Defiant Bush admits breaking law

[FlaSoxxJim]

i'd like to get past all of this partison B.S. and just like to know if people think their government leaders should be held accountable if they break the law? Because I do.

 

Not me. So long as They All Do It® , then what's the harm?

[southsider2k5]

i'd like to get past all of this partison B.S. and just like to know if people think their government leaders should be held accountable if they break the law? Because I do.

 

I'd love to see this drug into court just for the sheer fact of establishing whether this is constitutional or not.

[kapkomet]

Not me.  So long as They All Do It® , then what's the harm?

Keep twisting what I mean by that.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Which would mean spying on our journalists.

Possibly. Certainly, spying on someone for reasons other that what can be justified by the needs of the GWoT.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Keep twisting what I mean by that.

 

I've been forced to take it to mean that we are not supposed to be critical of the president and his administration because that would just be playing partisan politics.

[kapkomet]

I've been forced to take it to mean that we are not supposed to be critical of the president and his administration because that would just be playing partisan politics.

Nope.

 

Nice try.

 

It means, at least most of the time, please quit blaming our president for everything on the planet earth that's wrong, because the same games get played by both parties. It's just one side gets reported far more then the other for the "wrongs".

 

Where is that parliamentary system when we need it?

 

On a serious side note, what's wrong with a parliamentary system anyway? Maybe that should have its own thread. I'm curous to see what you all think about that.

[Balta1701]

Harry Reid's statement:

 

“The President asserted in his December 17th radio address that “leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it.” This statement gives the American public a very misleading impression that the President fully consulted with Congress.

 

“First, it is quite likely that 96 Senators of 100 Senators, including 13 of 15 on the Senate Intelligence Committee first learned about this program in the New York Times, not from any Administration briefing.

 

“I personally received a single very short briefing on this program earlier this year prior to its public disclosure. That briefing occurred more than three years after the President said this program began.

 

“The Administration briefers did not seek my advice or consent about the program, and based on what I have heard publicly since, key details about the program apparently were not provided to me.

 

“Under current Administration briefing guidelines, members of Congress are informed after decisions are made, have virtually no ability to either approve or reject a program, and are prohibited from discussing these types of programs with nearly all of their fellow members and all of their staff.

 

“We need to investigate this program and the President’s legal authority to carry it out. We also need to review this flawed congressional consultation system. I will be asking the President to cooperate in both reviews.”

[Balta1701]

On a serious side note, what's wrong with a parliamentary system anyway?  Maybe that should have its own thread.  I'm curous to see what you all think about that.

You know, that would be an interesting topic to consider. I'm personally not a huge fan of most parliamentary systems, on the grounds that in general, it tends to set itself up where neither of the major parties has enough votes on its own to form a government, and this winds up putting an excess amount of power in the hands of smaller, often more fringe parties, because they become necessary in order to forge a ruling coalition.

[Controlled Chaos]

Nope.

 

Nice try. 

 

It means, at least most of the time, please quit blaming our president for everything on the planet earth that's wrong, because the same games get played by both parties.  It's just one side gets reported far more then the other for the "wrongs".

 

Where is that parliamentary system when we need it?

 

On a serious side note, what's wrong with a parliamentary system anyway?  Maybe that should have its own thread.  I'm curous to see what you all think about that.

 

Here ya go kap

 

Clinton NSA Eavesdropped on U.S. Calls

 

During the 1990's under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon.

 

On Friday, the New York Times suggested that the Bush administration has instituted "a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices" when it "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without [obtaining] court-approved warrants."

 

But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 1990s - all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.

 

In February 2000, for instance, CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:

 

"If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency."

NSA computers, said Kroft, "capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world."

 

Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told "60 Minutes" that the agency was monitoring "everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs."

 

Mr. Frost detailed activities at one unidentified NSA installation, telling "60 Minutes" that agency operators "can listen in to just about anything" - while Echelon computers screen phone calls for key words that might indicate a terrorist threat.

