The order appears to require a Verizon subsidiary to provide the NSA with daily information on all telephone calls by its customers within the United States and from foreign locations into the United States.
A former FBI agent implied on CNN that they've got a lot more than that, in an interview on the Boston bombing investigation.
Quote:
BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.
It's important to remember that the government has had call monitoring and tracking systems setup for years, that were supposedly only for calls going in or out of the US but has probably been used on internal US calls for awhile now. That the government is tracking our calls is sadly not new.
The extra freaky part about this is that instead of building a kinda secret system to track things they just forced a Person ("Corporations are people my friend!") to hand over 'telephone metadata' on a daily basis and depending on how broad it's defined could even mean general location.
This is why I felt absolutely nothing towards the AP when they got all butthurt that the Government might be looking at their phones.
Where's the reporting been on this issue for the last decade? Oh cry, they're supressing the "free press". Join the crowd, and by the way, FuckityFuckyouwithasideofFuck lazy assholes.
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Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the night. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life.
This was a weird week because both right wing and far-left sources were freaking out over the same two issues or at least laughing in the case of the IRS. The NYT editorial about this today is pretty good.
Quote:
We are not questioning the legality under the Patriot Act of the court order disclosed by The Guardian. But we strongly object to using that power in this manner. It is the very sort of thing against which Mr. Obama once railed, when he said in 2007 that the Bush administration’s surveillance policy “puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.”
Remember when even the government ranks found this unsettling? Well at least they found the toe-stepping upsetting. Miami Herald:
Quote:
Comey arrived as the No. 2 man at the Justice Department in December 2003, a time of political and constitutional crisis. President George W. Bush had ordered the FBI “to adopt a wartime mentality” after the Sept. 11 attacks, as Bush described it in his memoir. FBI Director Robert Mueller, who had taken office a week before the attacks, had done his best. Now the bureau was going beyond the law in the name of national security.
FBI agents were tracking thousands of telephones calls, emails and Internet addresses in the United States under the eavesdropping aegis of the National Security Agency. The highly secret programs were conducted under the code name Stellar Wind; Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft had to reauthorize them every 45 days.
The number of people who knew the facts was exceedingly small. But Comey was among them.
Comey thought Stellar Wind violated the Constitution’s protections against warrantless searches and seizures. He convinced Mueller, who saw no evidence that the surveillances had saved a life, stopped an imminent attack or discovered an al Qaida member in the United States.
Now the two men had to confront the president in a showdown over secrecy and democracy.
On March 4, 2004, Comey told Ashcroft, his boss, that he couldn’t reauthorize Stellar Wind as it stood. Ashcroft agreed. That night, the attorney general was struck with a potentially fatal case of gallstone pancreatitis, sedated and set for surgery. Comey became the acting attorney general.
On March 10, Bush ordered White House chief of staff Andrew Card and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to get Ashcroft’s signature for the reauthorization of Stellar Wind. Ashcroft was in intensive care after surgery, drifting in and out of consciousness. The president called and insisted on talking to Ashcroft on a matter of national security. His wife took the call. She wouldn’t hand over the phone.
Alerted by FBI agents guarding Ashcroft, Comey raced to the hospital. Card and Gonzales entered holding a manila envelope with the presidential authorization inside and demanded a signature. Ashcroft lifted his head off his pillow and denounced the program as illegal.
Then he sank down and said: “I’m not the attorney general. There is the attorney general.” And then he pointed at Comey — the leader of the rebellion against Stellar Wind and the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States.
The president nevertheless signed the reauthorization alone on the morning of March 11. It explicitly asserted that his powers as commander in chief overrode all other laws of the land.
Mueller drafted a letter of resignation by hand: “I am forced to withdraw the FBI from participation in the program,” he wrote. “Further, should the president order the continuation of the FBI’s participation in the program, and in the absence of further legal advice from the AG, I would be constrained to resign as director of the FBI.”
The president and Mueller met the next day in the Oval Office. Mueller told Bush that he would resign if the FBI was ordered to continue warrantless searches on Americans without an order from the Department of Justice.
The president pleaded ignorance of the law and the facts. Without doubt, he saw a political disaster at hand — if Mueller, Ashcroft and Comey resigned over a program both illegal and too secret to describe, Bush conceivably could be impeached.
Unlike the Miami Herald I don't particularly approve of Comey as the new head of the FBI, but he did stand up for something at that time.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that he is “glad” that the National Security Agency is collecting millions of telephone records — including his own — from one of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies in an attempt to combat terrorism.
