elected representative government. Try the first definition at dictionary.com.
Sorry, I didn't mean to step on your expertise, since you know more than the Congressmen about what they know; you must know more about the meaning of words than the people who write dictionaries.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)It is a spy agency, I don't want them to be truthful with the world.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)disputes this claim.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)Though I retired for financial reasons to the remote corners of the MidWest, aka RedNeckLand, most people in this tiny town seem to have lost their taste for direct political onslaughts at me in person the last year or so. Guess I bit too hard. And I always try to discourage such conversation as needlessly provocative.
But I do still know they believe what Beck and Hannity and Limpball tell them is true. So I get my gossip here, where it generally comes with a refreshing chaser.
What was I going to say, now? Oh, yes... Wanda Sykes was on Jay Leno's show last night. While you tend to suspect everything those two great comics say might be a joke, with that caveat, for those of you who missed it: It appears from what they seemed to say in all seriousness that Ms. Sykes actually used to work for NSA directly, and not as a contractor's contractor either. Wouldn't be surprised; she's really a brilliant woman as well as the funniest ever.
Regardless, in her usual humorous way she laid waste to HongKong/Moscow Eddie and the idea that most of what the majority of us have to say to one another is worth the NSA listening to in the first place. The notion that anyone, much less a government agency with actual important work to do, wants to hear and record to every word out of the average person's mouth is sheer lunatic hubris. Honey, most of us just ain't that interesting.
Well, I did have one neighbor cautiously ask me if her friend a few miles away who had married a man of MidEastern descent was in any danger of being bombed with one of 'Obama's American drones' simply because of the husband's ethnicity. I asked her if he consorted with known criminals in the US or received frequent calls from overseas numbers connected to known terrorists, and she had to admit he didn't or her friend wouldn't still be married to him. I told her that he and his wife were in less danger from drones than I am, since my roots go way back in revolutionary Ireland.
"Now you must know," I assured her, "that I myself pose no threat to anyone except that I would bore a wiretapper to death. If Uncle Sam's not after me, I doubt he's after your friends either."
I find it passing strange that the sole credibility I've earned in this subsubculture is my apparent ignorance of and disinterest in the things they get all worked up about. Some DU'er said recently that maybe my long series of letters to the editor of the local weekly had begun to have a slightly positive effect on some of these people. I don't know. They probably won't go so wild next presidential campaign if we run Hillary plus? because a lot of the women adore her personally, as fewer of the men do. We'll see.
Meanwhile, in between times, I was gratified when one local couple helped me dispose of my giant trumpet vine arbor that blew over in our last wind storm earlier this week. They consider President Obama and certain other Democrats the Unholy Trinity, lying hyenas of socialism, etc. But for once at least, it didn't seem to matter. (Several contractors have refused to even quote various jobs for me, making it clear that politics - or their 'ethics' - mattered more to them than my $, which happens to be just as green as theirs.) So that felt good even above the practical aspects.
It couldn't be the letters to the editor. More likely, the excellent pie I take to carry-ins. Well, whatever it takes...
That is so true, was thinking that the other day and what kinds of conversations the NSA would grab.
A: sup?
B: nuttin
C: yeh?
D: yeh.
E: cool
F: I dunno
G: yeh
H: me too
Who hasn't overheard these kinds of conversations. I don't think the NSA is interested.
MineralMan
(146,241 posts)the telephone companies. Like all such records, they're subject to viewing with a valid court order. To change that will require congressional action that would make them unavailable. Perhaps we should elect a Congress that will do that. The current one is not going to do so.
GOTV 2014 and Beyond!
intaglio
(8,170 posts)Now it may strike you as strange or newfangled but publishing is just putting information out there into the public sphere.
You do not own the phone line between you and the person you are calling, so to set up that connection you have to ask your phone company to connect you. To do this they will mostly have to go via other service providers all of whom will have access to your phone number and the number you are calling. Your act of dialing is an act of making public certain information.
This information is recorded by the phone company to resolve not just your billing but also the billing received by your company from those other providers. It is this information the NSA wishes to access and does not contain cash information or the content of the call.
Now this may not fit your idea of what is right but it is where the law currently stands. You may be quite right in wanting a change to the law or Constitution but you cannot go round bemoaning the illegality of those actions when, as the law now stands, it is not illegal.