 

The "60 Minutes" report also spotlighted Echelon critic, then-Rep. Bob Barr, who complained that the project as it was being implemented under Clinton "engages in the interception of literally millions of communications involving United States citizens."

 

One Echelon operator working in Britain told "60 Minutes" that the NSA had even monitored and tape recorded the conversations of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Still, the Times repeatedly insisted on Friday that NSA surveillance under Bush had been unprecedented, at one point citing anonymously an alleged former national security official who claimed: "This is really a sea change. It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches."

 

Here's the whole 60 MINUTES transcript

[Balta1701]

Here is the letter that Sen. Rockefeller wrote in 2003 to the White House expressing his concern over the program. He says he is worried about the program, and he's even more worried about the fact that he can't consult with his staff or anyone else in Congress about it.

 

Edit: Statement by the Senator:

 

“For the last few days, I have witnessed the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and the Attorney General repeatedly misrepresent the facts.

 

“The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program. The limited members who were told of the program were prohibited by the Administration from sharing any information about it with our colleagues, including other members of the Intelligence Committees.

 

“At the time, I expressed my concerns to Vice President Cheney that the limited information provided to Congress was so overly restricted that it prevented members of Congress from conducting meaningful oversight of the legal and operational aspects of the program.

 

“These concerns were never addressed, and I was prohibited from sharing my views with my colleagues.

 

“Now that this issue has been brought out into the open, I strongly urge the Senate Intelligence Committee to immediately undertake a full investigation into the legal and operational aspects of the program, including the lack of sufficient congressional oversight.”

Edited December 20, 2005 by Balta1701

[Cknolls]

If Clinton would have done this, Congress would have tried to impeach him for it!

 

 

Ever heard of echelon?????????????????

[FlaSoxxJim]

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter breaks a big story. Guess who desperately tried to get the NYT to not run the story last week?

 

I guess that's one way to get an invite to the White House.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10536559/site/newsweek/

 

excerpt:

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting,

but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

Edited December 20, 2005 by FlaSoxxJim

[Cknolls]

i'd like to get past all of this partison B.S. and just like to know if people think their government leaders should be held accountable if they break the law? Because I do.

 

Not if they save my life, or the lives of any other American. I have nothing to hide. Surveil away baby.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Not if they save my life, or the lives of any other American. I have nothing to hide. Surveil away baby.

To connect this with the ANWR energy problem, Iraq "war for oil" etc. We no longer need energy from petroleum. Just set up generators on the caskets of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. Their spinning will give us more energy than we can ever use.

 

And there used to be another country that spied on people for their own protection -- those wonderful democratic countries like the former USSR or modern-day China. If you want domestic surveillance of people without 4th Amendment warrants, go live in China...and don't let the door hit your authoritarian ass on the way out.

[Mercy!]

.... If you want domestic surveillance of people without 4th Amendment warrants, go live in China...and don't let the door hit your authoritarian ass on the way out.

Come on now, this is the second time in two days you’ve told someone to take a hike because you didn’t agree with what he posted. Come to think of it, you did that “go away” thing to me too, once. I’d feel better knowing that was faux outrage and not the real McCoy. Let him stay, please? It’s terribly polluted in China.

 

Can you tell I got a gut full of the old "America. Love it or Leave it" bs when I was your age. It was lame then, too. But people just couldn't resist using it against anyone who criticized the governement's conduct of a different war. So what if the meaning has flip-flopped? The more things change, the more they stay the same when people get exercised over important issues.

[southsideirish71]

To connect this with the ANWR energy problem, Iraq "war for oil" etc.  We no longer need energy from petroleum.  Just set up generators on the caskets of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin.  Their spinning will give us more energy than we can ever use.

 

And there used to be another country that spied on people for their own protection -- those wonderful democratic countries like the former USSR or modern-day China.  If you want domestic surveillance of people without 4th Amendment warrants, go live in China...and don't let the door hit your authoritarian ass on the way out.

