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Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily [W:452]

Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

none of the previous 43 ever did this, only obama:

The Washington Post has published a remarkable report showing that the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been monitoring the central servers of major Internet companies -- Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple -- and "extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time."

Why did a government source leak information of this program, dubbed "PRISM," to the Post? What follows is perhaps the most chilling paragraph I've read to date about U.S. government surveillance:

Firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities, is what drove a career intelligence officer to provide PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials to The Washington Post in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said.

Why the gov't source leaked PRISM - POLITICO.com

uncharted territory, isn't it exciting?

can you feel the chill up your leg?

like a cold wind off the lake...
 
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Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

meanwhile, another leak, another co conspirator...

zieg heil!
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Here's something for all the panties that just all the sudden caught fire about this:

"Everyone's been aware of it for years, every member of the Senate," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Chambliss told reporters that the program has been going on for seven years under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He said he was not aware of a single citizen filing a complaint about it.

linkypoo...

Where the hell were you guys when the secret AT&T closet was found and Qwest was found out to be the only phone company to tell the government to go to hell when the gov asked them to turn over their phone call records? Nowhere to be found is where you guys were.
 
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Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Here's something for all the panties that just all the sudden caught fire about this:

"Everyone's been aware of it for years, every member of the Senate," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Chambliss told reporters that the program has been going on for seven years under the auspices of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He said he was not aware of a single citizen filing a complaint about it.

linkypoo...

Where the hell were you guys when the secret AT&T closet was found and Qwest was found out to be the only phone company to tell the government to go to hell when the gov asked them to turn over their phone call records? Nowhere to be found is where you guys were.

It's okay because a senator tells us no citizens have filed a complaint. About a secret surveillance program we weren't aware of. That's a rich defense.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

It's okay because a senator tells us no citizens have filed a complaint. About a secret surveillance program we weren't aware of. That's a rich defense.

Yes, Saxby Chambliss is a dumbass. I agree. Hardly refutes the point that the senate all knew about it for 7 years.

And btw... it's NOT okay. I never said so and in fact it pisses me the hell off. And it has pissed me off for 7 years. Not just for a single day after some partisan echo-chamber told me to all of a sudden be angry.
 
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Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Nice to see that a conservative finally gives a **** about this kind of stuff.

I've always cared. The real revelation comes from all the liberals that apparently stopped caring.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I've always cared.

Yeah. It really shows in your posts. By all means, link to one of your posts you've previously made showing how you remotely gave a **** before a day or two ago.

jmotivator said:
The more troubling revelation is all the liberals that stopped caring.

This is the sentence that makes more of your point. It's all about making a partisan political point.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

What evidence is there that all Senators and Congressman approved of this program over the years?

Do you think every Senator and Congressman who is not on an intelligence committee has the same level of access as they do?

I find it much more likely to be a combination of
A) Intelligence Committee "we can't tell you what it is but trust us, its good for America"
B) Nancy Pelosi's famed "You have to vote on it to see what is in it."

This isn't just about Bush and Obama. This is about ridiculous expansion and over reach of government power.

When you have Senators and Congressman that can serve so many consecutive terms that they are fully entrenched and don't even have to bother campaigning anymore, you get this kind of ruling class mentality that they have the "flexibility" to do whatever they want and don't feel that they have to strictly work hard to please their constituency any more.

I gotta be honest I don't see allot of citizens saying "you know what I'd really like, I'd like for the government to read all of my text/e-mails/social media", "I'd like to be under surveillance 24/7" "I'd like for there to be so many laws and regulations on the book that I have to hire an attorney just to be sure I am not breaking a law/regulation and any given time of day."
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I watched the Justice Department Oversight (oxymoron) & Budget hearing featuring Eric Holder. I laughed when Senator Kirk asked if Congress was being monitored, as well at Holder's "answer". I thought it was particularly humorous that Kirk was more concerned about colleagues of his being monitored than 100 MILLION Americans by the NSA.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I've known about this for years. If you're a senator and this is news to you... you are so incredibly out of the loop it is astounding. NSA whistleblowers have been making credible claims about this for years. Incidences where the government got busted setting up a data center linked to telcos have happened all over the U.S.

If you want to play the partisan game, guess who has been covering this all this time? Alternative liberal media and Alex Jones.

EDIT: Some history

Jan 2006
An NSA Whistleblower Speaks Out
http://www.alternet.org/story/30387/an_nsa_whistleblower_speaks_out

Jan 2009
Whistleblower Levels Shocking Allegations at Bush's Spying Programs
http://wvvw.alternet.org/story/122234/whistleblower_levels_shocking_allegations_at_bush%27s_spying_programs

June 2011
Government Case Against Whistleblower Thomas Drake Collapses
http://www.thenation.com/article/161376/government-case-against-whistleblower-thomas-drake-collapses

March 2012
Exposed: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive Secret Domestic Spy Center in Bluffdale, Utah
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/21/exposed_inside_the_nsas_largest_and

Sep 2012
Private Spies and Our Growing Surveillance State
http://www.thenation.com/article/169727/private-spies-and-our-growing-surveillance-state
 
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Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

The article states that the Patriot Act is the fig leaf used for the over reach. But nobody but the President (read: no SANE person) interprets the provisions that broadly.

... So Obama railing against the Patriot Act was really just a way of saying "You REALLY don't want to trust ME with that..."


And this is why a lot of civil libertarians spoke out against the Patriot Act. Even if you trust the man in office to not abuse it, how could you be sure about the next guy? A costly lesson for conservatives (and the rest of America).
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Yeah. It really shows in your posts. By all means, link to one of your posts you've previously made showing how you remotely gave a **** before a day or two ago.