Personally I find it difficult to conceive of how the law might be changed to reflect your desire without making the provision of phone services and internet connectivity impossible.
RC
(25,592 posts)It is still the private information of that service provider that provided the service, or that part of the service.
Nothing has changed as far as the government is concerned.
intaglio
(8,170 posts)There is no exclusive contract between you and the phone company except the maintenance of the line to your home. That copper pair* (unless you have fibre optic connection) from the cabinet to your phone it the only unchanging part of the network - all other routing is changeable and as such the call has to have public information allowing connections to be made an maintained.
If the meta was not public information then your phone company would have to advise you of each and every service provider with whom they needed to share that information and further obtain your permission to do so. Because interconnection is so complex now that would be virtually impossible.
The matter is even more complex for mobile phone services with multiple companies owning the cell aerials, others covering the microwave relays, still more with the copper or fibre cross country links. Some companies allow others to share the aerials they use and some of the microwave and fibre links will be Government owned and the whole is subject to change as you move from one cell to another or just to accommodate fluctuating traffic. Then there is the likelihood that your phone call may be moved through a foreign country - even if a domestic US call.
For all these reasons some part of your phone call or e-mail message has to contain public information.
=============================================
* all wired telephone connections are termed a "copper pair" even though there are more than two wires involved.
Whisp
(24,096 posts) AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries. 
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)in which no one of voting age should indulge. Beautiful poetry except it's all wrong. In a sense it can be taken as the genesis of conservatism's twisted every man for himself ideology. You see, that's what a conservative is: someone who never matured, morally or spiritually.
Sermon over. I hear incoming rotten tomatoes... gotta run...
Phlem
(6,323 posts)w/ storm umbrellas, they are big and deflect lots a tomatoes.
Your a jewel Irish
-p
AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)... having offered it to Chad and Jeremy (who declined). Perhaps he'd agree with you or maybe he was just looking for that first hit to break through to the big time and knew this wasn't it.
Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)by themselves, but thanks for trying, don't expect miracles though.
Illy Billy
(3 posts)Me too
blackspade
(10,056 posts)cheapdate
(3,811 posts)...that when we voluntarily divulge personal information to any third party, we waive our privacy rights and lose all Fourth Amendment protection over that information. In Smith v. Maryland that logic was extended to phone calls.
"The Court...affirmed the judgment of conviction, holding that "there is no constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy in the numbers dialed into a telephone system and hence no search within the fourth amendment is implicated"
- Smith v. Maryland, 1979
Congress compounded the problem in the 1980s with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which codified a lesser standard of protection for metadata. The EPCA has since been ammended by the Stored Communications Act, Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) (1994), the USA PATRIOT Act (2001), the USA PATRIOT reauthorization acts (2006), and the FISA Amendments Act (2008).
I'm not saying that I accept what the NSA and the government is doing, I'm just saying that the courts have taken a different view of phone records in the past than the one you're proposing.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)A lot of the media 'tards are trying to get us to focus on the expression "phone numbers, and times spent, and collecting phone numbers of associates."
But these are not actual numbers on paper. This meta data can be re-constituted and then listened to - so it is more than the data than they want us to think it is. In a world where Monsanto and Trans Canada want the police to see protesters as terrorists, it is not good to allow our Corporate-owned government have this ability.
cheapdate
(3,811 posts)That is an acknowledged fact. The government maintains that the laws that govern listening to actual content (i.e. obtaining a warrant listing probable cause) are being followed. There isn't any evidence to contradict that assertion. Which obviously doesn't mean it's true.
RC
(25,592 posts)not been divulged publicly, such as a phone call or E-mail meta data. Probable cause and a listing of what they are looking for, still apply, when asking for a warrant. The wide area sweeping up of our private information without any warrants is in violation of our Constitution.
cheapdate
(3,811 posts)in both the abstract and practical sense. The legal analysis I've read at the ACLU's website is not so certain, at least as far as how similar questions have been interpreted by the courts in earlier instances, and how the issue may be potentially interpreted by the courts in the future, especially given the laws that Congress has passed since the 1980s.