 

I love the outrage and the anger over something that has been going on for years. Whats the difference, one president actually admitted doing it. BTW Apu if you want to find that perfect democracy that would never ever spy on their own people, I would start by eliminating the partners in the Echelon network England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I am sure the French and the Russians today dont spy on their own, but then again they do. Actually outside of fairytale would you find a single country in the world, if not in modern history that hasnt performed survelliance /spying on their own people. But I guess thats ok because its not the hated George Bush. Now who is behind the biggest upgrades and push to Echelon. Was it Bush in a post 9/11 push of fear and anger. No it was President Clinton.

 

Echelon and spying on your own people is not something new. The system was built in the 70's, and the biggest upgrad happened under Clintons watch. Only a fool would believe that this is something unique to the evil republicans and their leader George Bush cooked up. Clinton seem to love this spying thing.

 

Insight Magazine reported in a series of articles in 1997 that President Clinton ordered the NSA and FBI to mount a massive surveillance operation at the 1993 Asian/Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) hosted in Seattle. One intelligence source for the story related that over 300 hotel rooms had been bugged for the event, which was designed to obtain information regarding oil and hydro-electric deals pending in Vietnam that were passed on to high level Democratic Party contributors competing for the contracts.  But foreign companies were not the only losers: when Vietnam expressed interest in purchasing two used 737 freighter aircraft from an American businessman, the deal was scuttled after Commerce Secretary Ron Brown arranged favorable financing for two new 737s from Boeing.

 

 

In September 1993, President Clinton asked the CIA to spy on Japanese auto manufacturers that were designing zero-emission cars and to forward that information to the Big Three US car manufacturers: Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.  In 1995, the New York Times reported that the NSA and the CIA’s Tokyo station were involved in providing detailed information to US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor’s team of negotiators in Geneva facing Japanese car companies in a trade dispute.  Recently, a Japanese newspaper, Mainichi, accused the NSA of continuing to monitor the communications of Japanese companies on behalf of American companies. 

 

I guess its okay if a Dem orders the spying

 

I wonder how many these companies gave to the Clinton campaign fund.

 

 

I am pretty sure that all US presidents have acted in this manner. They have all had some sort of survelliance in some sort of manner behind the closed doors. Do you really believe that the military under FDR wasnt spying on japanese americans, or that Eisnhower or JFK didnt do the same thing. Come on. The only difference is today we have better technology. What is the difference between those presidents and Bush. Bush admits it. Why because he feels he is doing it for the best interests of the US. Just like all of the presidents before him probably thought. Get over the conspiracy theories and the "OMG MY RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED".

 

Let me sum it up for you everyone is spying on you. When you go to work and you send an email or use the computer your company is spying on you. I work as a security engineer at my company. We watch every single thing every one of our associates do(email, call detail, internet, im, fax transmissions). I can pull up an IM conversation in session, and see Jimmy trying to pick up random internet chick on company time. And everyone of our users have volunteered for this. Because they click on a little I agree icon(acceptable use policy). Then when we are firing them for surfing for porn, or sending our patents to our competitors. They cry about their rights. I am sure that most have done this at their work and dont think about it.

 

If you use any electronic mediums to communicate you should pretty much assume that it isnt safe. Why because the government is listening to you. No because your neighbor with some smarts in electronics can spy on your cell phone calls, or your home cordless phones. Your email is open to the world, your computer probably has had some spyware on it and has sent out some of your personal information. Your web browsing is being documented probably by others. BTW make sure you triple sooper dooper shred your documents or someone will do some dumpster diving and steal your info.Yes this is the Assume the worst, and then lose the paranoia for a few minutes and put down the Orwell chronicles and figure that maybe just maybe this doesnt have anything to do with you. Are these intercepts by your neighbor, unintended personelle illegal. Yes. But you go ahead and try and catch them. You try and pinpoint someone who is passively intercepting your information.

