Senate Panel Presses N.S.A. on Phone Logs

[East Coast Pirate]

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — Senators of both parties on Wednesday sharply challenged the National Security Agency’s collection of records of all domestic phone calls, even as the latest leaked N.S.A. document provided new details on the way the agency monitors Web browsing around the world.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of “terrorist events” detected through surveillance, and it did not show that “dozens or even several terrorist plots” had been thwarted by the domestic program.

“If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen,” Mr. Leahy said, citing the “massive privacy implications” of keeping records of every American’s domestic calls.

At the start of the hearing, the Obama administration released previously classified documents outlining the rules for how the domestic phone records may be accessed and used by intelligence analysts. And as senators debated the program, The Guardian published on its Web site a still-classified 32-page presentation, apparently downloaded by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, that describes a separate surveillance activity by the agency.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/us/nsa-surveillance.html

[FreakinDJ]

1. Using contractors means "There are no rules"

[Life Long Dem]

2. Manning wasn't a contractor

Didn't seem to matter for Manning and rules.

[Coyotl]

4. Exactly. How would anyone ever know if they designed a scheme to be able to spy on Dems?

What is to prevent political abuses? Economic abuses?

You can bet your life savings that the people working these jobs are not leftists or liberals! They are Bush hirees filtered through the Bush Junta loyalty system for their conservative credentials and Christian affiliations.

[FreakinDJ]

6. DING DING DING - We have a Winner Folks

This guy gets it

[bluedigger]

5. I was a contractor for FEMA.

We did exactly what our government bosses told us to.

[rootProbiscus]

3. If they do not listen to calls, I can say "assasinate Obama" and it is not picked up

If it is picked up they listen.
I have believed for many years it would be picked up.
I still do.
They are using weasel words to avoid answering the question directly, and blatantly lying when their weasel words are insufficient.
And as for Bradley Manning and Snowden - I thought the law was to prosecute the law breakers and the breakers of the constitution.
Every one of the bastards that has participated in these schemes should be prosecuted. They are traitors, every one of them that has participated in any way or who has known about it and not done or said anything. Traitors. And they are the ones that should be prosecuted and receive a traitors sentence, every one of them.