Demand a Complete and Impartial NSA Investigation

It's too bad much of the US general public does not vote.. or even pay that much attention to politics. Seems we're too busy worrying about who's doing whom in Hollywood. I've been a huge fan of Molly Ivins for quite some time. She sums up my feelings pretty well. Once upon a time, Americans understood their decisions mattered.

Chip, it's interesting you feel mind boggled, because myself I can't understand why everyone is so quick to judge and brand others a certain way. Whether it is branding them as hypocrites, liars, idiots, or whatever.



But it's more complicated than that, so I don't like the analogy. (Anyway I'm hoping that eventually there will be additional information given out to only those who should recieve it.) Nobody is talking about the fact that the program is highly classified, except for those responsible for protecting the nation from people that we KNOW are out there trying to cause us harm. National security seems to be completely ignored by everyone except the people that will recieve alot of flak if they fail in their mission to protect the country, not to mention the fact that lives depend on it.

The reason it's more complicated than you put it is because it could potentially damage national security. The people protecting the country and providing our national security don't fool around with the important stuff. It's a good thing, because asshole jihadists surely aren't fooling around either, they won't think twice about causing us massive harm if we allow them the opportunity.

Anyway, it may turn out that this whole thing is "technically" legal, or that there is more than one feasible way to interpret laws on the matter, and that introduces some doubt into the equation. Also, it's quite clear that the fact is--we don't have all the facts. You might want to read this if you're bored enough, which presents some arguments why this is important, if you can stand to cut through the media bias accusations. Particularly the bit about FISA.

Link

I'm open to the possibility that the activity is technically illegal, maybe. But even if it is, I also think it's important to consider if it was a decision made that was known to be illegal, or if it was truly believed that a court would back the opinion that Gonzales and NSA legal analysts present. It's also worth nothing that nobody that I know of is talking about shutting the program down, meaning that given the "wartime" situation we're currently in, recognition of the need for such a program is widespread.

I don't buy that argument. Any terrorist with half a brain isn't going to be communicating openly about their plans. They'll use code words as stand-ins. It's a similar situation to software and digital asset DRM systems. Knowledgable hackers will circumvent the systems so the only thing they really do is inconvenience lawful honest users of the products. In this case we're talking about a lot more than just inconvenience. We're talking about a complete loss of privacy. It's not inconceivable that someone with a taste for middle eastern foods who buys them with a supermarket bonus card could find themselves on the no-fly list with no recourse to get themselves off of it. People are ending up on it just for having the same name as a suspected terrorist so do you really think the NSA is magically going to be accurate with millions upon millions of communications scanned for keywords? It's insane. It's all predicated on the stupid idea that we can prevent these things before they happen. That's truly dangerous and paranoid logic.



We have enough facts now to know how it works. It's basically the Total Information Awareness program. When that was introduced several years ago everyone including congress flipped out about it because it was too big of an invasion of privacy. So much so that the Bush adminstration claimed they'd put an end to the program. Well now we know they didn't. They lied... not just to the American people but to Congress.



Of course they knew it was illegal. The only reason people are saying they want oversight instead of having it shut down is because it's an election year and they're all terrified of being accused of "aiding the terrorists." We're governed by a bunch of preening spineless opportunist morons.

My worldview has been shattered.

the Carter/Clinton remark was made to illustrate the point that "under oathe" doesn't guarantee truth-telling.

So far you have speculated a great deal, and you insist that the FISA court has some jurisdiction in this matter.

If the president has an inherent right to act in such a manner as he has, then Congress can pass no law restricting that right. That means FISA is irrelevent.

If you can prove that the president DOES NOT have an inherent right under the constitution during wartime, then please offer us a cup of your enlightenment. Until then, your speculation is noted and appreciated.

I have a colleague here in the US from India. He was telling me about a friend who is working on a US govt. project there (that the friend is probably not supposed to talk about). It's basically a super secret "bot" that monitors communication lines for certain keyphrases or other patterns. It's pretty much on 24/7, filtering all communications passing through that channel. It is specifically designed to flag suspicious communications for a human analyst to review, but it's still touching pretty much every communication that comes through that pipe. Kinda like Google for phone calls. I don't have any corroborating evidence, but it sure sounds plausible to me.

