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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

That's a great question. What can we do as individuals? Write/phone/e-mail our elected reps?

Why bother with elected reps? Just send something to your mother ... the Government will see it.

I heard something funny earlier ... they said we all have Obamaphones now.

Another question I've heard posed yesterday and today ... with all the phone & internet data mining, how come they missed stuff like the Boston Marathon bombing?
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Thanks for the props, but it seems like you're immersed in your own partisanship. You're more focused on calling out liberals than just saying that this NSA situation is a problem. Even further, you're focusing on liberal partisanship when there is plenty of conservative partisanship in the thread too - starting with the literal first post of the thread.

Correct

Though I'm sure it was unintentional, but by concentrating on partisanship, Zyphlin has been sucked into the very partisanship that he deplores.

The fact is, we are where we are because of Congress, the White House, and the Judiciary. All three branches of the govt are complicit in this, and so are both parties.
 
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

Thank you! I'm in agreement with you.

After 9-11 I wanted it to never happen again so I didn't

bitch about Patriot Act.I felt as tho it wouldn't affect

me since I don't do terrorism. I was wrong.

The USA I know doesn't do crap like this!!:cry:
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

The fact is, we are where we are because of Congress, the White House, and the Judiciary. All three branches of the govt are complicit in this, and so are both parties.

Absolutely. And again, my issue isn't really partisanship. I expect liberals to not be as vocally upset about this as they were under Bush. I expect conservatives to be more vocally upset about this then it was under Bush. My issue is with either side trying to act like it's only the OTHER side that is acting in that way. It's the nature of tribal relations...people are often going to act a bit different to things when its "their people".

In this particular instance, Obama is responsible for his administrations own actions, regardless of what people before him have done. At the same time, those that came before him are responsible for putting in place the tools to allow him to do such things. And that continues on back administration to administration to administratoin. I expect Democrats to be more upset about those who put the tools into place and first used them and I expect Republicans to be more upset about the current misuse of the tools. It just irks me when either side feels that kind of mentality is only acceptable for their own side to have.

For every bitch of "Why aren't the democrats yelling about Obama, they did it when the Republicans were in!" by someone on the right, there was an individual on the right (sometimes the same individual) 10 years ago yelling "It's okay! It's for security, do you want the terrorists to win!". And it's the same on the flip for democrats.

People by and large treat "Theirs" a bit differently.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Jmac and Penn's posts made me think about this.

I wrote my Senior Thesis for college on the Patriot Act. One of the focuses of my paper was the notion that these significant infringements upon civil liberties in the name of security have occured numerous times in our countries history, typically corresponding with some kind of MASSIVE event. I basically described things like a balance, with "Freedom" on one side and "Security" on the other. One of these massive events happen and drops into the Security side, clearly pushing things out of balance. Typically, these instances happen at times where the "Freedom" side is a bit heavier than the "security" side, though not always.

In those instances, the American Public by and large are willing to give up freedom in exchange for security because of the impact of that massive event and a realization that, at that moment, their security is more important to actually be able to use their freedom. So you have things like Patriot, or Internment camps, or journalists being penned up on the bottom of boats sitting in a river.

As time moves farther and farther from that 0 hour point of the Massive event, the balance slowly begins to relevel itself. We have many checks in this country to somewhat help with the natural rebalancing of things; the press, the court system, our electoral system and the public, various legislative things like sunset clauses, legislation, etc.

As you see, the "public" is one of those things that help balance it. The farther from an event you get, the less inclined people are to continue with that reduction in freedom in the name of security. It happens for a variety of reasons; distance from the event allows more rational than emotional thinking, fatigue over the various measures that were put in place, more chances of it affecting them in a personal way, and even simple partisanship, to name a few. And so I'm not surprised to see some who previously supported things now being those that oppose it, and while I imagine some and perhaps much is based on partisanship I think some is due to those other factors coming into play.

Had Kerry won in 2004 and all the NSA stuff still happened in 2006, I think there would've been some people going after him for it (As I said, partisanship is one reason) but I think there'd be a lot fewer than those willing to go after Obama today...because we were still much closer to the trigger event, we didn't have as much time to get fatigued from all the efforts, etc and thus I think there would've been more people still taking the "It's worth it" type of mentality.