The courts have not ruled on the specific question of whether the widespread collection and retention of metadata as authorized under existing public laws, is constitutional or not. Under certain circumstances, the collection of phone data without a warrant has been ruled constitutional by the courts in other cases. Congress has passed a number of laws, as I noted earlier, that purport to provide a legal framework for the NSA's actions.
Whether or not the court will overturn any of these laws, if any challenge should somehow make it to the SCOTUS (none have so far) is an open question.
If I had my choice, the government would immediately cancel all private contracts with the NSA, freeze the programs in question, reveal the full and complete extent of the programs, and begin a open debate and discussion with Congress and the American people over all of these questions, including our values, objectives, proper constraints, tradeoffs, limitations, etc.
It's doubtful that something like that will happen, but there are encouraging signs in the Senate that some of our leaders, even some Republicans, are moving that way.
Response to boston bean (Original post)
cynzke This message was self-deleted by its author.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)If they are used in criminal cases, the accused will have the right to challenge the use of them on Constitutional grounds. So it isn't "fucking scary", it's the way the law in the USA has always worked.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)The whole reason that Snowden offered up this information to Greenwald and The guardian is so that we would learn:
One) Our Corporate-owned government is storing up data that is able at any time in the future be re-constituted in the future. In a world wherein Big Companies like Monsanto and trans Canada want the local police to treat protesters as terrorists, the idea tht the government has X amount of my conversations and emails with friends and associates in their entirety is not something I want to have happened.
Two: so far, the courts have not even allowed any challenges to this, since this data is covered by security classifications that keep it hidden. Therefore, no one in the USa has had standing to take the government to court on this issue.
This changes the whole ball game. You need to think about it.
And yes, maybe some here who have been ardently supporting Blue Dawgs and DLC Democrats don't mind this data gathering. But if Jeb Bush gets in in 2016, will you be just as content then? Will you not mind then?
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)In my world, the US government has protected minority rights from the states. In my world, there is no world government and each government's laws apply only to people falling under it's authority.
You cannot have standing, unless the data gathering has had an impact on you. That's pretty simple to understand. That's why it is no more "fucking scary" than any other action of our government.
It works the same way if Jeb Bush is in office.
As bad as the blue dawgs might be, the support of the Paulites here is much more frightening to me. Rand and his ilk taking office would be "fucking scary."
RC
(25,592 posts)but then you go on and usually prove yourself wrong.
As long as they have a (D) by their name, they are not scary?
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)RC
(25,592 posts)Comprehension plays a part too.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)RC
(25,592 posts)I see problems as puzzles. I see life as a puzzle. Information are the pieces needed to see the whole picture. With enough pieces, problems, and life makes sense. That is how I solve problems. If a piece seems to fit at the time, but later I notice the pieces around it look different, then that piece is either in the wrong place or doesn't even belong in the puzzle in the first place. I take that piece out. I do not make excuses as to why it should remain in place, when it obviously does not belong there. That is my reality. That is my world. Also, I have a fairly strong sense of right and wrong. If any of the puzzle pieces look funny according to its surroundings, I check out why.
Being on the Left politically, I'm like Will Rogers says,
He said this back when being a Democrat meant something, because Democrats back when said it, [u[were were Left of Center, unlike now.
Now we have many Democrats with Right of Center mind sets, as witness by their supporting of paranoid Republican values, such as excusing the wholesale spying on the citizenry. Trying to pass off the illegal and morally reprehensible as legal and proper because somebody's talking point said so.
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)and are upset when you're called on it. I don't see that as being a Democrat, I see that as hearing voices in your head.
You certainly didn't read it.
RC
(25,592 posts)What did I make up? I described the way I see the world around me. Your reality seem so to be a bit far to the Right for a Progressive.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)As long as the "D" is by their name, they are not scarey.
it was almost fun watching attorney Stone, (the man who hired Obama to teach that law course at Univ of Chicago,) try and stipulate during his debate with Greenwald, that the meta gathering under Bush was illegal, and sinister, but meta-gathering under Obama is totally about our need to be safe. And he cannot escape his critique of Bush/Cheney meta data gathering, s he had put his thoughts into a letter that will stand for all time.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)imo. BTW, I would stop talking to rocks.. they usually don't have much to say.
