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Greenwald says 'low-level' NSA workers can tap into phone, Internet records

greyhat said:
Call your congressman and see if he can request POTUS' Daily Briefing- see what answer he gets...

The intel committees are tasked with a certain amount of oversight, not micromanaging.
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And what "certain amount" is that?
 
greyhat said:
You must have me confused with someone else; I've advocated no such thing. Check with the voices inside of you- they may have a clue.
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Check out your post #245.

Is your memory as deficient as your grammar?
 
Henry David said:
Check out your post #245.

Is your memory as deficient as your grammar?
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I take it you're unable to pick up on sarcasm; it doesn't surprise me.
 
greyhat said:
So a law passed overwhelmingly by both chambers of Congress is illegal bc YOU say so? LOL

Oh brother, your way out there now. May I suggest some top picks on bunkers and ammo for your impending revolt?

I hear The Bikini Atoll makes a great place this time of year.
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The Supreme Court routinely rules that laws passed by congress are unconstitutional. The fourth amendment is not ambiguous, anyone comparing current surveillance practices with the language of the fourth amendment can see the violation. (if they are willing to be honest)
 
Hard Truth said:
The Supreme Court routinely rules that laws passed by congress are unconstitutional. The fourth amendment is not ambiguous, anyone comparing current surveillance practices with the language of the fourth amendment can see the violation. (if they are willing to be honest)
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The Fourth Amendment not ambiguous? Really..? This is probably one of the most ambiguous parts of The Constitution. Take a look at it.

You may also want to revisit your history; the US has a long standing tradition of wartime surveillance of the enemy, both foreign and domestic, and while we’re not at war with a State per se, we’re at war nonetheless (whether we should or not is besides the point).

This tradition of intel collection goes back to our colonial times and is a practice as old as communications itself; during the Revolutionary War George Washington made frequent use of his Army's collection capabilities; he directed the interception of British mail, the opening of such documents and the exploitation of their data. You may argue that this was directed at a foreign power and that’s true, but such logic has extended to other cases; during the Civil War the Union wiretapped the Confederate’s telegraphs and I remind you, without a warrant and while targeting US persons.

Even in more recent times such as WWI, Wilson authorized the US military to intercept telegraph, telephone and cable communications headed in and out of the US (sound familiar?); he derived this authority from The Constitution and from Congress’ declaration of war, an authorization to use military force that did not explicitly include language related to SIGINT collection methods.

This was once again done in WWII after Pearl Harbor and one can see how such protocols exist today, in a more technologically advanced manner through the NSA’s (and other's) various programs.

You may not like the truth for it is counterintuitive to what you believe, but the truth it is nonetheless…
 
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Misterveritis said:
You have a history of aggressive, overbearing posts. I responded to one of them.
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lol can you imagine a world in which I treated all opinions equally, as if they were equally valid and some not worthy of derision? I can't. I'm glad you admitted that you weren't responding to random rudeness, though. I phrased my response to him in almost the exact way he responded to me. You didn't mind his. No biggie, but don't try to scramble for some moral high ground.
 
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Misterveritis said:
I understand different points of view. I do not understand the evil that men do in the name of security.
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Apparently you don't understand different points of view, because you automatically think that what you don't agree with is evil. Grow up. That's such an immature and childish way to look at things.

The system is broken if a vote means nothing. If our choices are Tweedledee or Tweedledum then it is time to go back to basics and actually follow the Constitution. If we fail how is it possible to not have a revolution? History shows that people will suffer for a long time but not forever.

So we fix it or we end it. Revolutions are horrible, destructive, rending things. So we have to pull on our big boy pants and fix it.
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Horribly immature. You don't like a government policy and are now saying that if they're aren't enough people that agree with you, you want to resort to violence. Pathetic. Just move.
 
Henry David said:
What part of "no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause" do you not understand?
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BAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH

looooooooooooooooool

Is this where you pretend that 'probable' isn't subjective, Henry? I see there's a couple more pages after you posted this. Let's see you argue that it's objective for a few pages (fingers crossed, please please please do this). No wonder you're a conspiracy theorist.
 
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greyhat said:
Take up arms then; see how far that takes you....what governance did you like btw?
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It seems he likes whatever he agrees with. If he doesn't agree with it, he wants a revolution. There's toddlers out there with more maturity.
 
OldWorldOrder said:
It seems he likes whatever he agrees with. If he doesn't agree with it, he wants a revolution. There's toddlers out there with more maturity.
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Yep! Sad though.
 
greyhat said:
The Fourth Amendment not ambiguous? Really..? This is probably one of the most ambiguous parts of The Constitution. Take a look at it.

You may also want to revisit your history; the US has a long standing tradition of wartime surveillance of the enemy, both foreign and domestic, and while we’re not at war with a State per se, we’re at war nonetheless (whether we should or not is besides the point).

