[The Bush] administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.
I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.
That means no more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists.
You don’t because? I can cite some facts, at least. If you believe the government is lying about everything then there’s really not much point in discussing this since it’s unlikely we’d find out otherwise.
This quote actually highlights a couple of problems. For one, there were no national security letters, so that was technically fulfilled. Secondly, there was no “ignoring the law” because, as far as I can tell, everything is perfectly legal. THAT is what needs to be attacked right now: the laws allowing what’s going on.
You are correct that this breaking issue is not about phone taps but rather collecting phone records.
That does not mean phone taps are not happening.
From seven years ago:
No idea if that is still going on but I am willing to bet the NSA did not meekly backoff once the story was broken and stop doing such things.
Consider that the NSA just built a huge data center in Utah.
[quote]
The NSA says the Utah Data Center is a facility for the intelligence community that will have a major focus on cyber security. The agency will neither confirm nor deny specifics. Some published reports suggest it could hold 5 zettabytes of data. (Just one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62 billion stacked iPhones 5’s-- that stretches past the moon.
It’s possible that online voice and video chats (like Skype) could be intercepted by the NSA through the PRISM program, but that’s different from the telephony data mining.
Obama just got through addressing the NSA reports: he says it’s legal, it protects us from terrorists, there’s oversight, and he “welcomes the debate.” I’m not sure if that last part can be true if until two days ago it’s been top secret. Maybe it’s a secret debate.
And not directly related to the NSA phone news: The Guardian has obtained ANOTHER secret document, this time concerning American cyber attack targets. Are these just going to keep coming? They seem to be on a roll.
In the sense that her kind of reasoning seems to be all too common, sure — if nothing else, because her statement makes it clear (or at least look like) that she, in general, is in favor of this kind of surveillance.
I understand why it was done, but we have to have a national debate on whether we think it’s worth it. Even if terrorists were running around in an America that was pre-9/11 in terms of security, the odds of you dying in a terrorist attack are about the same as your odds of winning the lottery. Your odds of being inconvenienced or having your privacy violated by security measures, however, are about 100%. So we need to decide what our priorities are.
One thing I’m grateful for is the relative maturity of the debate now that a Democrat is in office.
The Verizon court order is clearly labeled TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN (special intelligence, no foreign nationals). Which makes it, according to some news articles, one of the most closely held secrets in the federal government. Obama probably wouldn’t have been up for debating it before a few days ago. Hence my remark.
I may not be fully aware of what NSA goals are but that comment on data analysis and patterns would not make any sense if you are after a “specific threat”. Call meta-data (i.e. all data available about the call but not the content of the call itself like from what location to what type of phone, how long, frequency etc.) simply has no use if one wants to do anything similar to police work.
Call data makes only sense once you have a bunch of leads and you can then use technical data to x-reference for negative exception analysis (i.e. eliminate leads b/c call data does not support it).
I personally think there is no use of this data to any meaningful counter-terrorism planning activity and measures as I’m sure people who want to harm US in an organized manner would think of this first. Since 9/11, I’d argue that there was no single well organized group (in terms of, say, IRA group) on the US territory.
Which leads me to believe that this data may be used for something totally different and people who do it assume that putting it under label “anti-terrorism” makes it all wash away.
First off, if I were President, I would want our enemies to believe that we are totally listening in on everything they say. I’d lie about it if it would help.
Second, at least 95% of the people worried about the government snooping into their private lives don’t have private lives that are remotely interesting to anybody, let alone the gummint. They would have to pay someone serious money to pretend that their private lives are interesting, and then only till their hour is up.
Third, if Something Happens, does anyone doubt that the same people are gonna be screaming about “failing to protect us”?
Four, do you believe that US government (any part of it regardless did they check with Obama or not) may be doing - not only something illegal or morally wrong - but some sort of “action” that you will never find out about and when the “reaction” to that “action” comes you will “see” it as “attack”?
Where I’m going with this is that they may have done it already (the “action”) and are aware that “reaction” is coming so they go looking for it but they wont tell you about it cause then they’d have to tell you all about it.
I also don’t have to worry about the CIA dropping an anti-tank missile on my car. That doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to object whenever they murder some kid.
Ah yes, the old “There’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole” spiel. :rolleyes:
The Verizon court order is clearly labeled TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN (special intelligence, no foreign nationals). Which makes it, according to some news articles, one of the most closely held secrets in the federal government. Obama probably wouldn’t have been up for debating it before a few days ago. Hence my remark.