They're accountable if they're under oath. Nobody can do anything about it when they lie when not under oath. That is somewhat the point of being under oath. You get testimony into the record and can later determine if they were lying or not as facts and other testimony are also read into the record. Clinton, if anything, should highlight to republicans why it is important to have witnesses under oath.

Now as to FISA not counting for anything... I would submit that if the president murdered his wife, claiming she was a terrorist and that he was protecting our country, he is still culpable for murder. The president still has to obey laws when waging wars. If the FISA act was not enough, that should have been brought to Congress and the senate to produce a new law or amend what is there. No president, in the end, has authority to do whatever the hell they want.

Exactly right, Siro. Congress has already ammended the FISA law five times for the Bush administration so they're more than willing to be accomodating. If FISA doesn't adequately cover what's being done it's not the fault of the FISA law, the FISA court, or Congress. It's because the Bush administration hasn't fessed up to the enormous scope of what they're actually doing.

Clearly you do not realize that the Constitution of The United States is a check against the government (and President) from eclipsing The People's inherent rights.

The burden of proof lies with the President. NOT with The People. The President is accountable to us for his actions. NOT the reverse.

Well, I don't think we'd be wasting time on something that doesn't produce any results (for long), and I don't think anyone is saying we don't need the program, right? Code words, etc, sure-- don't you think there's teams of people who's job is to figure out things like that? If it's targeted surveillance only with people who are connected to individuals outside of the country that we suspect have terror connections, it's not such a wild thought that you'd hear something of interest at some point. Consider, for one thing, that the parties involved may not even be aware that they have attracted the special attention they're getting. Sure they aren't stupid, but they aren't talking to each other with telepathy either. There's going to be mistakes made, and we should try to catch them.

I'm not sure I get where you're going with the bonus card thing... I kinda do think that situation is inconceivable. Being put on a list because your name is the same as someone on a watch list, (I'm familiar with the "infant detainment" and the lack of identifying information on such lists), would be a mistake that should be corrected. If a system like that sucks (which apparently it does now), it should be fixed so mistakes can be challenged and fixed rather than automatically abandoned, right?

And sure we can prevent attacks! Hasn't it already happened? There's a news story out today about some assholes that were going to hit LA awhile back. (The Library Tower... it was going to be part of the "bigger" and original 9/11 plan that was later downsized to what actually happened that day.)

I think the attitude that we're helpless in preventing attacks on us (and thus, we should just let them happen if they will) is more dangerous than throwing away the majority of our information gathering tools because they're not perfect. Be skeptical of them, fine...but at least try to come up with workable alternatives to solve the problem at hand. It's better than just saying, "I'd rather take the risk that we'll miss some opportunity to prevent some kind of attack, than take the risk that an imperfect system will violate someone's privacy rights." Privacy is important but IF it's a well run program that produces useful results, I'll take saved lives in exchange for occassional losses of privacy any day.



I don't think we do have enough facts to know how it works. I've been seeing conflicting facts, to begin with. Really I don't think even most of Congress right now has enough of the technical facts to know how it all works, how could we? I still think you're still pre-judging the situation, Chip. If it's pretty much an exact copy of the TIA program, which I don't think can be proven currently, then yes that looks very bad.



Well, maybe you're right about that, but it's anybody's guess.

Oddly enough the current administration thinks you're wrong. Rather than fix the FISA act, they chose to abandon it entirely, which resulted in the same program you are mentioning that you think should be fixed. Fix the root problem first, okay?



It hasn't happened. Apparently, if you read the text of Bush's speech or actually listened to it, you'd know that he never said what, exactly, we did to prevent that attack, if anything. Apparently it was some completely unidentified southeast asian country. We weren't told what they did, what connection we have with them or anything. It's great that LA didn't get attacked, but nothing was said in that speech that indicated we had a hand IN that. It is absolutely pure conjecture wtf Bush was actually trying to say or indicate.



Nobody is saying to not spy on terrorists (and if you are, really, wtf?). There are perfectly legal and expedient ways of doing so now. The problem is we ARE spying on peace groups and war protestors (with no foreign connection whatsoever). It smacks of nixonian enemy lists.



You're absolutely right, we (and Congress) don't know much about the situation other than that something hideously illegal is going on. The hideously illegal part is basically what has those of us who are concerned, concerned.

No? Ever hear of the War on Drugs?