This tradition of intel collection goes back to our colonial times and is a practice as old as communications itself; during the Revolutionary War George Washington made frequent use of his Army's collection capabilities; he directed the interception of British mail, the opening of such documents and the exploitation of their data. You may argue that this was directed at a foreign power and that’s true, but such logic has extended to other cases; during the Civil War the Union wiretapped the Confederate’s telegraphs and I remind you, without a warrant and while targeting US persons.

Even in more recent times such as WWI, Wilson authorized the US military to intercept telegraph, telephone and cable communications headed in and out of the US (sound familiar?); he derived this authority from The Constitution and from Congress’ declaration of war, an authorization to use military force that did not explicitly include language related to SIGINT collection methods.

This was once again done in WWII after Pearl Harbor and one can see how such protocols exist today, in a more technologically advanced manner through the NSA’s (and other's) various programs.

You may not like the truth for it is counterintuitive to what you believe, but the truth it is nonetheless…
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None of that is comparable to collecting, retaining and analyzing telephone and internet meta data (and content to an unknown degree) from the entire nation.

Washington's war was before the constitution existed. The actions of the armies during that war may have lead to the public demand for the protections in the Bill of Rights (i.e quartering soldiers in people's homes) The confederates during the civil war were no longer citizens. The government has a long history of violating human rights and the constitution. That does not make it legal or acceptable.
 
Hard Truth said:
None of that is comparable to collecting, retaining and analyzing telephone and internet meta data (and content to an unknown degree) from the entire nation.

Washington's war was before the constitution existed. The actions of the armies during that war may have lead to the public demand for the protections in the Bill of Rights (i.e quartering soldiers in people's homes) The confederates during the civil war were no longer citizens. The government has a long history of violating human rights and the constitution. That does not make it legal or acceptable.
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Ok, if you say so...LOL history disagrees with you. But that's fine, you go on with your fantasy.
 
No fantasies required. There are plenty of examples of what happens to countries that allow the government to eliminate civil rights protections in the interest of "fighting terrorism."

On 11 September 1973, the combined Chilean Armed Forces (the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Carabineros) overthrew Allende's government in a coup, during which the presidential palace, La Moneda, was shelled and Allende died.[16] W.....

The new government rounded up thousands of people and held them in the national stadium, where many were killed, setting the stage for decades of brutal repression that followed. As many as 3,000 people died during Pinochet's years in power, and more than 1,000 are still missing.[17]

In the months that followed the coup, the junta, with authoring work by historian Gonzalo Vial and admiral Patricio Carvajal, published a book titled El Libro Blanco del cambio de gobierno en Chile (commonly known as El Libro Blanco, "The White Book of the Change of Government in Chile"), where they attempted to justify the coup by claiming that they were in fact anticipating a self-coup (the alleged Plan Zeta, or Plan Z) that Allende's government or its associates were purportedly preparing.

...

Almost immediately after the military's seizure of power, the junta banned all the leftist parties that had constituted Allende's UP coalition.[33] All other parties were placed in "indefinite recess" and were later banned outright. The government's violence was directed not only against dissidents but also against their families and other civilians.[33]......]

The Rettig Report concluded 2,279 persons who disappeared during the military government were killed for political reasons or as a result of political violence, and approximately 31,947 tortured according to the later Valech Report, while 1,312 were exiled. The latter were chased all over the world by the intelligence agencies. In Latin America, this was made in the frame of Operation Condor, a cooperation plan between the various intelligence agencies of South American countries, assisted by a United States CIA communication base in Panama. Pinochet believed these operations were necessary in order to "save the country from communism".[34] In 2011, commission identified an additional 9,800 victims of political repression during the Pinochet regime. This led to the total number of victims being revised to approximately 40,018, including 3,065 killed.[35]


Other victims of Condor included, among hundreds of less famous persons, Juan José Torres, the former President of Bolivia, assassinated in Buenos Aires on 2 June 1976; Carmelo Soria, a UN diplomat working for the CEPAL, assassinated in July 1976; Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States and minister in Allende's cabinet, assassinated after his release from internment and exile in Washington, D.C. by a car bomb on 21 September 1976. This led to strained relations with the US and to the extradition of Michael Townley, a US citizen who worked for the DINA and had organized Letelier's assassination. Other targeted victims, who escaped assassination, included Christian-Democrat Bernardo Leighton, who escaped an assassination attempt in Rome in 1975 by the Italian terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie; Carlos Altamirano, the leader of the Chilean Socialist Party, targeted for murder in 1975 by Pinochet, along with Volodia Teitelboim, member of the Communist Party; Pascal Allende, the nephew of Salvador Allende and president of the MIR, who escaped an assassination attempt in Costa Rica in March 1976; US Congressman Edward Koch, who became aware in 2001 of relations between death threats and his denunciation of Operation Condor, etc. Furthermore, according to current investigations, Eduardo Frei Montalva, the Christian Democrat President of Chile from 1964 to 1970, may have been poisoned in 1982 by toxin produced by DINA biochemist Eugenio Berrios.[36]