 

In the end this has been happening for years, stop watching "Enemy of the State" and drink a beer. Go back into the matrix neo, its ok.

Edited December 20, 2005 by southsideirish71

[EvilMonkey]

I love the outrage and the anger over something that has been going on for years.  Whats the difference, one president actually admitted doing it.  BTW Apu if you want to find that perfect democracy that would never ever spy on their own people, I would start by eliminating the partners in the Echelon network England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I am sure the French and the Russians today dont spy on their own, but then again they do.  Actually outside of fairytale would you find a single country in the world, if not in modern history that hasnt performed survelliance /spying on their own people.  But I guess thats ok because its not the hated George Bush.  Now who is behind the biggest upgrades and push to Echelon. Was it Bush in a post 9/11 push of fear and anger.  No it was President Clinton. 

 

Echelon and spying on your own people is not something new. The system was built in the 70's, and the biggest upgrad happened under Clintons watch. Only a fool would believe that this is something unique to the evil republicans and their leader George Bush cooked up.  Clinton seem to love this spying thing. 

I guess its okay if a Dem orders the spying

 

I wonder how many these companies gave to the Clinton campaign fund.

I am pretty sure that all US presidents have acted in this manner.  They have all had some sort of survelliance in some sort of manner behind the closed doors.  Do you really believe that the military under FDR wasnt spying on japanese americans, or that Eisnhower or JFK didnt do the same thing.  Come on.  The only difference is today we have better technology.  What is the difference between those presidents and Bush.  Bush admits it.  Why because he feels he is doing it for the best interests of the US.  Just like all of the presidents before him probably thought.  Get over the conspiracy theories and the "OMG MY RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED".

 

Let me sum it up for you everyone is spying on you.  When you go to work and you send an email or use the computer your company is spying on you.  I work as a security engineer at my company.  We watch every single thing every one of our associates do(email, call detail, internet, im, fax transmissions). I can pull up an IM conversation in session, and see Jimmy trying to pick up random internet chick on company time. And everyone of our users have volunteered for this.  Because they click on a little I agree icon(acceptable use policy).  Then when we are firing them for surfing for porn, or sending our patents to our competitors.  They cry about their rights.  I am sure that most have done this at their work and dont think about it. 

 

If you use any electronic mediums to communicate you should pretty much assume that it isnt safe.  Why because the government is listening to you.  No because your neighbor with some smarts in electronics can spy on your cell phone calls, or your home cordless phones.  Your email is open to the world, your computer probably has had some spyware on it and has sent out some of your personal information.  Your web browsing is being documented probably by others.  BTW make sure you triple sooper dooper shred your documents or someone will do some dumpster diving and steal your info.Yes this is  the Assume the worst, and then lose the paranoia for a few minutes and put down the Orwell chronicles and figure that maybe just maybe this doesnt have anything to do with you.  Are these intercepts by your neighbor, unintended personelle illegal.  Yes.  But you go ahead and try and catch them.  You try and pinpoint someone who is passively intercepting your information. 

 

In the end this has been happening for years, stop watching "Enemy of the State" and drink a beer. Go back into the matrix neo, its ok.

 

 

[Balta1701]

Echelon and spying on your own people is not something new. The system was built in the 70's, and the biggest upgrad happened under Clintons watch. Only a fool would believe that this is something unique to the evil republicans and their leader George Bush cooked up.  Clinton seem to love this spying thing. 

I guess its okay if a Dem orders the spying

 

I am pretty sure that all US presidents have acted in this manner. They have all had some sort of survelliance in some sort of manner behind the closed doors. Do you really believe that the military under FDR wasnt spying on japanese americans, or that Eisnhower or JFK didnt do the same thing. Come on. The only difference is today we have better technology. What is the difference between those presidents and Bush. Bush admits it. Why because he feels he is doing it for the best interests of the US. Just like all of the presidents before him probably thought. Get over the conspiracy theories and the "OMG MY RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED".

