We know there are phone taps. It would be bizarre if there weren’t since that’s one of the reasons you want this kind of data in the first place: it lets you know what activity needs to be watched more closely. But every time people call this stuff phone tapping, they are suggesting (or confusing other people into believing) that this is about the government listening to everybody’s phone calls. It isn’t.
If we are talking about remote control war by way of the drone program, that’s one thing. This is about the limitations of collecting intelligence. I don’t know if we have a thread for random gripes about Obama, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t it.
Well, in your three points post, it appears as you are trying very hard to justify and/or rationalize the actions of the Government (I admit I think you might be a tiny bit sarcastic but you never know, eh?).
I was just trying to expand the possibilities by suggesting that the action of the Government may be fully reasonable but for something we have no clue about - as I said , I don’t believe it has anything to do with anti-terrorism (or, at least, narrow definition of it).
Are you going to tell us what it does have to do with, or would that be a spoiler?
I have no clue.
I mean, the only information that can be classified as “fact” on this forum is - if you follow chain of information distribution - coming from Government.
And when a leak happens quite an effort is being put together to manage the value and the meaning of the information leaked.
The only thing that is different between the times of Watergate Scandal and WikiLeaks and this - aside from the fact that the latter ones are much, much more serious - is the way Government is managing it.
Even on this thread you almost have a competition going on who will write more beautiful apologetic essay for the Government.
But, as always, I’m way off the tangent … :o
How?
So 95% of the program is useless, and the other 5% is violating the privacy of those who need it the most (excluding the .001% or whatever of legitimate targets). Everybody should be genuinely worried about privacy invasions, though, especially if they escalate. Even someone with the most boring private life ever would object to weekly police searches of their home, for example. It’s why we call it a “private” life.
Things have already happened – the Boston Marathon bombing for one, if you consider it a terrorist attack. Things will happen again. An NSA call database isn’t going to stop terrorism. We don’t even have a cite that it has helped – just assurances from government officials.
For starters, it is useful to us that our enemies worry about it. That the security of their communications is uncertain, even if our threat is largely or partly a bluff. That makes the organization and execution of their plans more difficult.
I am very susceptible to Orwellanoia. In my living memory, anti-war persons and groups experienced exactly what we are most concerned about, here. Whether or not the people pulling this sort of happy horseshit on us sincerely believed that we were enemies of America hardly matters, fact is we weren’t.
Huge difference being that these people are enemies of America, right down to their toes. Or does that make a difference? I think it does, but I am but one voice in a very necessary and long overdue national conversation.
And what a long strange trip its been.
Who are they? Do you have their call meta-data?
Cite please.
This may or may not be properly manintained:
Not sure it had this recent case:
I suppose we can add to that those responsible for the Woolwich beheading a couple of weeks ago and, from today, this breaking news on The Guardian:
"Six Islamic extremists who plotted attack on English Defence League rally jailed for terms ranging from 18 years and 9 months to 19 and a half years. More details soon… "
So you’ve got 3 blokes who were arrested following being bugged, and a list of thwarted incidents that include:
"“2007 1 November: Police searching for indecent images of children arrested British People’s Party local organiser Martyn Gilleard in Goole, East Riding of Yorkshire under the Terrorism Act, over explosives found in his home”
2008 14 May: The Nottingham Two were arrested and detained for six days under the Terrorism Act 2000. A postgraduate student had downloaded a 1,500-page English translation of an Al-Qaeda document from the United States Department of Justice website for his PhD research on militant Islam. He sent it to a friend in the Modern Language department for printing. Both were cleared of terrorism-related offences, but the friend was immediately re-arrested on immigration ground"
2008 14 September: Oxford graduate Stephen Clarke arrested after someone thought they saw him taking a photograph of a sealed man-hole cover outside the central public library in Manchester. He was arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000, held for 36 hours while his house and computer were searched, and then released without charge. No photographs of man-hole covers were found.
2009 13 February: 9 men arrested on the M65 motorway under section 40 of the Terrorism Act 2000. 6 were kept hand-cuffed in the back of a van for seven hours. The remaining 3 were detained for six days. No one was charged."
etc, etc.
Not seeing much evidence of “dozen of convictions of Muslim extremists on the back of data-based Intel” there?
“Their plans were uncovered by chance when a police officer carried out a routine stop on one of the vehicles as the men made their way back to Birmingham.”
That’s insane. What idiot decided that pointing a camera at the ground in a public place is sufficient justification to search a person’s house?
Are you some sort of socialist-jihadist terrorist apologist?
lol
The sad thing is that the NSA could gin up huge public support by announcing that they’d used the program to track down “Rachel from Card Services”, and that she is now at Gitmo being waterboarded.
The thwarted section wasn’t too exciting, ‘Arrests, detentions, and other incidents related to the Terrorism Acts’ prob was.
That’s the section I quoted from. You might want to read your link, as it really doesn’t do much to support this idea of dozens of arrests from data analysis. If anything, it suggests that the intel being passed around is complete crap. As well as the ones I’ve quoted above, you’ve got:
"2004 24 September: Four men arrested in the Holiday Inn in Brent Cross trying to buy red mercury, a mythical substance which could purportedly be used to construct a nuclear bomb, from a newspaper reporter.One man was released three days later, while the other three were cleared at their trial on 25 July 2006, during which the jury was told that “whether red mercury does or does not exist is irrelevant”
“2005 28 July: David Mery arrested at Southwark tube station on suspicion of terrorism for wearing a jacket “too warm for the season” and carrying a bulky rucksack. All charges were dropped on 31 August. It took four more years for the police to apologise for the “unlawful arrest, detention and search of [his] home”.”
“2006 2 June: The 2 June 2006 Forest Gate raid (on a house in Forest Gate) saw the arrest of two suspects, one who was shot in the shoulder, on charges of conspiring to release a chemical weapon in the form of suicide vest. The suspects were cleared of suspicion and released days later.”
In short, far as I can see “data-based Intel” isn’t actually doing much at all.