This natural progression is why I've not been massively ruffled about the Patriot Act and some of the things that have been done during Bush, or with Obama, especially in terms of people thinking that either needed to go to jail or be impeached or any such thing. The most troublesome parts are or will be cut out and even the less troublesome ones will slowly go away as the public becomes more and more apt to swing that balance to more Freedom to Security, up until such a point that we have another Massive Event to restart the cycle yet again.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Kill the Patriot Act....today, please.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Kill the Patriot Act....today, please.

I'm going to go with no. When it's biggest critic in the senate suggests 90% of it is good law, I'd rather take scapels to the problem parts than kill the whole thing and then attempt to get the useful stuff repassed in an atmosphere where simply being attached at some point to "PATROIT" would be toxic and nearly guarantee it'd not be touched.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

So one wonders what they do with that information? Flag customers who make call to certain countries? It has to be something like that. ??

Yes and whatever they do to you under the Patriot Acts you are prevented under the Patriot Acts from telling anyone what "they" did. In essence, **** goes on, maybe even to your next door neighbors or friends you have from work, and they can't talk about it or what was done or why it happened. In all likelihood they're never told exactly why whatever happened to them happened.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Correct

Though I'm sure it was unintentional, but by concentrating on partisanship, Zyphlin has been sucked into the very partisanship that he deplores.

The fact is, we are where we are because of Congress, the White House, and the Judiciary. All three branches of the govt are complicit in this, and so are both parties
.


To a degree ... but evaluating possible differences in motivation and extent would be wise in order to get an accurate degree of concern for these practices.

surviving-the-creeping-crud.jpg
 
Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I wasn't aware that W was President in 1991.....? With that said, you do have a point in that we allow things to happen that later become problems then say to ourselves, "what the....?"

Let me restate that, it started with the legislation on the "infrastructure" in 1991. Since that point all cell phones can be tracked via gps, can have the mic turned on remotely by police, etc...

Bush stepped it up a notch with the total information awareness, that basically logs all phone calls, emails, text messages, etc, for computer analysis finding key words that will flag the message to be checked.

Was typing too quick for my own good, the point Is that this is nothing new.

Oh, also, google itself was started with NSA money, so who do you think gets that data?!

So youre ok with Obama doing this?

No, this has been headed in the wrong direction for more than 20 years.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

That's a great question. What can we do as individuals? Write/phone/e-mail our elected reps?

THats about all we can do till the next election when we can replace them all.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Lisa Gerard came up with the solution to this problem 52 years ago.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Well, for one, I don't think we all agree.

Second, "what we're going to do about it" may be the one area where "the last guy" may be important in terms of the notion of precedence. I know there were complaints and issues in legal senses and others regarding what occured with Bush. Knowing how those proceeded and what occured and what was established would be important to know.

Third, "what we're going to do about it" would largely depend on what your focus is. Is it that this action is bad and needs to be stopped? Is it that laws that ALLOW for these type of actoins to be done are bad and THEY need to be stopped? Is it that you think Obama is bad for doing this and it means he needs to be removed? And, on the latter point, is your desire for that so much that you'd focus on that even if it's likely to fail at the expense of not being able to actually get the former issues resolved?

I think Rand Paul probalby has the right idea on this in terms of "doing something about it" if anything needs to be done, and that's some legislation attempting to firmly set down a limit on doing such actions.

Thats what I was getting at. People seem to be against the blanket and secret nature of whats going on. So congress or the President needs to put a limit on whats being collected such that its only collected when needed and only whats relevant to a particular investigation. The only way to make them do that right now is petitioning govt.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

I'm going to go with no. When it's biggest critic in the senate suggests 90% of it is good law, I'd rather take scapels to the problem parts than kill the whole thing and then attempt to get the useful stuff repassed in an atmosphere where simply being attached at some point to "PATROIT" would be toxic and nearly guarantee it'd not be touched.

I could care less what most massively corrupted Senators think.

Politicians love power - that's why (imo) most of them entered politics.

And the Patriot Act means more power to the government - less to the people.


The Patriot Act lessens freedoms in the name of fear - and that is ALWAYS wrong.

I will not debate this point as it is (IMO) an absolute.


If America can only survive by taking away individual freedoms and liberties of it's people, then let it die.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

We all seem to agree that what Obama is doing is wrong, so what are we going to do about it?

Well, I for one have been boycotting Verizon since 2008. Only one man but I do what I can. :)
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

The Patriot Act lessens freedoms in the name of fear - and that is ALWAYS wrong.

