What was left out in the Gonzo hearing on illegal wiretapping

[BR_Parkway]

We've all speculated about his careful parsing of the phrases "the program that we're talking about today" or "the program that the President has confirmed". Now, barely a week after Rove comes out with the marching orders that spinning the wiretap issues the right way will lead to (R) victories in the upcoming elections - suddenly we've got (R)'s calling for investigations and more info. Have they returned to their actual "no big gov't intrusion" conservative roots or might there be another game in play?

Polls are showing way too many Americans upset by this issue for the ReThugs to simply spin it once again as "you're either for illegal wiretaps or with the terrorists". So, to win elections, they need to show how strong they are on Law & Order, holding the (mis)Administration accountable.

What steps do they have to take to 'win' on this issue?

1. Loudly call for investigations
   
2. Admin finally gives in and forks up more info (on the program that the President confirmed)
   
3. Committee reports verify cumbersome nature of current law, everything changed 9/11, blah, blah
   
4. Write new law, very specific to this one issue that President confirmed
   
5. Start PR campaign to shift from broken law and illegal activity to how they strenghtend America by enacting new law in WOT
   
6. Demonize Democrats for obstructing over any arguements
   
7. Carefully word new law to allow all other surveillance gov't wishes to do under Total Info Awareness
   

Boomantribune.com
Gonzales came to the committee to discuss one thing and one thing only. He calls it the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" (TSP), a term coined by bloggers. I will refer to it as NSA Domestic Spying Plan One (DSP1).

<snip>

What nobody talked about was all the other DSP programs, numbers 2-999. The ones that are not strictly focused on international calls. I'm talking about programs like data mining browser and search engine usage (DSP2), surveillance of peace and anti-war groups (DSP3), data mining emails (DSP4), using JPEN and other "total information awareness" type databases (DSP5), using computers to data mine domestic phone calls (DSP6), passing along NSA information on Americans (illegal) to other agencies like the FBI (DSP7), etc.

The Senate hearings were interesting, that's for sure, but they were largely useless. Gonzales was there to talk about DSP1 and only DSP1 and since it involves people reasonably believed to be Al-Qaeda terrorists, the Congress is going to do nothing about it. The American people don't care if the government is spying on Al-Qaeda (even in America), in fact they support it wholeheartedly. I finally figured out why the administration is stumping on the issue - it's because they're only talking about DSP1 and it sounds great. Who could really be opposed to spying on "known" terrorists?

DSP1 is just one tiny "tool" used by the administration and it is by far the most acceptable one to the American people. When the New York Times revealed that there were DSP's, the administration focused on DSP1 and only on DSP1 and framed it in such a way that only petty sticklers to the law could object. This is a war after all!

[izzie]

1. Any information from the AG. Who's AG is he? Not ours

I am starting to think my ancestors did not fight in the Revolutions but were Royalist.

[Norquist Nemesis]

11. IIRC, he swore he'd be AG for the country and be independant

during his nomination hearings. He lied.

[watrwefitinfor]

2. Let's play connect the dots.

US Plans Massive Data Sweep
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.

The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2095810

White House Gives Details on Surveillance
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5603679,00.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — After weeks of insisting it would not reveal details of its domestic eavesdropping, the White House reversed course Wednesday and provided a House committee with highly classified information about the program.

“It’s a different program than I was beginning to let myself believe,” said Alabama Rep. Bud Cramer, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee’s oversight subcommittee.

“This may be a valuable program,” Cramer said...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2095022

And does all this indicate why they might have been unwilling to have Gonzo testify under oath?

Wat

[EVDebs]

9. Worse than you think...It's all TIA with Global Information Group Ltd

in the Bahamas now. Offshore, privatized, out of DOJ or anyone else's jurisdiction. Very convenient. Just error prone (since they're using ChoicePoint's data known for being hackable). CSMonitor has also reported on RFIDs and the background checking business, with errors.

The two, put together, can be used against critics of the administration very effectively. You won't get a job...ever...again.

Total Surveillance
http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2005/12/albrecht.html

Couple this insidious technology with purposely erroneous background checks

Who is checking the background checkers?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p13s02-wmgn.html

[rodeodance]

3. WH did # 2 yesterday-big headlines of how Gonzalas and Hayden

briefed members of the committee.


Admin finally gives in and forks up more info (on the program that the President confirmed)

[BR_Parkway]

5. #'s 3 & 4 are underway - the Gonzo hearings and Specter on the floor

yesterday speaking about introducing legislation that says the president has to follow the law that was already passed.

[Mnemosyne]

4. .

[unblock]

6. what was REALLY missing was a video of gonzo's private sex life

they should have gotten (possibly doctored) video of gonzo inserting all sorts or wacky thing up his butt for sexual gratification, and then said, "is THIS what you want our government to have the authority to collect, view, and archive in the process of trying to find terrorists?"

[woodsprite]

7. What was left out? The swearing in part! n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. How many times do I have to say it? Until we can give the public

the names of the targets for these illegal wiretaps, the Republicans can and will do all the tap dancing they want. All we need is to bring out a few examples where it's clear that Bush went after partisan political opponents which had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. That's it.

Well, then there needs to be an upswelling of outrage from the Democrats, because your average Republican will say, so what? You've got to show it's not acceptable.

[EVDebs]

10. It was a 'vacuum cleaner' job. The names are every one of us !

Don't you see ? This was 'profiling' on a national level. All US citizens, as suspects, had to have their data checked. It was sent offshore, via CAPPS II (TIA) to Global Information Group Ltd. in the Bahamas. The datamining done offshore was then wired back to the mainland. They could just as easily have done this in Bangalore India but, hey, vacation trips off south FL are easier for retired CIA-types along the eastern seaboard.

The already conservative-laden national security apparatus rejects liberal views and constraints related to 'laws' anyway. Black bag jobs, especially with the whitecollar crime aspect of stealing everyone's data, signed off via fineprint, contained in banking and medical records etc etc, means that Karl Rove and his dirt-dealers have a treasure trove of data to work on in their neverending job of terrorizing the last living liberal they can find. See post #9 above to see the details.

[ladjf]

12. All significant information.