Dude, 2 points. 1...can someone prove to me that Clinton didn't go and get FISA warrants for the people who were monitored through that program? Between the establishment of the FISA court and like 2003, there were roughly 0 requests for a warrant from that court which were turned down.

 

Secondly, the Foreign Intelligence Service Act was passed in the late 70's. So what Kennedy did, or Ike Did, or FDR did...none of that matters. The difference between Bush and the others is not that Bush Admits it, it's that what he is doing has since been made illegal.

 

The question here is not the surveillance. I don't care at all about the surveillance. The governnment obviously needs the power to obtain wiretaps, and it would be stupid to suggest that they don't.

 

The problem here is that Bush is openly flaunting the law of the United States. This is not about surveillance, that's just the avenue through which he chose to violate the law. He didn't choose to ask that the law be "Fixed", he didn't go to Congress and ask for authorization, he just decided that the law did not matter because he was the President and they were at war.

 

The Republicans in the late 90's had a saying. I believe it went something like..."It's not the sex, it's the lying." They were right in that saying. Right now, the saying should be "It's not the spying, its the lawbreaking."

 

This is not an issue of wiretapping. This is an issue of open defiance of the laws of this country. You cannot defend this by defending only the wiretapping, and to do so simply ignores the real issue here. You have to defend the President's declaration and the Attorney General's statement that the President is above the law in a time of war.

 

The spying is not the issue at all. The issue is that Bush could not be troubled to go to the FISA court to obtain warrants as spelled out quite specifically under the law, and he didn't want to bother with changing the law, so he just decided to defy the law.

[Rex Kickass]

It seems to me that there's a big difference between what the President did here and what other presidents may have done with Echelon and business spying (which btw is a totally different animal.)

 

Echelon - which I have a problem with - is sort of like listening to a scanner from what I understand. You aren't picking someone to listen to, you're just listening.

 

From what I understand, the Bush administration is specifically targetting US Citizens. Specific ones, and eavesdropping on them without getting a warrant. To say that's justified because Clinton used Echelon and because Clinton may or may not have spied on foreign business interests (and I won't take Insight magazine as established fact, being somewhat familiar with the rag) is to say that because of Echelon and other alleged illegal spying its ok for the cops to just walk into your apartment when you aren't there unannounced and do a little snooping.

 

I will say that if Clinton authorized this business spying, its damn wrong. I think Echelon is damn wrong.

 

Did JFK and LBJ do this as well? Possibly. We know that Nixon did and that's why we have the laws regarding eavesdropping on US Citizens in the first place.

 

I'm glad he's taking responsibility for violating the law. That's good. But he should be held accountable as well for violating the law, best of intentions or otherwise.

 

His defense appears to basically be "I'm the President and you guys said any means necessary." Yeah, that's not a defense. His defense is an insult to the Constitution and to every American alive and dead.

Edited December 20, 2005 by Rex Kickass

[Balta1701]

Did JFK and LBJ do this as well? Possibly. We know that Nixon did and that's why we have the laws regarding eavesdropping on US Citizens in the first place.

Again, it doesn't matter what JFK and LBJ did. The law was passed after their time.

 

Campaign finance laws have changed since the days fo Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon as well. You can't just go and say "Well JFK did it" as a legal defense for something if you violate a modern campaign finance law. If a new conspiracy statute appears on the books, you can't just say "Well it was legal 5 years ago" as a justification for why you did it 2 years ago.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

I love the outrage and the anger over something that has been going on for years.  Whats the difference, one president actually admitted doing it.  BTW Apu if you want to find that perfect democracy that would never ever spy on their own people, I would start by eliminating the partners in the Echelon network England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I am sure the French and the Russians today dont spy on their own, but then again they do.  Actually outside of fairytale would you find a single country in the world, if not in modern history that hasnt performed survelliance /spying on their own people.  But I guess thats ok because its not the hated George Bush.  Now who is behind the biggest upgrades and push to Echelon. Was it Bush in a post 9/11 push of fear and anger.  No it was President Clinton. 

