Posted on 08/18/2013 10:49:48 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz
Why is the NSA issue a big deal? It's main mission is to eavedrop on "every" electronic transmission, provide analysis and through whatever algorithms used, find the person or people that want to harm America.
The NSA's mission hasn't changed much, although the technology has. Where analog phone lines existed for telephone, today phone signals bounce off satellites, networks of digital equipment encrypt billions of messages on a day to day basis.
After 9/11, the courts and congress put in place laws for what the NSA can and cannot do. Intelligence gathering hasn't changed. What changed is what the NSA can do with the intelligence it did gather, hence the problem.
A year ago, the vast majority of the country didn't know what the NSA did, let alone even care what they did. If you lived an honest existence and weren't planning a jihad you were pretty safe. You spoke on the phone, sent an email and maybe evey skyped a friend or family member. You went into a chat room or a blog or a forum such as this and you expressed your first amendment rights without fear.....
Fear is the 600 pound gorilla in the room and no one is addressing the real issue. Let's put it into a simple progression.
I call my buddy on the phone. We discuss the weather, our families and I mention how pissed off I am that our President is screwing white Christians. Somewhere in Utah, a computer picks up a conversation with the keywords Christians, white and President.
It takes the phone numbers, runs it through its database and finds out who EQAndybuzz is. A few more inquiries finds out that EQ votes Republican. A few more inquiries and it finds out EQ contributed to Senator Cruz's campaign. Another database match and EQ's file is sitting on some desk in the Cincinnatti IRS office.
Now let's go back to the first sentence. "It's main mission is to eavedrop on "every" electronic transmission, provide analysis and through whatever algorithms used, find the person or people that want to harm America."
Now let's change America to Democrat. Let's add in the IRS scandal.
Now you know why everyone is in a snit about Snowden. The real question isn't what has Eric Snowden done. The real question is, who is using the information from the NSA against the American people?
Republicans are Ball-Less
ANY and ALL info will be used against us.
Very good analysis. I also find it remarkable that so few analysts are connecting these dots.
The problem is the 0bama regime is far more concerned with political enemies than it is enemies of the United States. This is obvious to anyone who follows current events.
This also explains why so few Rino’s want to go up against the current regime.
Information is power. Check out what William the Conqueror did with information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book
So it goes without saying what the info will be used for...
” The real question is, who is using the information from the NSA against the American people? “
Well, we know for a fact that the IRS and the DEA are getting info from the NSA. Other agencies are probably getting it as well. As things stand today, most of the federal government is unconstitutional.
Because the nsa has no legal authority to be an internal spy agency. They are not legally able to be Americas stasi. Our papers and effects have 4th amendment protection
Snowden is a hero for striking a blow for living within the constitution. The mere existence of a technology does not make it constitutional or moral. As for those who ask why Snowden went to Russia and find some nefarious scheme there, consider that he simply went somewhere that drones and US agents would not be able to access him.
What the NSA is doing is a bad idea for an unexpected reason.
It is indicative of inefficiency, incompetence, and impotence. It is almost a reflection of how East Germany behaved before it collapsed.
They kept fat dossiers of everyone in the country, and coerced half the population to inform on the other half. Things like what people ate for lunch and who was eating there at the same time, the routes they took to and from places, all utterly useless information, the government was obsessed with collecting, recording and analyzing.
At the same time, the store shelves were empty, with everything rationed, even color and music being reserved to honor the corrupt government, pollution was everywhere and horrible, infrastructure was collapsing, medical care was both socialist and impossible to get. In effect, there was *no* government that did anything useful.
But back to the NSA, and all the other government agencies doing surveillance redundant with the NSA.
The biggest clue that something had gone horribly wrong was that these agencies lost the ability to distinguish our foreign enemies in other countries, with honorable citizens in our country.
Imagine a military at war, and they have lost the ability to tell who are the enemy and who are friendly forces.
“But we have the ability, the technology, to fire in ALL directions at once!”, does not justify doing so. Yes, the enemy might get hit sometimes, but so is our side, and the vast majority of the weapons we expend are wasted.
It is much better if they train their guns just on the enemy. And the same with the 16 major US intelligence agencies. Bottom line, people living in the US need only the FBI to keep a watch on them; and even then while using constitutional rules to do so.
That’s it. The other 15 intelligence agencies should only concern themselves with spying on foreigners in foreign countries; and preventing foreigners from spying on our country.
Incorrect premise.
The NSA isn't eavesdropping on every electronic transmission and providing analysis.
The NSA is creating a database of every phone call placed from every number to every number that can be mined at any time in the future for any purpose.
