The Sky is Falling Again [NSA Phone Records]

The American Thinker ^ | May 16, 2006 | Bob Wier

[Quilla]

USA Today is weakening our defenses with the aid of traitors embedded in Washington.

[CPOSharky]

It's 900 numbers the libioiots call that they don't want anyone to know about.

[Quilla]

The choice is simple: either we allow ourselves to be defended with all means available, or we risk the lives of millions of our fellow citizens.

Welcome to Free Republic.

[tomnbeverly]

What really bugs me is that the idiots in the NSA, CIA and the NYT that are leaking this stuff to the public are not being held to account...

i.e., wrong is wrong but if our government had covert ops going on that found out beforehand terrorists were prepping to destroy oh lets say NYC with a dirty bomb and our covert types assasinated all of them without trial, miranda or anything I wouldn't mind...

and that doesn't matter if Bill, Hillary or Kerry were president.

[GingisK]

First of all, let’s be clear; they are not listening in on the calls...

Yeah, right! Look up Echelon.

[Nevernow]

But what if they find out that Mandy is cheating on Ryan with Chris since she calls Chris all the time but hardly calls Ryan at all???
Seriously though, people scare me. One of my friends was trying to convince me this was bad because, "Like say if you call the doctor, they know, and then they can like call the doctor's and demand your information and then they'll know things like if you use birth control and they might even find out," (Get ready for this. It made me burst out laughing...) "your social security number or something!"

[zerosix]

Hey, let your blood pressure calm down.

I was livid about Hillary getting 1,000 plus raw FBI files and their contents spread who knows where.

Then I hit the roof when I learned about Clinton's CIA Director, John Deutsch, taking TOP SECRET, CLASSIFIED information home on his lap top, where he admitted his son surfed the 'net.

I was absolutely sure that Sandy Burgler would be sentenced to real time in a Federal Pen over his purloining records from Nat'l Archives, even going so far as to destroying them. I was sure that since Bush was now President and Ashcroft top dog at Justice, finally some Clintonian felonious behavior would at last be punished.

Did it happen - no, and now I'm wondering if there actually isn't some government within a government that exists in this country that I don't know about. All of this doublespeak on Illegal Immigration, really gives me pause that someone else runs this country and it certainly is not "We The People."

[Theo]

strangers shouldn't be invading my privacy at all, regardless of what I have to hide

So we shouldn't worry about the bomb factory in your basement? You're either a lib or a kid.

[HawaiianGecko]

"strangers shouldn't be invading my privacy at all, regardless of what I have to hide".

The problem with this argument is that collecting phone logs is simply not an invasion of privacy.  Phone companies routinely give phone records to law enforcement/government and they don't require a warrant. Why? Because it is not an invasion of privacy or suspension of anyone's rights.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 explicitly permits telecommunications companies to provide customer records to the government if the government asks for them. So it would appear that the companies have been acting not just in the public interest, but also within the law and without encroaching on the privacy of any of their customers.

Now, if the government wanted the content of the discussions of those phone calls, a warrant would be required, but the records alone require no such effort.

The government has much more sensitive data on you than your phone habits, think... IRS.  Credit card companies do too, and they routinely give your information to marketers.

If what was done was illegal, why did three very large corporations knowingly break the law?

 

 

[Theo]

Dude, it's not all or nothing. We give up some freedom in order to live in a civilized society. It may be tricky to determine where these boundaries are, but they do exist. Let's have a thoughtful discussion of what these boundaries are.

For example, you are not free to walk around naked at work. You are not allowed to drive on the left side of the freeway. You are not allowed to dump your trash in the middle of the street. You are not allowed to park in handicapped spots (unless you're handicapped). You are not allowed to manufacture bombs or drugs in your basement. You are not allowed to fraternize/collaborate with the enemy.

Lots of rules that infringe on your freedoms.

[Quilla]

I'm sorry, but I don't get the analogy. How is searching for folks who are placing and receiving calls to and from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the like, akin to banning guns? I would think that in a time of war (i.e. War on Terror), every American would want several guns and ample rounds "just in case". At least that's the way we look at it here in LA (Lower Alabama).

[tomnbeverly]

OK take the tin foil hat off...

besides all this is another ploy to make this president look bad... Bottom line the Liberals have successfully deployed wedge issues as their shock and awe campaign against the president... Granted they ran the Bush lied rhetoric into the ground and managed to hypnotized alot of center voters but now you split the base with immigration reform and DPW.....The Clinton handlers are behind it all and they all graduated from the Karl Rove school of campaign genius.... All that said the GOP needs to figure out how to counter ASAP...

[HawaiianGecko]

How far do you want us to go? Ban guns, ban all travel into the USA, strip search all air passengers and forbid hand luggage? Sure, it's all for the public good, and would make us safer, but it's no way to live.

I don't think the President or Republican members of congress have to worry about the "strawman-American"  vote this November.  Banning guns is unconstitutional, obtaining their phone records is not.

 

 

[Bryan24]

Intelligence gathering operations are only effective as long as the targets don't know they are giving away information and how they are being monitored.

Sometimes you have dumb terrorists who are easily tracked down. Thanks to the New York Times, USA Today and other liberal (and even some conservative) media outlets, the dumb terrorists are getting huge billboard-sized signs warning them what not to do.

[Lou L]

Good - the NSA tapping calls to the number of Mr.Jihad,

Our relatively open and free society allows people like your "Mr. Jihad" to use resources like our phone and Internet networks to plan attacks against our country. How are we supposed to tap only Mr. Jihad? How do we distinguish Mr. Jihad from Mr. Jones, without a little screening?

Let's see: Mr. Jones calls a mix of residential and business in a "normal" day, and rarely makes any calls after 9:00pm local time. Mr. Jihad rarely uses his phone, but every now and then makes a flurry of calls to Pakistan, Iran, and Indonesia at all hours of the day. How do you compare the two without at least a small screen?

[HawaiianGecko]

Bad - the NSA tapping communications at will.
Good - the NSA tapping calls to the number of Mr.Jihad, with appropriate oversight and accountability to prevent abuse (no government has ever abused its power, no).

Again you are setting up an argument you can win with one exception. It's not the argument on the table. USA Today's article about three phone companies turning over phone numbers to the NSA is not the same thing as tapping communications at will.

You are entitled to your own opinions, you are not entitled to your own facts. Another liberal said that.