I am. Terrorism kills very few people. You're at much greater risk from aspirin and your bathtub.



The thing is, it's not targeted surveillance. It's blind data mining. The claims by the Bush administration that this is a closely controlled and finely targeted program are flat out lies. Unless Congress completely rolls over (which is unfortunately likely because the Republican majority is far more interested in toeing the party line than in exercising oversight), the shit is going to hit the fan in a big way.



Not this way. By the kind of logic they're using we could catch all drug users by mandatory searches of all private residences. Would you be okay with that? After all, if you're not doing anything wrong why should you have a problem with it?



It should be agandoned. It doesn't work and it won't ever work without submitting everyone to an unacceptable loss of privacy. I bring up the supermarket bonus cards because it's yet another paper trail database that's been used to try and profile terrorists. If you think they're only monitoring specifically targeted communications I think you're naive. Here's an example...



There's a guy wrongly accused of arson because of something he bought with his supermarket bonus card. Extrapolate.

If you haven't read this article from the post I linked to a few days ago you really need to. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401373.html



Gee, how convenient that the Bush adminstration is only now telling us about this. They couldn't perhaps be desperately trying to justify their illegal spying program now could they? They must think we were all born yesterday.



We killed tens of thousands of innocent people in Iraq based on the faulty doctrine of preemption. Er, oops. We used to believe in being innocent until proven guilty. This program turns everyone in the United States into a suspect who is guilty until proven innocent. It's wrong, and it won't prevent bad things from happening. On the contrary, it will dramatically increase the likelihood of another Timothy McVeigh.



Read that Washington Post article. I don't doubt a word of it. If it's not that bad yet, that's the direction we're heading by giving any justification to Bush's NSA program. It's wrong and it should be stopped.

Thanks for that link actually, I hadn't noticed a story with that much detail yet, I think that sheds a little light on things.


Good point, it seems a little different to me, but then again the government is known for wasteful spending.
There is at least this difference though--for that "war" to be successful we'd have to see a broad change--ALOT of success stories (a statistically significant change). But for a program like this to be successful, depending on your standards of success, you'd only need a few success stories. Discovery of just a few operatives or suppliers we didn't know about before, etc.



I was only referring to major figures in politics, how "nobody" is calling for an end to the program, oops for being too vague there.

But that attitude is scary. Again, it sounds like "ignore terrorism because we can't prevent it". And to make it worse, since it's true that you're very unlikely to be directly effected by a terrorist attack, that makes it a little too easy for people to dismiss it: "It'll never directly effect me..."

(Oh, but it would.)

Because there's more than just the "death statistics", which you're using, to that story. I think we can guarantee that if (God forbid) a nuclear bomb goes off or something, at the very least there's going to be much more loss of privacy and civil liberties in the knee jerk reaction. And I think we could also guarantee that there would be a huge psychological wound inflicted, much bigger than 9/11's. If a bomb goes off in a major city, are you ever going to really feel safe again, at least in the near future? Loss of peace of mind is another casualty. Okay I'm digressing here...just an argument for why prevention is important.



Not sure. Can a computer program, i.e. a machine, invade someone's privacy? Something tells me they weren't really considering that one when the jotted down the 4th 200 years ago. If no human sees it (which is probably true in 99+% of the cases), should it even matter? The human examination, even by the description in the post article, does sound like it's very targeted. The number they used in the article was 5,000. That's a pretty small amount to focus on. And apparently FISA isn't very clear on alot of this stuff.

Here's a take on the legality thing that I havn't heard an argument against, yet. It's from one of those stupid blog things (also from the site I linked before) so weigh it accordingly, but it's an interesting point:



(I think you should look at that link I posted too, by the way, if you havn't yet.)
It might be outdated at this point but I'm not sure...I don't think it's too bad.



Maybe... I have mixed reactions to the Wash Post article. At some points it doesn't sound like it's doing any good, but then later the story says that there have been some successes. I'm especially interested in some of the comments people like Bob Mueller and Hayden have made. (Not sure I trust Cheney's comment.)



But what's unacceptable? Having a computer "listening" to (analyzing) communications? Having humans filter out communcations that aren't of interest? (Deleting such data of course would be important.) As long as it isn't misused, I'm not seeing a penalty that outweighs the potential gains.