 

Echelon and spying on your own people is not something new. The system was built in the 70's, and the biggest upgrad happened under Clintons watch. Only a fool would believe that this is something unique to the evil republicans and their leader George Bush cooked up.  Clinton seem to love this spying thing. 

I guess its okay if a Dem orders the spying

 

I wonder how many these companies gave to the Clinton campaign fund.

I am pretty sure that all US presidents have acted in this manner.  They have all had some sort of survelliance in some sort of manner behind the closed doors.  Do you really believe that the military under FDR wasnt spying on japanese americans, or that Eisnhower or JFK didnt do the same thing.  Come on.  The only difference is today we have better technology.  What is the difference between those presidents and Bush.  Bush admits it.  Why because he feels he is doing it for the best interests of the US.  Just like all of the presidents before him probably thought.  Get over the conspiracy theories and the "OMG MY RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED".

 

Let me sum it up for you everyone is spying on you.  When you go to work and you send an email or use the computer your company is spying on you.  I work as a security engineer at my company.  We watch every single thing every one of our associates do(email, call detail, internet, im, fax transmissions). I can pull up an IM conversation in session, and see Jimmy trying to pick up random internet chick on company time. And everyone of our users have volunteered for this.  Because they click on a little I agree icon(acceptable use policy).  Then when we are firing them for surfing for porn, or sending our patents to our competitors.  They cry about their rights.  I am sure that most have done this at their work and dont think about it. 

 

If you use any electronic mediums to communicate you should pretty much assume that it isnt safe.  Why because the government is listening to you.  No because your neighbor with some smarts in electronics can spy on your cell phone calls, or your home cordless phones.  Your email is open to the world, your computer probably has had some spyware on it and has sent out some of your personal information.  Your web browsing is being documented probably by others.  BTW make sure you triple sooper dooper shred your documents or someone will do some dumpster diving and steal your info.Yes this is  the Assume the worst, and then lose the paranoia for a few minutes and put down the Orwell chronicles and figure that maybe just maybe this doesnt have anything to do with you.  Are these intercepts by your neighbor, unintended personelle illegal.  Yes.  But you go ahead and try and catch them.  You try and pinpoint someone who is passively intercepting your information. 

 

In the end this has been happening for years, stop watching "Enemy of the State" and drink a beer. Go back into the matrix neo, its ok.

 

Sorry the "well, the other party did it too so it must be OK" argument is like a pregnant woman -- they both can't hold their water. There is a major difference between a private company and the US where the government cannot fly in the face of the 4th Amendment. They could have easily got the wiretaps LEGALLY (well, even with the questionable legality of the Patriot Act which FISA had said may not meet 4th Amendment must but "almost certainly comes close")

 

I just smash Bush for his anti-4th amendment crap because he's said he wants to limit the scope of government while taking every goddamn opportunity to give he and his cronies more power. But I'm sure COINTELPRO type activities are perfectly fine in America.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Sorry the "well, the other party did it too so it must be OK" argument is like a pregnant woman -- they both can't hold their water.  There is a major difference between a private company and the US where the government cannot fly in the face of the 4th Amendment.  They could have easily got the wiretaps LEGALLY (well, even with the questionable legality of the Patriot Act which FISA had said may not meet 4th Amendment must but "almost certainly comes close")

 

I just smash Bush for his anti-4th amendment crap because he's said he wants to limit the scope of government while taking every goddamn opportunity to give he and his cronies more power. But I'm sure COINTELPRO type activities are perfectly fine in America.

 

 

Once again APU is whining about his rights being violated.