Every bit of security law...from PATRIOT To FISA to even simple basic laws against things like murder or theft...ALL lessen freedom in SOME FORM in "fear" of something bad occuring.

Let's be real here. No one, save for an anarchist, has any issue with the generalized notion of giving up some level of freedom in exchange for security. It is merely where one draws a line.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Every bit of security law...from PATRIOT To FISA to even simple basic laws against things like murder or theft...ALL lessen freedom in SOME FORM in "fear" of something bad occuring.

Let's be real here. No one, save for an anarchist, has any issue with the generalized notion of giving up some level of freedom in exchange for security. It is merely where one draws a line.

:rolleyes:

Oh come on now - you knew exactly what I meant.

If you want to get into an anal retentive contest - find someone else to do it with.


I am not talking about jay walking - I am talking about a major increase in government intrusion into American's lives without any prior notice or apparent reason at any time that they so choose without America being in an official state of war.

And the pathetic War on an Emotion (Terror), doesn't count.


Have a nice day.
 
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Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

:rolleyes:

Oh come on now - you knew exactly what I meant.

If you don't want people to take what you type as serious, then perhaps stop using defintive words like always and placing them in all caps to make them stand out as very important and literal. It's not my fault you typed what you type.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily
The NSA has been collecting this kind of phone data for nearly twelve years.
The only news is that now we have a government document released that shows that this is occurring.
If this is a brand new revelation to you ...where have you been for the last twelve years?




Seriously, spin that, Obama fans.

The NSA has been collecting this kind of phone data for nearly twelve years.
The only news is that now we have a government document released that shows that this is occurring.
If this is a brand new revelation to you ...where have you been for the last twelve years?
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

If you don't want people to take what you type as serious, then perhaps stop using defintive words like always and placing them in all caps to make them stand out as very important and literal. It's not my fault you typed what you type.

So you honestly thought that by typing 'always' in reference to the Patriot Act that I might have been referring to ALL laws?

Riiiiiiight.


When I typed 'fear' - I was referring to fear from the 9/11 attacks and the laws that have come from the fear those attacks generated.

I thought that was fairly obvious given the OP and my mentioning the Patriot Act...I guess not.



Now please find someone else to have anal retentive, urinating contests with.

And if you don't want to take my public posts seriously - FINE with me.


Have a nice day.
 
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Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

The only news is that now we have a government document released that shows that this is occurring

aclu: surveillance under bush "at least was targeted at agents of al qaeda"

forbes link above
 
Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

The NSA has been collecting this kind of phone data for nearly twelve years.
The only news is that now we have a government document released that shows that this is occurring.
If this is a brand new revelation to you ...where have you been for the last twelve years?

What is your point?
If a man has been beating his wife for over a decade, does that make it ok to continue doing it?
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Well, I for one have been boycotting Verizon since 2008. Only one man but I do what I can. :)

You dont use a phone?
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

The NSA has been collecting this kind of phone data for nearly twelve years.
The only news is that now we have a government document released that shows that this is occurring.
If this is a brand new revelation to you ...where have you been for the last twelve years?

Initially this program was used (or so we've been told) to track calls between the US and foreign nations ONLY. I'm not about to get into whether that was actually what happened or not because I don't know but what I DO know is that the authority to do this comes from the FISA court. FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I'm thinking that it's a pretty freaking big leap to assume that something designed to collect foreign source data can be expanded to every US citizen and even exclude foreign exchanges.
 
Re: Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily

Initially this program was used (or so we've been told) to track calls between the US and foreign nations ONLY. I'm not about to get into whether that was actually what happened or not because I don't know but what I DO know is that the authority to do this comes from the FISA court. FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I'm thinking that it's a pretty freaking big leap to assume that something designed to collect foreign source data can be expanded to every US citizen and even exclude foreign exchanges.

And I think one of the main issues here is the secrecy. I think everyone assumed the govt was already spying on us when needed. And so did the terrorists. All we have now is confirmation. The major problem people have, IMO, is that they weren't asked. They don't know whats going on, so they cant make sure its ok. We have secret warrants surveiling the press, secret spying on citizens emails and phone calls, secret after secret. And I think Obama was right today when he said

"I think it is important to recognize that you can't have 100% security and then also have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we are going to have to make some choices as a society."

People are choosing privacy.
 
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