Librarians turned snitch?

[Cadaverous Pallor]

FYI, the public library I work at does not keep a record of what you've checked out in the past. Once the item is returned, its connection to your record is severed (as long as you don't have any fines).

I'll bet that many other libraries are setting up their systems this way in retaliation to all this bullsht.

[innerSpaceman]

It's all well and good to say there's nothing new under the sun in the way of spying, but it's not simply a matter of accepting it cause it's always been done.

Using the NSA to spy on American citizens was last famously done by the Nixon Administration, which got clobbered for it in 1972. Nixon, like Bush, claimed an executive right to issue warrants for eavesdropping and wiretapping of Americans, but the Supreme Court flatly overruled him.

It is thus the law of the land that the president has no power to issue electronic monitoring warrants against American Citizens. It is also the law that the president does not have this power against international subjects either.

Specifically to curb any such wayward presidential ambitions, the FISA legislation was passed in 1978 - - establishing the FISA Court as the sole method for issuing of federal warrants for electronic monitoring of non-domestic subjects. The law makes it a felony for "any person" to go around the FISA Court for this purpose. It should be noted that the FISA Court is a rubber stamp, having denied just 8 warrant applications out of over 14,000. It is frankly amazing that the Bush Administration is essentially claiming they do not have to bother going thru FISA.

As Bush has just admitted that the non-FISA warrants were issued on his personal order, he has just confessed to committing a felony. I wonder whether scaeagles feels this is an impeachable offense.





Oh, and the recent NBC News story of Pentagon files being created on war-protesters smacks of another spying scandal of the Vietnam-era. The military had to foreswear all such domestic spying after it was uncovered in the early 70's ... eh, but what the hell - - that was 30 years ago! Who remembers? Time to start it all up again.


I hate that I have lived long enough to watch many of the horrors of the Vietnam era repeated in a corrupt military and a corrupt presidential administration. I agree with scaeagles that such corruption is nothing new. But it's alarming to me just how vigilent we must be to keep it at bay, for the same dirty tricks will be tried as soon as memory of the last round begins to fade.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

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

From the same transcript:

KROFT: (Voiceover) But only after Goss threatened to cut the NSA's budget. He still believes, though, that the NSA does not eavesdrop on innocent American citizens.

If the NSA has capabilities to screen enormous numbers of telephone calls, faxes, e-mails, whatnot, how do you filter out the American conversations, and how do you--how can you be sure that no one is listening to those conversations?

Rep. GOSS: We do have methods for that, and I am relatively sure that those procedures are working very well.

So, in this instance, at least if Portor Goss is to be believed, there were safeguards in place to ensure that it wasn't used domestically. Not that I necessarily trust that information, but it comes from the senate intelligence oversight comittee.

With the current situation, we have the President flat-out admitting that he ordered this, it is being done, and will continue to be done.

I see a difference.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Not Afraid

OK. Who is responsible for McCarthy's reincarnation?

I don't know, but damn do I hope someone figures out how to do the same with Edward R. Murrow.

[scaeagles]

I'm not convinced a felony took place (please refer to Alex's post - I believe it is the 13th of the thread - edited - its the 16th).

Pelosi and Reid have both given statements that they were, in fact, briefed on the program. Apparently, they weren't concerned about any legal violations or civil rights violations until the story hit in the NYT.

I am also reading that certain parts of the Patriot Act may have trumped or overridden parts of FISA, but I'm still not quite sure on all the legal parts of it.

I am torn, quite honestly. I'm a "slippery slope" kind of guy. I guess I fail to see harm in massive computers monitoring communications and flagging those with certain key words for analysis. How does this harm me, I wonder. But, it is certainly government intrusion. What could it lead to further on down the road?

I look at Lincoln, widely regarded as one of the greatest Presidents, who was certainly involved in a unique war, and some of the actions he took. He suspended the writ of habeus corpus over much of the Union. He had journalists thrown in prison. He also had various political enemies thrown in prison because they had spoken of supporting secession for some Union states. Harsh measures. Some prewar, some during the war. History certainly casts lincoln in a positive light. Were all these steps necessary? Without them being taken, would the North still have won the civil war? Who knows.

Tough times we live in. I suppose I have to evalute if I consider it a threat to my personal freedom and liberty to have a giant computer monitoring electronic conversations. If I were tagged as a terrorist for saying that my son's performance bombed (good lord, perhaps I just was tagged), I'd probably be pretty concerned.

[€uroMeinke]

I pretty much expect that anytime I use the internet my communications are being monitored - maybe not by the governement, but probably my employer, and various communications, media, and marketing firms.

Sure there's stuff I say and do that I hope remain private, but I aknowledge that it may well be beyond my control.

That said, this fear of "infiltration" reminds me unpleasently of the McCarthy era.

If we do have the best system of government in the world, it would be nice to let it work the way it's supposed to without the behind the scenes manipulations.

[scaeagles]

"Democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others." Winston Churchill.

There is no form of government that works the way it is supposed to.

If there were not people within our own borders that were bent on the destruction (or to inflict harm upon) the US of A, it would work a lot better.

So....what to do? Leave out certain forms of intelligence gathering that may prevent another 9/11 and then take the heat when another 9/11 takes place?

[€uroMeinke]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

So....what to do? Leave out certain forms of intelligence gathering that may prevent another 9/11 and then take the heat when another 9/11 takes place?

That of course is the challenge - having happend once, we can be certain someone would like to make it happen again. To some extent though I wonder if this sort of intelligence actually effective against this sort of thing. You have software and agents looking for patterns, whicle the other side works to create new ones.

For me I guess I lack the confidence that such things can be prevented through these extra-survellience tools, and I fear more the potential for abuse. On the one hand, I suppose I should find comfort in both sides of the aisle being complicit in this thing, but the anarchist in me trusts neither of them to do anything that isn't self-serving.

[scaeagles]

I would have to say our electronic intelligence gathering is probably pretty sophisticated and gathers lots of stuff. The sad thing about intelligence gathering is that to publically discuss the successes would be self defeating by tipping what had been stopped by what means.

Every leak, sadly, tips the terrorist element - whether among us or on foreign shores - as to what we are able to do and how successful we are at doing it. I would like to think this is why Pelosi and Reid did not come forward after being briefed as to NSA surveillance methods.

[Gemini Cricket]

The part that bugs me is that Bush ran both campaigns as him being some sort of moral compass for America. That he was going to put morality back into the presidency after the Clinton Administration left. Obviously that ain't true. It's the hypocrisy that steams me. But, scaeagles is right this abuse of power ain't shocking. Not coming from this president...