Harmony Blue
(3,978 posts)and will not hold up in the public courts.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)How can we even know it is legal if there is no way for it to be challenged in court?
And what about "efficacious?" Does it / can it actually work to keep us safe or is it more just to keep us in line?
DCBob
(24,689 posts)with no one providing absolute proof one way or the other. Seems its come down to a judgment call.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)Discussions or judgments, here or anywhere, don't make a dime's bit of difference. The only possible determinant of legality is through the courts...and the courts can't make a ruling without a case...and a case can't be brought if no one has standing, by being able to at least assert harm...and that can't happen when a program is as secret as this one.
It is happening now. Here's hoping it continues.
DCBob
(24,689 posts)Although FISA was found constitutional, the cases were limited and only lower court.. that's why at the moment its a judgment call until SCOTUS finally rules on it.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)And until the program became public knowledge there was absolutely no way to test it's constitutionality.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)The people don't approve of what the government is doing so that makes the people the enemy. Thus, there is a need to monitor them.
Don't like that? Well then you too are eligible for monitoring.
Keep in mind that it's safer to be a right wing freak but I've never liked to play it safe.
Apophis
(1,407 posts)They always shape the argument in their favor.
ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)Nay
(12,051 posts)
classykaren
(769 posts)I just came back from the best movie I've seen in my life. Everyone should see it Jamie Fox plays our president. The White House is taken over by extreme Right Wingers. Much talk regarding the Militarized Industrial Complex. Really if you have a chance go see this movie. Actors play parts that must be Rush Limpball and Alex Jones
Maven
(10,533 posts)Otherwise your post is 100% correct.
Karmadillo
(9,253 posts)
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)... well, you know.
US v Duggan 1984
US v Truong Dinh Hung 1980
US v Buck 1977
US v Butenko 1974
US v Brown 1973
Zweibon v Mitchell 1975
leveymg
(36,418 posts)particularly email that ends up being stored a third-party's server.
You should read this - it's probably the best summary of the technologies and case law (to 2004) out there: http://www.americanbar.org/publications/criminal_justice_magazine_home/crimjust_cjmag_19_1_surveillance.html
The bottom line is the SCOTUS hasn't ruled on splits between the circuits about 4th Amend. email content, particularly that stored in 3rd party servers, even though by statute that is supposed to be secure. Content of phone calls requires a warrant but not metadata, which is swept up wholesale under the conceit that foreign terrorists are known to be using telco networks. First class mail is protected, but not the markings on the envelopes. Otherwise, things like bank records are open to search by issuance of Administrative letters, or they were until April when a court within the 9th Circuit found most of that method of gov't access to be illegal.
So, it's really not so simple as you would like to believe, Steven.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)nic surveillance
It really is that simple.
From US v Duggan:
, but it had made clear that the requirements of the Fourth Amendment may change when differing governmental interests are at stake, see Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S. Ct. 1727, 18 L. Ed. 2d 930 (1967), and it observed in Keith that the governmental interests presented in national security investigations differ substantially from those presented in traditional criminal investigations. 407 U.S. at 321-324.FISA added a requirement to get a FISA warrant for electronic surveillance from a FISA court. The President got that. Done as far as the legal/Constitutional argument is concerned.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)So again, what wrong doing were millions of people suspected of in order to justify this warrant to stalk the phone activiites of all Americans?
FISA has no jurisdiction over Domestic Surveillance, so who issued this warrant to spy on the American people?
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)anti-terror. Here is what the senior FISA judge said regarding how carefully they review the requests for warrants;
Reggie Walton, the FISA court's senior judge, rejects the notion that the court doesn't ask enough questions. He sent this statement to Reuters:
The perception that the court is a rubber stamp is absolutely false. There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the executive branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts, and then by the judges, to ensure that the court's authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize.
So the requests for FISA warrants are first looked over by five lawyers whose expertise is national security law and the constitution and then by senior federal judges. One of the things they look very carefully at is whether the intended target is a national security target and not a domestic one.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)are DOMESTIC calls. The FISA court has no jurisdiction over Domestic Intel. Eg, if the FBI identifies some Right Wing Anti Government Survivalists plotting to bomb a Fed Bldg and they need to monitor their phone calls, they CANNOT GET A WARRANT from the FISA Court! Where would they go for such a warrant? NOT the FISA Court.