 

 

 

 

The government doesn't give a flying f*** about Joe Sixpack, they're out to find out what people suspected of illegal activity are talking about. With you presumably being a law abiding citizen you have more to fear about someone listening in on you from some joker walking past your house and overhearing your rants about Bush than the NSA listening in. Does that mean you're going to lean out your window and scream at every passerby for invading your privacy?

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

I love the outrage and the anger over something that has been going on for years.  Whats the difference, one president actually admitted doing it.  BTW Apu if you want to find that perfect democracy that would never ever spy on their own people, I would start by eliminating the partners in the Echelon network England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I am sure the French and the Russians today dont spy on their own, but then again they do.  Actually outside of fairytale would you find a single country in the world, if not in modern history that hasnt performed survelliance /spying on their own people.  But I guess thats ok because its not the hated George Bush.  Now who is behind the biggest upgrades and push to Echelon. Was it Bush in a post 9/11 push of fear and anger.  No it was President Clinton. 

 

Echelon and spying on your own people is not something new. The system was built in the 70's, and the biggest upgrad happened under Clintons watch. Only a fool would believe that this is something unique to the evil republicans and their leader George Bush cooked up.  Clinton seem to love this spying thing. 

I guess its okay if a Dem orders the spying

 

I wonder how many these companies gave to the Clinton campaign fund.

I am pretty sure that all US presidents have acted in this manner.  They have all had some sort of survelliance in some sort of manner behind the closed doors.  Do you really believe that the military under FDR wasnt spying on japanese americans, or that Eisnhower or JFK didnt do the same thing.  Come on.  The only difference is today we have better technology.  What is the difference between those presidents and Bush.  Bush admits it.  Why because he feels he is doing it for the best interests of the US.  Just like all of the presidents before him probably thought.  Get over the conspiracy theories and the "OMG MY RIGHTS ARE BEING VIOLATED".

 

Let me sum it up for you everyone is spying on you.  When you go to work and you send an email or use the computer your company is spying on you.  I work as a security engineer at my company.  We watch every single thing every one of our associates do(email, call detail, internet, im, fax transmissions). I can pull up an IM conversation in session, and see Jimmy trying to pick up random internet chick on company time. And everyone of our users have volunteered for this.  Because they click on a little I agree icon(acceptable use policy).  Then when we are firing them for surfing for porn, or sending our patents to our competitors.  They cry about their rights.  I am sure that most have done this at their work and dont think about it. 

 

If you use any electronic mediums to communicate you should pretty much assume that it isnt safe.  Why because the government is listening to you.  No because your neighbor with some smarts in electronics can spy on your cell phone calls, or your home cordless phones.  Your email is open to the world, your computer probably has had some spyware on it and has sent out some of your personal information.  Your web browsing is being documented probably by others.  BTW make sure you triple sooper dooper shred your documents or someone will do some dumpster diving and steal your info.Yes this is  the Assume the worst, and then lose the paranoia for a few minutes and put down the Orwell chronicles and figure that maybe just maybe this doesnt have anything to do with you.  Are these intercepts by your neighbor, unintended personelle illegal.  Yes.  But you go ahead and try and catch them.  You try and pinpoint someone who is passively intercepting your information. 

 

In the end this has been happening for years, stop watching "Enemy of the State" and drink a beer. Go back into the matrix neo, its ok.

 

 

More manufactured outrage from the left because the wrong guy is in office.

 

With all the whining, pouting and crying going on about this issue the folks at Kimberly Clark ( makers of Kleenex ) must be laughing all the way to the bank.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Once again APU is whining about his rights being violated.

The government doesn't give a flying f*** about Joe Sixpack, they're out to find out what people suspected of illegal activity are talking about.

 

So GWB has no doubt authoorized a wiretap on himself and all the fun folks around him.

:rolly

[FlaSoxxJim]

With all the whining, pouting and crying going on about this issue the folks at Kimberly Clark ( makers of Kleenex ) must be laughing all the way to the bank.

 

With all the jerk-offs in the administration and in the GOP congress the Kleenex people are already rolling in dough. :headshake