I've been here 4 months. Please show me all the posts you have made that showed you caring about this subject in the last 4 months before the news broke. A brief scan of your recent posts reveals you seem to care a lot more about the pay scale at Walmart than you do NSA data mining even AFTER the story broke.

This is the sentence that makes more of your point. It's all about making a partisan political point.

It was a direct response to your accusation, I just flipped it back. One has to wonder when you come into a thread like this and attack the people who are agreeing with you rather than the ones who don't that your motives are entirely partisan.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I wonder if it has unlimited data?
 

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Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Ok Bush did it too. Lets remove him from office. Oh wait.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I am not really sure how I feel about this story...

When the Patriot act was instituted and this practice was initiated, I defended it with the explanations that the Bush administration gave, in that they weren't listening in to actual conversations of Americans on a day to day basis, but that they were tracking calls made from here, to an overseas known terror figure, or vice versa.

Many liberals that I know and respect used, turns out quite prophetically at the time, that this power would be abused, and we may not like it when Bush was gone...Crystal Ball? Nah, just something we should have listened to.

Although I do think that this was/is just an extension of what has been going on for the past 7 years at least, and I am not that quick to listen to how evil this is, set to some horror movie sound track, while the broadcaster in somber voice tells us how the evil Obama is for doing this...

What does seem to bother me, is that it is coming out that it is not only the meta data involved in your phone records that is being stored because it may be lost as the companies routinely scrub their history's....It is now revealed that the program also includes, your web traffic, your credit card purchases, your e-mail....etc...This is intrusive...Whether it is actually read, looked at, or not, is not the question, the question is do we have a 4th amendment anymore? Where is our right to privacy?

This is a case where, as I said, I defended it when it started in the Bush administration, I was wrong.:peace
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I am not really sure how I feel about this story...

When the Patriot act was instituted and this practice was initiated, I defended it with the explanations that the Bush administration gave, in that they weren't listening in to actual conversations of Americans on a day to day basis, but that they were tracking calls made from here, to an overseas known terror figure, or vice versa.

Many liberals that I know and respect used, turns out quite prophetically at the time, that this power would be abused, and we may not like it when Bush was gone...Crystal Ball? Nah, just something we should have listened to.

Although I do think that this was/is just an extension of what has been going on for the past 7 years at least, and I am not that quick to listen to how evil this is, set to some horror movie sound track, while the broadcaster in somber voice tells us how the evil Obama is for doing this...

What does seem to bother me, is that it is coming out that it is not only the meta data involved in your phone records that is being stored because it may be lost as the companies routinely scrub their history's....It is now revealed that the program also includes, your web traffic, your credit card purchases, your e-mail....etc...This is intrusive...Whether it is actually read, looked at, or not, is not the question, the question is do we have a 4th amendment anymore? Where is our right to privacy?

This is a case where, as I said, I defended it when it started in the Bush administration, I was wrong.:peace

Question is, why haven't liberals gotten rid of it?
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I can understand the desire for this data but I blame the judge for providing. Verizon and the others could easily provide a schema for the data and then when a court authorizes the tracking of a suspect, then the relevant data can be sent over. I feel badly for those wrong numbers that accidentally get a call from a terrorist.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Question is, why haven't liberals gotten rid of it?

What is useful for one, is also useful to another, just not for the same possible reasons.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I am not really sure how I feel about this story...

When the Patriot act was instituted and this practice was initiated, I defended it with the explanations that the Bush administration gave, in that they weren't listening in to actual conversations of Americans on a day to day basis, but that they were tracking calls made from here, to an overseas known terror figure, or vice versa.

Many liberals that I know and respect used, turns out quite prophetically at the time, that this power would be abused, and we may not like it when Bush was gone...Crystal Ball? Nah, just something we should have listened to.

Although I do think that this was/is just an extension of what has been going on for the past 7 years at least, and I am not that quick to listen to how evil this is, set to some horror movie sound track, while the broadcaster in somber voice tells us how the evil Obama is for doing this...

What does seem to bother me, is that it is coming out that it is not only the meta data involved in your phone records that is being stored because it may be lost as the companies routinely scrub their history's....It is now revealed that the program also includes, your web traffic, your credit card purchases, your e-mail....etc...This is intrusive...Whether it is actually read, looked at, or not, is not the question, the question is do we have a 4th amendment anymore? Where is our right to privacy?

This is a case where, as I said, I defended it when it started in the Bush administration, I was wrong.:peace

I admire your candor!

I was one of those condemning the patriot act from its beginning. It was unconstitutional then, and it's unconstitutional now. It nullified the Fourth Amendment then, and we're seeing now the results of 10 years of unconstitutional governance.

When we reject constitutional government, this is what we get. We have forsaken the US Constitution, and this is what we get.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I admire your candor!

I was one of those condemning the patriot act from its beginning. It was unconstitutional then, and it's unconstitutional now. It nullified the Fourth Amendment then, and we're seeing now the results of 10 years of unconstitutional governance.

When we reject constitutional government, this is what we get. We have forsaken the US Constitution, and this is what we get.

We've sold our privacy for the ultimate witch hunt.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Question is, why haven't liberals gotten rid of it?

Oh that is an easy one...

Because both Liberals and Conservatives have played into the post 9/11 paranoia. Both parties represent big government and the left/right paradigm controls our politics.

They are two different sectors of the same entity.
 
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