Again, the question everyone is asking, mostly now NOT on their phones for obvious reasons, is how the hell they got this warrant to spy on the American people??
I realize it's easier to keep insisting we are talking about Foreign Intel, but we are not. We are talking about our own Telecoms and we are talking about Domestic calls. There is no way that this can be manipulated into 'foreign' in order to make it fit the law. Square pegs don't fit into round holes.
Even the President didn't try to turn this into something it isn't, although his attempt to explain it raised more questions than answers.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)the actual warrant and neither of us knows the intended target.
Five national security legal experts and a federal judge who also has expertise in that area signed off on the warrant after ensuring the target is a national security target.
The main concern of these six people is that the warrant is for a national security purpose.
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)the system works the way they say it does. Millions of Edward Snowdens have access to this system and this information, and some are in much higher positions of authority.
The system's weakness is human nature. How much personal, professional, or monetary gain do you think might be gleaned by checking up on someone involved in a high-stakes lawsuit, divorce, congressional vote, corporate board meeting vote, etc..?
You want proof? Nope. Don't have it yet. And, the system has been fortified with billions of our tax dollars to fight the release of such info. But I know in time something will leak out, because we are dealing with human beings. Some fraction of which are dishonest.
Blue Owl
(50,216 posts)n/t
Katashi_itto
(10,175 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)
Phlem
(6,323 posts)Amen Brotha!
-p
Atman
(31,464 posts)They love this! And seem to have no recollection of how much they loved warrantless wiretaps when Dick "Dick" Cheney and W started them.
I'm not disagreeing with. But maybe you'd be happier posting over there.
truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)Either they are living in their own delusional partisan dingbat land where they incapable of thinking straight or examining the facts - or they were faking their opposition to authoritarianism all along.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)I've got local govt version of this going on where I am. The mentality is the same...
Our cognitive dissidence problem in the United States knows no federal, state of local boundary because it's basically the same nightmare we are experiencing now - SOME laws are okay to break, according to who's breaking them...
Whether it's here on DU, or if it deals with some local "golden boy" some figure-head (when he/she break the law). Anyone's privacy (making the same argument for who is able to see something the clearly should not) is secondary when the law breaker is someone who couldn't possibly do any wrong. It's stunning to see who becomes blind over what's been violated, only caring about the bad press for someone in power.
I'm sure the arguments for the 4th amendment have been bastardized by those in the Bush administration who didn't even recall a connection between probably cause and search and seizure... But THIS is the Obama administration. The NSA is a rogue group that grew out of a cold war mentality. So, they now are given a pass to look up our collective information asses. But, isn't our freedom of the way we communicate vital? Are we not a nation of laws? When exactly did we develop this myopia?
Tooting the clarion again.... WAKE UP, AMERICA!
kentuck
(111,035 posts)They're sycophants.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)... bootlickers, brown-nosers, toadies, flatterers, lackies, doormats, and general suck-ups? You found plenty of them in the Republican party during Bush, and more in DU than you wanted to know existed when recognizing the boundaries we've placed on our Rights.
I'll just put it out there and admit this nation and many of "the people" have gone astray in recognizing that the United States has FUCKED UP in its mission and vision. It cannot be made better, or good enough for the inevitable loss of those Rights.
Maybe it's going to take more than an administration to examine the darker angels of our nature when it comes to civil and therefore all human rights.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)also build propaganda infrastructures.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts) 
great white snark
(2,646 posts)No matter the case law that proves you wrong.
Rock on.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)And go back to pretending that Big Brother is taking good care of them. The Rocks apparently have put their faith in the George Bush spy machine with Republicans Clapper and Mueller. I dont trust Republicans but apparently the Rocks do. They need a strong authoritarian Big Brother and Clapper meets the bill.
treestar
(82,383 posts)Rocks are people who simply refuse to look at what will bother their biases. People here took out a position too soon and refuse to be informed rather than admit they didn't know much.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)started screaming, "Snowden and Greenwald are evil, please disregard anything that might in the least reflect on our beloved President.
Rocks arent open-minded. They dont like too much information. Especially if it shakes their carefully crafted status quo.