I'm not sure I see your point with the bonus card story. First--It's not law enforcement or intelligence that is tracking anyone's buying habits using bonus cards, it's the supermarkets. It sounds like they just had records that investigators asked to see--and it seems like a justified course of action given the information they probably had. I don't think it's some kind of special massive monitoring project, which it sounds like you're presenting.

But more importantly just because a tool gives you a false lead once in awhile (as in this case) doesn't mean it's worthless, bad, or even unreliable. That's like saying bomb sniffing dogs are useless because they might give false alarms sometimes. Or, like saying a surveillance program is worthless because it only produces good leads 1% of the time... In that line of business, I bet the reality is, MOST of your suspected leads will probably turn out to be bogus, and that's to be expected.



You know Iraq isn't that simple. Even before someone is proven guilty and they are "believed innocent", we don't really treat them as if they were innocent. If we did how could we even place people under arrest until after they've been proven guilty in court? Instead we have to have reasonable evidence that puts some reasonable doubt into their innocence... which is what the filters in that program are supposed to find. Maybe they suck at it and the program is crap solely because of that, but it's still up for some debate.

Dunno. Not if they thought courts would agree that FISA didn't apply in this case. But that depends on technical specifics of the program we don't have full details of. The details we have are vague...and possibly even inaccurate.



Yeah in that case who knows if our preventative stance helped or not. (I wasn't saying I think this program had anything to do with it, although Bush probably wants people to believe that.) But I think there are other instances of prevention successes that didn't get big news coverage. I can't remember specifics, but I recall one about some kind of sleeper cell awhile back, for example. If you did some searching around you'd probably find something.



One problem we have is that the people who actually do the job, who know best, are saying that the "perfectly legal and expedient ways of doing so" are not cutting it. So how would you respond to that? What's the solution if the current ones aren't acceptable?

With this program, it would be a total misuse and violation of policy to use it for anything like monitoring war protestors specifically. It's not supposed to be anything like that so I'm not sure why you're saying we're using it to spy on peace groups, if that's what you're saying.

Has anyone ever thought about this compared to the executive order that caused the Japanese American internment during WWII?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html

It is entirely irrelevant what they THINK the courts will do about FISA. They still have to go to the courts. Over the past few days we've been getting more and more details. At any rate, the mere admission that they are indeed sidestepping FISA is illegal. They may THINK it is legal and that the courts agree with them, however they still have to be brought up on charges because that's not how our country works.



On the other side of the coin, we may also find out that the program was used primarily to obtain blackmail. If that is the case (as it seems to be), then whatever other good it has done is made entirely irrelevant.



Amend the law to the satisfaction of everyone. This should be a 'duh' thing and obvious. "If the speed limit does not suit me or the road, I will massively violate it and then insist what I did is legal." That's how crazy what they're saying sounds.



Yes I'm saying it because many people were brought in to the basement in congress (democrats are not permitted to call it a hearing) and said that they found out that they were indeed being spied upon (except we can't call what they said testimony because we aren't allowed to have an inquiry or sepina people). So we have all these various groups who have aquired information about their being spied upon either through the Freedom of Information act or directly. I'd invite you to research the terrorist watch list. There are almost no terrorists but many peace advocating americans on it.



That order was flat out retarded (and blatently a violation of their rights). I mean, we didn't jail italians, or germans (as groups).

I know, ignorance of the law (or misinterpretation in this case) isn't an excuse. I was responding to your comment "they chose to abandon it entirely", where you were saying they intentionally broke the law in secret. It's still illegal either way, but intentionally breaking a law and accidentally breaking a law are two different things as far as most people are concerned.



Maybe, but I'm not aware of any evidence like that yet. I wouldn't object to some kind of monitor, whether it be the FISA court or whatever, observing a program like this. Something like this needs SOME kind of checks against it, sure, but I don't think that check should be total declassification and public dissemination.



I think the problem is that "some" are just never satisfied, by any solution, and they never seem to offer up any useful alternatives.



I'm not familiar with what you're referring to...



I believe there were some Italians and Germans involved too, though few because they were more assimilated into the population... and probably because they were a decent sized voting block.

The only reason I bring it up is because it seems to have some similarities. Historically speaking, during wartime, there's other examples of presidential powers encroaching upon what would normally be untouchable civil rights. This program pretty much pales in comparison to the WWII example, yet I don't recall hearing many objections back then (except from the director of the FBI, interestingly.)