Protests continued, however, during the 1980s, leading to several scandals. In March 1985, the savage murder of three Communist Party members led to the resignation of César Mendoza, head of the Carabineros and member of the junta since its formation. During a 1986 protest against Pinochet, 21 year old American photographer Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri and 18 year old student Carmen Gloria Quintana were burnt alive, with only Carmen surviving.

In August 1989, Marcelo Barrios Andres, a 21 year-old member of the FPMR (the armed wing of the PCC, created in 1983, which had attempted to assassinate Pinochet on 7 September 1986), was assassinated by a group of military personnel who were supposed to arrest him on orders of Valparaíso's public prosecutor. However, they simply executed him; this case was included in the Rettig Report.[37] Among the killed and disappeared during the military regime were 440 MIR guerrillas.[38

Wikipedia
 
Hard Truth said:
No fantasies required. There are plenty of examples of what happens to countries that allow the government to eliminate civil rights protections in the interest of "fighting terrorism."

On 11 September 1973, the combined Chilean Armed Forces (the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Carabineros) overthrew Allende's government in a coup, during which the presidential palace, La Moneda, was shelled and Allende died.[16] W.....
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LMFAOL I like Chile, but our history is different- if you can't tell then am sorry for you.
 
That was one of the most hardcore slippery slope arguments I've ever read.
 
The Stasi infiltrated almost every aspect of GDR life. In the mid-1980s, a network of IMs began growing in both German states; by the time East Germany collapsed in 1989, the Stasi employed 91,015 employees and 173,081 informants.[25] About one of every 63 East Germans collaborated with the Stasi. By at least one estimate, the Stasi maintained greater surveillance over its own people than any secret police force in history.[26] The Stasi employed one full-time agent for every 166 East Germans. The ratios swelled when informers were factored in: counting part-time informers, the Stasi had one informer per 6.5 people. By comparison, the Gestapo employed one secret policeman per 2,000 people. This comparison led Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal to call the Stasi even more oppressive than the Gestapo.[2....

Tactics employed under Zersetzung generally involved the disruption of the victim’s private or family life. This often included breaking into homes and messing with the contents – moving furniture, altering the timing of an alarm, removing pictures from walls or replacing one variety of tea with another. Other practices included smear campaigns, denunciation, provocation, psychological warfare, psychological subversion, wiretapping, bugging, mysterious phone calls or unnecessary deliveries, even including sending a vibrator to a target's wife. Usually victims had no idea the Stasi were responsible. Many thought they were losing their minds, and mental breakdowns and suicide could result.

One great advantage of the harassment perpetrated under Zersetzung was that its subtle nature meant that it was able to be denied.

Wikipedia
 
OldWorldOrder said:
That was one of the most hardcore slippery slope arguments I've ever read.
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I know huh; his next argument is that of Rome and Caesar... *yawns
 
"trust us"

"It can't happen here."

"If you aren't a criminal you have nothing to fear."

"That was then, this is now."
 
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"COINTELPRO tactics have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.[3][4][5]...............

FBI records show that 85% of COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed "subversive",[7] including communist and socialist organizations; organizations and individuals associated with the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Congress of Racial Equality and other civil rights organizations; black nationalist groups; the American Indian Movement; a broad range of organizations labeled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen; almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, as well as individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; the National Lawyers Guild; organizations and individuals associated with the women's rights movement; nationalist groups such as those seeking independence for Puerto Rico, United Ireland, and Cuban exile movements including Orlando Bosch's Cuban Power and the Cuban Nationalist Movement; and additional notable Americans —even Albert Einstein, who was a socialist and a member of several civil rights groups, came under FBI surveillance during the years just before COINTELPRO's official inauguration.[8] The remaining 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert white hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.[9]...........

Wikipedia
 
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The final report of the Church Committee concluded:

Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous -- and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations -- have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity.

Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed -- including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.

Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.

The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities. Until recently the Executive branch has neither delineated the scope of permissible activities nor established procedures for supervising intelligence agencies. Congress has failed to exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its appropriations were being put. Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them.[59][60]"
1976
Wikipedia
 
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And then the Church Committee created FISA courts.
 
OldWorldOrder said:
And then the Church Committee created FISA courts.
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and many of the post-Church committee reforms were watered-down, eliminated or ignored after 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act etc.
 
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