“A U.S. president has just received word that American counterterrorist operatives have captured a senior al Qaeda operative in Pakistan. Among his possessions are a couple of cell phones — phones that contain several American phone numbers. In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, what’s a president to do?”

Oh, gee, I am not sure. How about investigate the numbers and make sure to obtain a warrant from your super-secret FISA court of dubious legality within 3 days?

If protecting me involves allowing computer applications like echelon apply voice and text recognition algorythms to my e-mails and phone calls without any oversight, I think I’ll pass on the “protection”.

Bush could be spying on the press, his political opponents, Congress, or the Supreme Court and we really wouldn’t know about it. You can debate as to whether would or would not do such a thing, but when you allow someone this kind of power without any kind of oversight, what is to prevent it from occurring?

Please, explain this to me. What is to prevent this from occurring? I’ll take my answer off the air.

You might want to take a gander at …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121901027.html

A key reason the Articles of Confederation were dumped in favor of the Constitution in 1787 was because the new Constitution � our Constitution � created a unitary chief executive. That chief executive could, in times of war or emergency, act with the decisiveness, dispatch and, yes, secrecy, needed to protect the country and its citizens.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007703

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-yoo20dec20,0,4832707.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

I said in a previous post that I didn’t know if the President had committed a crime (although most of the bulging brains I’ve read in this thread have made that assumption).

Now it turns out that not only does the President have the authority to take the action he did, but he went out of his way to involve Congress when he didn’t have to – an involvement that turned out to be a threat to national security, since that leak had to come from somewhere.

Who in Congress is guilty of being a traitor? Who leaked national security information to the NYT? A true and unbiased review of the facts do not allow for any other interpretation: One of our Congressional representatives is guilty of treason.

What were going to find in this case is that it will come down to the Administrations interpretation verses the congress’ interpretation. And being that the congress granted the president these powers (in the Administration’s opinion), should it not be congress’ interpretation that matters? And again if the president wanted these powers he needed to ask the congress for them, not ask around in congress about them. the WOT is not a justification for this Administration to do as it pleases, and it is about time that this Administration and its apologists start acting like they are subject to laws and oversight of congress. And stop using the WOT as a reason to scoff oversights set up in the constitution.

I’m also aware of the computer programs that, when allowed to access these databases, can recognize patterns in the way you have entered information; for instance, if you use the false e-mail address “willsit@aol.com” with your real address once, and “willsit@aol.com” with your real telephone number a different time, these programs easily link your address to your phone number using the false e-mail address as a key (and helping to build your profile).

If I know that false e-mail address that you have used more than once, and have access to one of these databases with the right software, I can very quickly determine the color of your car, or your neighbor’s social security number.

Right now, these massive databases are being used primarily for marketing purposes, but the government is tapping in as well.

As software programs become more and more sophisticated, there will eventually be a mapping of everywhere you’ve ever lived and worked. There will be the possibility of mappings between you and other people through telephone calls, and who knows what else. As computer storage and bandwidth costs drop, and voice and speech recognition software become more sophisticated, well, I think you are seeing where I’m headed here.

Now, do I want any government having access to these kinds of tools? Do I trust that they won’t use these tools to secure their political power? Do I trust them to know where to draw the line?

Of course not, don’t be a freaking idiot! It is unprecedented that any government could wield this kind of power over it’s populace. The thought that we should roll over and play dead because of the bogeyman has taken the form fo the “war on terror” when the “terror” itself is only a backlash to our imperialist and unjust foreign policy, well, let’s just say it may be time to move to Canada before the borders are closed.

Tom,

To maintain an argument that national security imperatives justify this action, you would need to argue that obtaining a warrent would undermine national security. I have heard no such argument.

With the reality of leaks (which we’ve certainly seen some prime examples as of late), an argument could certainly be made for the need for greater secrecy given the circumstances.

Mr. Madden and others protesting the violation of their personal information …

Do you realize that there’s more surveillance being conducted in the name of marketing, of which you are unwitting targets, than what has been conducted by this administration against the American public?

So, if you’re going to unleash a verbal barrage on the subject of personal information transgressions, don’t forget the Big Brother of Marketing!

Why should I be any more careful with my vote now than I was before? BOTH MAJOR PARTIES participated in this debacle – voting for a Democrat as opposed to a Republican wouldn’t fix the problem.

I don’t know if what President Bush did was illegal. The difference between myself and most of the bulging brains I’ve read in this thread is that I don’t pretend to know, I admit my ignorance. I’m not a constitutional scholar nor am I a lawyer expert in Federal law. I’m waiting – and suspending any hypocritical hysteria – until the facts are in.

Spare me your biased, partisan ranting. YOU. DON’T. KNOW. THE. FACTS. And I know you don’t. More importantly, you don’t know if the actions that President Bush took were outside the law or his span of powers or not. Now, if you want to try to convince me that he did act unlawfully or beyond his powers, then try to convince me with fact, not assumption.

This means that statements like “What about the 4th amendment?” aren’t going to cut it. Saying that President Bush can’t violate the 4th presupposes so much that it is a meaningless statement – something like, “Man can’t violate the law of gravity.” Yet man can fly. It’s true that man has to use airplanes or other aids and that they follow certain physical laws in order to get off the ground, but MAN CAN FLY. A bald statement that man can’t violate the law of gravity is therefore meaningless by itself.