Suppose a person, "John Doe," is a solid Libertarian conservative and is the front runner for the highest office in the land. Someone from the party of tolerance decides to put John Doe's phone number through the database, and finds out that every Thursday at 9 pm for the past 5 years, John has been calling the same number. A little more snooping finds out that the number belongs to an attractive young woman 20 years John's junior. John's been having an affair.
An anonymous letter is sent to John, saying that unless he withdraws from the race, his affair with "Miss X" will be revealed.
John leaves the race, and never finds out how his skeleton in the closet was discovered.
“So, Eric Snowden goes around telling the world that the NSA is listening in on everyones phone conversations. This is no secret. Whether it was in the movies, on the history channel, or in the New York Times, the NSA has been doing this for over 60 years. “
Actually, that is not quite true. Ostensibly, the NSA was only supposed to be monitoring offshore communications. It wasn’t part of their original mission to do any kind of domestic surveillance, or at least, they did not admit to it.
They did get away with tapping international phone calls, even before the Patriot Act, because one party was not domestic, so they found some wiggle room. The rest of the domestic surveillance only became “kosher” after the Patriot Act.
The mere possession of this data in a bureau of the US Government makes it available to all of them, to anyone who has a hankerin to know something about a personal enemy or any of a huge number of other scenarios.
You REALLY don't see the danger in this??? I find that ludicrous!
I'll tell you the REAL danger here.
I'm sure we all have heard of 'FBI Profilers' and 'dossiers'. Back in the 60's and 70's it took weeks and months to gather the information on a target from all of the other branches of the executive branch. Now, thanks to a technology called 'relational database''s, this can be done in literally minutes.
The IRS showed us that the 21st century way of creating an enemies list isn't with a pen and paper, it's with a computer search box. This is no different. The way to create a criminal suspect's dossier in the 21st century isn't on a batch of index cards, it's a relational database that can pull information from the NSA's own data, other govt agencies and private company's computers that they have a backdoor into.
Believe me, I've been a professional computer consultant for over 30 years now and I'm here to tell you that this scares the hell outta me.
They may be connecting dots, but they are ignoring the underlying issues here: the 4th Amendment is Law, or it is not. (The 5th and 6th, too.) — if it is the Law, then it prohibits the Congress's 'law' from being valid, just as the 6th prohibits these secret court's pronouncements from being valid. (The 5th could also apply, as these operations would make phone tapping WRT the case-building causing the person to witness against themselves.)
But if the 4th (and 5th and 6th) are not law, then the valid questions arise: is there anything the government is prohibited from doing? What use is the Constitution, if violating it carries no consequence? and If the rights recognized in the Constitution can be violated at whim by enactment of 'law' (or executive order
) then is not every aspect of life dependent and contingent upon government approval?
It should scare you. You are a 30 year computer consultant. Did you think about this 20 years ago? 10? 5? Most Americans didn’t. It wasn’t until the IRS scandal broke that we started to put two and two together.
I contend that Sbowden was the diversion to keep us from putting two and two together.
Here is what the Republican strategy should be. Say the dots are connected and the NSA leaks are directly connected to the IRS. Implicate everyone. Tie the voter fraud to it, John Roberts and Obamacare, Eric Holder, everything.
Get the American people to believe that Obama and the Democrats are trying to take over the country. Cite examples, ask questions. Billboards, ads, everything. Start attacking the MSM that they are part of it.
Attack from everywhere. Overwhelm them and don’t let up. And insult them.
It’s Cloward Piven and Alinsky from the right.
Snowden’s not the only one.
What do They know about you? An interview with NSA analyst William Binney
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/10/what-do-they-know-about-you-an-interview-with-nsa-analyst-william-binney/?print=1
BUSH-ERA NSA WHISTLEBLOWER MAKES MOST EXPLOSIVE ALLEGATIONS YET ABOUT EXTENT OF GOV’T SURVEILLANCE (Russ Tice)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3034138/posts
This is where it fails. Unless this is front page headline news, it will be written off as kook talk. This country can't overcome a bad press. Too many uninformed who want to live their lives without thinking about the government. By the time the sheeple wake up, it will be a police state.
Every community has a network of socialist, “progressive” hens and sensitive New Age guys sharing information and influence with local government. Some information is shared between levels of government. The default process and near future decreases in spending will probably have an effect on such anti-Fourth-Amendment, anti-First-Amendment networking. That’s what they are afraid of, and that’s why they broadcast more than the usual portions of hysteria. Decrease personal debts, and concentrate on savings.
Why pay so much attention to one person or party in politics, when favored constituents manipulating both political parties are socially ill spendthrifts motivated toward a police state?
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