The scope described there is pretty disturbing. Without some good oversight (doesn't need to be a court approval before you do anything, IMO), or something, to check for and prevent abuse it's worrisome. "Starlight has already helped foil some terror plots" is interesting though, I wonder what that means...

With the "but we can't discuss it because it's classified" it means it's most likely complete bullshit. If they had really foiled an attack they'd be shouting it from the rooftops.

Okay so you understand breaking the law is bad and there are varying degrees of punishment. That's good. Please then understand that knowingly or unknowingly violating certain constitutional amendments does indeed require, at the very least, an inquiry invovling testimony given under oath.




FISA would have not declassified or publicly disseminated anything. Unless you consider a judge on the FISA court public? We don't need to know who they're spying on or why, just that they are doing it in a fashion reportable to congress.



So because someone doesn't like a law or process, they just violate it instead. This is not a useful alternative. Amending the law or writing new laws is a useful alternative.



Obviously due to the concealment by the 'liberal media'. Oh wait, nevermind.
That is the most frustrating part. You, and many others, just don't seem to have all the facts. Here is one example.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/National_Security_Agency_spied_on_Baltimore_0110.html



I don't really get where you're going with in comparing this to WWII anyway. Now if you want a comparison we could refer to McCarthyism, wherein we spied on citizens we thought to be communists or 'enemies'. Or we could compare Bush to Nixon maybe. We could also talk about whole "Unitary executive" which is synonymous with "Dictator". I mean, if you just LISTEN to him... He's said several times now that everything would be easier (for him) if this (his presidency) was a dictatorship. So, finally, if you want to do WWII comparisons, it'd be more apt to compare his actions to what happened in pre-WWII germany.

How about that.
You're starting to tread the fine line between a civil discussion and condescension. Correct me if I'm wrong.



You're missing my point and assuming that I'm blindly giving out a free pass to whatever the administration does, which is wrong. I said FISA monitoring would be OK, and possibly so would some other type of monitor or check against it, at long as it doesn't hinder the operational ability or damage the classified nature of the program.
As to why FISA wasn't made that monitor, I don't really know, but I'm not going to knee-jerk and call foul when we don't even know half the facts for certain. Investigation, sure; full dissemination of the program, trial, impeachment...at this point...ah, get a grip. That's the kind of crap that pisses me off in politics. The right did it to Clinton when he was in office, and the left currently...well, people make careers out of it now. Relax and let things unfold over time, if there isn't enough information yet.



No, I didn't say that. Take another look, I never stated a solution (and the one you assert is idiotic.)



But another frustrating thing is that you and many others find it so easy to automatically believe anything that supports your point of view, seemingly without even lifting a finger to challenge it. Personally, I try not to take anything too seriously if I'm seeing it on a website that has ultra-conservative or ultra-liberal ads and propaganda on it, although I'm sure there's correct information to be found at times. That story doesn't seem like the one you described before, is it related?



Okay, that's getting a little off the deep-end. Yeah, Bush is Hitler I know, I've heard that one before... It was an example of executive powers being utilized (in a more extreme way)--which didn't even generate any heat for that administration. It should have--but it's basically at the extreme opposite of the situation we have currently, so forgive my skepticism.

Yes, this degrades into an non-civil discussion when you claim something and then claim to not claim it. It's incredibly frustrating.




There is lots of information. The problem I have been having is that we aren't even attempting to uncover facts in a legitimate legal forum. Which is to say a complete and impartial investigation. It's not a matter of 'revenge' or anything. It's just a matter of legitimately having the discussion.



I'm not directly the one asserting the solution. The Constitution asserts that the congress makes the law, not any single entity. Bypassing that process IS a problem. Bush has stated he has bypassed it and I think we can at the very least take him at his word on that. (unless he would like to retract it and say something else). So no, it is hardly idiotic to follow existing legal processes instead of making them up.



Yes it is the same one, quakers being spied on. I thought you might appreciate a link instead of me just repeating things. Would you like me to find you a publication that you prefer(or approve of) and carries the same story? I'm all for finding one if it's just the particular link that you don't like. A short list of approved publications might speed my search though.



Yes, that was what I was highlighting, any WWII examples do indeed go off the deep end. It is somewhat the point and I just carried it to the logical end so we can stop making silly comparisons and be done with that.