It wasn't meant to provide comfort, I certainily don't take any in it. Just stating the fact that most of the limits of government police activity are imposed through evidentiary exclusion. If evidentiary inclusion is not the goal of a police activity, there aren't actually all that many laws prohibiting activities.

Which is cool in a society which requires trials to bring action on someone - it seems we've been departing from that.

But yeah, realisticly I know "privacy" is an illusion, that sometimes you have to watch what you say less some psycho go off on you. It's just dissappointing when your government becomes that psycho.

Scaeagles, I do realise what you are saying, and you are right about responsibility. If any Dems knew about it and didn't say anything, then they should suffer the consequences. We shall have to wait and see. By his own admission, Bush did do this, and he said he would and will do it again, because he's the boss. The buck stops at his desk.

Scaeagles, if you only knew what I thought of most Dems in office- it's not much, I can tell you. I just think even less of the other side.

I'm curious why this leak is a threat to national security. I would presume any would be terrorist is already paranoid enough to suspect he is being watched.

Anyone remember "echelon"? Huge blow up in the year 2000. But wait! Bush wasn't elected until 2000! How can this be blamed on him? We must find a way!

The NSA was not only monitoring and flagging everything from cell phones conversations to items overhead on baby monitors, they were actually sharing the info with Canada, Austrailia, and Great Britain.

Not good. Not good then, not good now. Hardly a new phenomena.

Again, I completely stand by my theory of complicitiness and timing of the release to coincide with the Iraqi election.

On the other hand, one could say that the timing was in Bush's favor. The NY Times had this info prior to the 2004 elections but did not release it then. I wonder why? They sat on the story for over a year to conduct 'additional reporting'...

The more I think/hear/read about this, I suppose one thing amazes me more than anything else - that this is being portrayed as something new. Echelon and Carnivore were programs started in the 90s. I have no doubt that there were programs prior to those that did similar things.

Go ahead an object to the programs. But don't act like it is something new and shocking and unique to the current administration.

Ah, but there is a major difference.

Echelon was used to monitor other countries, not US citizens. Carnivore required a court order before it could be used to monitor an individual. So, in actuality, domestic wiretaps on US citizens without a court order is both shocking and unique.

Carnivore

Not based on what I've read. From a 60 minutes transcript -

That specific conversation isn't going to come up and be flagged unless ALL conversations are being monitored.

Here's a link to the entire 60 mintues transcript that's from -

http://cryptome.org/echelon-60min.htm

I can't speak to Carnivore. You may be right. As I understand it, when Carnivore started it was illegal because email was not currently covered by any law and it took a while for the laws to catch up, but I have nothing solid on Carnivore to support that.