Every day more info is being revealed. Every day more progressives are calling for futher investigations. And every day the conservatives get nastier and nastier about the characters of Snowden and Greenwald.
RC
(25,592 posts)Another reason to suspect those that think this wholesale spying by our government on its citizens is somehow OK.
This has nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with power and control by a few over the many.
sofa king
(10,857 posts)1) The United States pretends to be a nation of laws;
2) The U.S. has more laws and legal precedent than any single individual can ever familiarize one's self with in a lifetime;
3) The United States itself, and therefore all Americans, are collectively guilty of violating numerous laws, including treaties with American Indian Tribes, for example;
4) Ignorance of the law is no excuse;
5) Therefore, all Americans are probably guilty of something, and law enforcement has probable cause to watch all of us.
Now I know how Alberto Gonzales worked: spend a minute to think about it working backwards from your evil objective, and then write the first stupid thing that comes into your head.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)responses to this OP, so forgive me is I'm repeating something. (I know that many, many people will disagree with the following; but I hope someone will hazard an answer, or at least, ponder the thought.)
What you have written is technically correct ... "your neighbor can't write to the phone company and ask them for all the details of your phone calls. ie, who you called, and for how long and from where. ..." However, the next part of the sentence ... "The government can't do this either without a warrant based on probable cause" ... is incorrect.
What many seem not to know (or care about) is, The government, and any private concern (including, your neighbor), can PURCHASE all of your above information. In fact, the mining of (consumer ... read: everyone's) data that everyone is so concerned with of late is/has been a multi-billion dollar industry.
But what troubles me is the only restraints on the transaction (on the private side) are: 1) whether the collector wants to sell it to the party; and, 2) whether the party on the other side of the tranaction can afford to make the purchase.
What I don't understand is: why when government gathers the information (for arguably moral purposes, e.g., to prevent violence), it is an uber-wrong; but when private industry does it ... for profit (i.e., for inherently amoral purposes), it is a matter, not worthy of discussion?
I, by far, fear/distrust the private industry that I have absolutely no control over, than the government where I, to this point, have been able to retain the illusion that through my vote, I have a measure of control.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)They have no power to compel me to give it. The government, OTOH, does have that power.
Do we need a lot more scrutiny and regulation over what companies are allowed to do with our information? Of course. But, that doesn't change the fact that what "our" government is doing is wrong and completely contrary to the founding principles of this nation.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)into the Fair Isaac system ... and did you have a choce ... and what control over the information they collect and sell?
The honest answers are: Never ... No ... None.
Logical
(22,457 posts)
Zorra
(27,670 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)midnight
(26,624 posts)tavalon
(27,985 posts)I've only ever had 5-6 people on ignore, and they had proven themselves useless and divisive. Today, I put, what I not so affectionately call the gang of five on ignore, bringing me higher than ever. But they just weren't forwarding the dialogue, they were spewing talking points. I can get those from the NSA, if I want them. They were diversionary and if they aren't being paid, well, they are obsessive and not good at dialogue.
felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)after their last election were triangulated, identified and thrown in jail (many tortured and disappeared) because they were texting and using their cell phones. These aren't just simple phones, people dismissing potential for abuse are very naive.
Yes there has to be transparency, probable cause, and a warrant for our phones to be opened up. Now we are seeing tiny incremental steps taken, invisible to some people and completely visible to others, to remove our rights to privacy.
I have known many people from Iran and have heard of all the dirty tricks under the Shah and afterwards--who came to this country to escape this shit. Eternal vigilance is NOT paranoia-- it is our patriotic duty if we care at all about the world our children will be living in.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)
Liberal_in_LA
(44,397 posts)darkangel218
(13,985 posts)
Thanks for posting this OP.
I wuvs you x
In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Last edited Sun Jun 30, 2013, 06:27 PM - Edit history (1)
All states that turn authoritarian use it heavily.
Governments that build surveillance infrastructures also build propaganda infrastructures.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)BlueStreak
(8,377 posts)Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)She still has both of her legs.
But, these 11 people don't --
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110211139
BlueStreak
(8,377 posts)Are you suggesting that if only the NSA could monitor all our phone calls, they could have prevented that marathon tragedy?
(Uhhh, they WERE monitoring all our calls, and that didn't stop anything.)
Zorra
(27,670 posts)
