Posted on 06/11/2013 11:02:40 AM PDT by yoe
For years Americans' right to privacy, as granted by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, has come under threat as the country's surveillance systems have grown.
After intelligence leaks by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, however, the NSA's domestic dragnet is finally getting the attention that many people feel it deserves.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Plus the NSA staff can now download their porn 40% faster than DSL...
“WE CAN HEAR YOU NOW”
Government of the people, for the people, and by the people.
Is that no longer operative?
0bama repealed it.
...for work, home or world-wide-web.
So, they have a link and they promise that they’re only violating our rights a little bit. How long until we see evidence that their “little bit” is equivalent to a colonoscopy?
The Verizon explanation is not in the vague and cryptic memo the company issued last week after the Guardian exposed its program. It came, instead, in the company’s annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, included in Verizon’s annual report to shareholders. It said, “As part of the FCC’s approval of Vodaphone’s ownership interest, Verizon Wireless, Verizon, and Vodaphone entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation which imposes national security and law enforcement-related obligations on the ways in which Verizon Wireless stores information and otherwise conducts its business.” http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/10/why-did-verizon-do-it
Let’s end the hype. For decades, the feds have had the ability to tap into phone lines and record those as they needed.
As the terrorist threat increased as well as the popularity of the Internet, the feds added the ability to monitor Internet activity to their list of tools.
Where things took a bad turn was when Bush, 43, passed the so-called “Patriot Act” to allow the government to monitor both voice calls as well as Internet activity without necessarily having a warrant. Many of us were concerned that this authority could be abused, but Bush assured us that only terrorist communications were being monitored when they went offshore. Communications between ordinary American citizens were not supposed to be included in the mix.
Well, welcome to 1984, ObamaWorld and the Socialist States of America! Today, our rights under the Constitution are being eroded or smothered everytime zero opens his mouth and assures us that everything is both okey and dokey when the opposite is true. Our 4th Amendment rights are being routinely ignored by the TSA, the FBI and the NSA as the Verizon scandal has shown. Our First and Second Amenment rights have been under major attack for years and those attacks are increasing.
Increasing, people are being arrested for exercising their Right to Free Speech and our Second Amendment Rights are being constricted by politicians anxious to end the “balance of power” so they can increase their level of tyranny.
So, while the Verizon scandal has shaken us, it is not new. Google has been providing information to the FBI for years as well as to the Chinese. Facebook has recently consented to providing the FBI information about what people are saying and all of this is occurring as a clear violation of our 4th Amendment rights.
So in other words, like with the lending scandal, the Federal government used its unrelated authority to coerce businesses into “consenting” to do questionable things. Yup. Verizon’s fault.
...though,
Verizon Allegedly Built A Fiber Optic Cable To Give The Feds
Simply means the government ordered a circuit.
Yes, and if anyone wants a lucerative contract with any gov’t agency, they must comply with the regulations.
In this case, if they wanted to buy another company they had to consent to things completely unrelated in order to be allowed to conduct ordinary activities that businesses do. Ostensibly, the government would have been using its SEC powers to prevent monopolies to block the purchase, and to gain the approval, and theoretically prove it won’t be a consumer-harming monopoly, it had to grant access to records not to the SEC, but to the NSA - to review things having nothing to do with business practices.
Can you smell the Fascism yet? Wake the hell up!
Exactly. What’s another OC-192, here or there.
This is not news.
Which means Verizon (and all the others) didn’t supply direct links to their servers, contractors did .... washed their hands of any direct involvement if not questioned expertly.
He left after 33 years and is drawing his gov retirement but when exactly did he notice the unlawful acts and how long had they been going on before that?
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