If the President can’t violate the 4th amendment, then NO ONE in Federal Government can violate the 1st or the 2nd amendment – yet we have that appalling Campaign Finance law that was proposed by McCain limiting free speech 60 days prior to an election; and the right to own firearms is constantly being infringed.

Yes, the govt can (and does) misuse every department they run. Many of these misuses should be considered illegal. I duobt there will ever be any indictments over this particular issue, because I’m sure there is a loophole somewhere that allows for this very thing.

Many times, our govt is more like a Tom Clancy novel than we’d like to think. The small, covert parts are just a lot more efficient than the big, bureaucratic parts.

The question isn’t do they need to have the power to wiretap and listen in on terrorists. There is no doubt that the administration has that right. The question is why he felt the need to circumvent the established system in order to do it. We have a system in place to allow for such needs.

The thing is that we the people, nor our elected officials in congress know who they were spying on. That is precisely why there is an oversight of impartial judges to decide on these cases. And there has been cases where the Patriot Act has been misused, namely to spy on Quackers who are against the war. Quackers Ford, Quackers! Given that, could you not see how the administration might misuse the NSA as well, and why the established oversight should be used?

This is just another one of MANY classified govt programs that are needed to protect the people. Since WWII, and probably before, there have been a lot of this type of activity going on. Don’t just blame W. Most of the time, not only do you not hear of the program, you don’t here of the crimes that were stopped by them.

I don’t trust the govt blindly, in fact, I trust them ALL less than I would trust a used car saleman. However, I do understand the need for them to run programs like this once in a while. Again, they are only “watching” those people that pose a threat. When they start watching my next door neighbor because he’s a member of the NRA, then I’ll start complaining.

I’m more concerned about who leaked the program. I learned when I got my security clearence in the military, if I talked about anything I learned, even after I got out, I was going to jail. I guess we’ve relaxed those laws a little bit.

You act as if this were a single incident immediately following the 9/11 attack. All evidence seems to point to the fact that this effort continued for YEARS after 9/11 even after the inception of the patriot act. If the President did nothing wrong then why not let a senate panel review this incident, a full review minus the typical stall and delay tactics of this administration. And when testifying before this commitee every member voluntarily testify under oath, even GW and Cheney. No nice little chats like the 9/11 commision. Do you really see that happening? Absolutely not, they will play the same game they have played with every other issue this administration has encountered.

Yours and others defense of this type of infringement on our civil liberties is “IF you’re not doing anything wrong, THEN you have nothing to fear.” It’s time we put this same burden of proof on this Administration. If he has nothing to hide, then he has no problems with oversight. Right?

I can’t support the Democrats, either – so consider me a disenfranchised politico. All other politicos can join me at http://americanmoderateparty.blogspot.com

The president said it best:

“If this were a dictatorship we’d have it a lot easier. Just so long as I’m the dictator.”
George W Bush 11/12/2004 FreePress Intl

He was not joking. HE MEANS IT!!!

Freedom, protection, fighting terror ad nauseam do not mean anything to this president, those are talking points for shills and for consumption by uninformed, easily brain-washed americans whom this Republican Administration takes this country for.

This Republicans administration is working slowly and steadily to maintain a permanent Republican majority in the country and for changing America into a Totalitarian Dictatorship.

BIG BROTHER WELCOME HOME!!

Americans that uphold our laws should be really AFRAID of this ongoing assault on our liberties. It is the responsibility of Americans to become informed about the lies and abuse that this Republican Administration is forcing, by stealth and deceit, into our lives. Sadly there are very few true Republican and Democratic politicians willing to risk their careers for the COMMON GOOD of our country.

Only through our vote can we stop this threat while there is still time.

Especially those of you unconcerned about NSA spying.
Were you concerned about Texas Republicans using Homeland
Security to try and find a plane full of Democrats?

My report includes a treatment of how they perform Internet email
monitoring, by way of my describing how I monitored the
emails of more than 7000 employees on Wall Street.

Cryptography_Manifesto

Somehow I’ve also managed to include a description of how
life begins from lifeless atoms.

Can you say, ‘bloviate’? Well, it was my first polemic.

—-

Whitfield Diffie, Distinguished Engineer—Security at Sun Microsystems:

“An essential element of freedom is the right to privacy, a right that
cannot be expected to stand against an unremitting technological attack.”

I’m perfectly willing to accept that fact. Moreover, I’d be perfectly willing to accept the idea that our Government shouldn’t be able to use wiretaps, monitor our e-mails, or build databases full of our personal information at all.

I don’t trust our Government with this kind of power, and there’s a history just full of reasons why you shouldn’t either.

Twenty or thirty years from now, assuming our Government then remotely resembles the one we pretend to have now, this period of time where it was ok to torture, and kidnap foreigners, and use all the wonders of the information age to blatantly deceive and spy on our citizens will make the era of U.S. McCarthyism look like a love in.

As for fools like Denise Best above are either shills for the fascists, or completely brainwashed. The Government isn’t “protecting” us from terrorists, they are slowly but surely turning our country into a police state.

I would have to say that our Government is enacting terrorism on this great country by destroying the values that form its foundation.

Clearly the warrents would only be denied in cases that they should be denied – gross overreaching, or entirely specious “probable cause”.
To maintain an argument that national security imperatives justify this action, you would need to argue that obtaining a warrent would undermine national security. I have heard no such argument.