Mr. Graham said that he is a Verizon customer and has no problem with the company turning over records to the government if it helps it do its job. The South Carolina Republican said that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to worry about because the NSA is mining the phone records for people with suspected ties to terrorism.
Of course you do, Lindsay. Of course you do. Fuck civil liberties. Man, remember when the government didn't technically have the ability to legally spy domestically without a warrant and probable cause? This was before the War on Terror, when we fought off the envy hobos all jealous of our freedoms and saved Christmas.
The National Security Agency and FBI have been engaging in a highly classified program that mines data from leading U.S. internet companies, according to a bombshell report in The Washington Post Thursday night.
The program is code-named PRISM, and the Post reports that it was established in 2007. According to the report, the nine companies that "participate knowingly" in the program are Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.
The NSA and FBI tap directly into the central servers of the companies, obtaining audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs that "enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time," according to the Post.
Overly Attached Girlfriend's take:
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
Well of course! According to these orders acknowledging the existence of these orders is illegal and probably terrorism.
What's the first rule of PRISM club?
I can't get to the original WSJ article about this without a subscription but this is a decent summary. It's hard to imagine that they all thought that no one would notice the "direct access" qualification.
I just heard it on NPR and I was spitting acid. The hypocrisy is just nauseating.
Quote:
[...]you’ll remember when I made that speech a couple of weeks ago about the need for us to shift out of a perpetual war mindset. I specifically said that one of the things that we’re going to have to discuss and debate is how were we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy, because there are some trade-offs involved.
No shit. How the hell is this discussion and debate going to take place if the government refuses to inform the people of what they are already doing with our information? This is just transparently bullshit.
Quote:
And I welcome this debate.
Liar. You are only having this debate because it was exposed by the media. Foreign Media at that.
Which is an entire other part of this I am confused and terrified about. Most telecommunications companies are in bed with our corporate media. I don't think for a minute that our American media were unaware of these orders. They remained mute on the subject for their own legal liability as well as their own financial interests.
Quote:
And I think it’s healthy for our democracy. I think it’s a sign of maturity, because probably five years ago, six years ago, we might not have been having this debate.
WTF? Yes it would have been healthy for our democracy. We "might not have been having this debate?" We DIDN'T have this debate, FFS. You can take that smug and smarmy opinion about the "maturity" of the American people and shove it up your ass, Mr. President.
That is the most patronizing and condescending statement I think I have ever heard come from the white house. Lies I am used to.
Quote:
And I think it’s interesting that there are some folks on the left, but also some folks on the right who are now worried about it who weren’t very worried about it when it was a Republican president. I think that’s good that we’re having this discussion.
Fuck you. Seriously, just fuck you. You are in your second term. It is clear that you are no longer campaigning. But if you think that you can get a pass for your administration rubber stamping the policies of Bush, you are sorely mistaken.
Quote:
But I think it’s important for everybody to understand, and I think the American people understand, that there are some trade-offs involved. You know, I came in with a health skepticism about these programs. My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards. But my assessment and my team’s assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. And the modest encroachments on privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration without a name attached and not looking at content — that on, you know, net, it was worth us doing.
That’s — some other folks may have a different assessment of that. But I think it’s important to recognize that you can’t have a hundred percent security and also then have a hundred percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.
You know who was absent in the "we" statements in the first paragraph, but present in the second? The fucking people's whose names are on that list. The people who are directly effected by YOUR CHOICES. These weren't OUR CHOICES, they were YOURS. By keeping the policies of your predecessor secret, your continued to rob us of the choice. Seriously, fuck you.
What happened to all those promises and assurances about "transparent" government? How the fuck can you reconcile all those previous statements with this? Secret programs putting surveillance on private citizens without their knowledge, consent, or any probable cause?
I can't even get into the second question. It is so ridiculous and exposes all of his lies in the first response. Essentially he was asked, "If you welcome the debate are you glad of the leak?" He contradicts everything he said previously and pretty much paints anyone concerned with privacy into hysterical, tin foil hat wearing, morons with political motive.
I will simply quote this:
Quote:
And if people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.
Liar. You are only having this debate because it was exposed by the media. Foreign Media at that.
It's easy to pretend-welcome a "debate" that was thrust upon you, especially when the debate won't yield anything of substance. It's already been pointed out a billion times, but no president from now until the U.S. devolves into something resembling a Mad Max movie will ever willingly give up what George W. Bush got in the wake of 9/11. Even if some extraordinary act of judicial or legislative will someday brings down USA PATRIOT, too late! The surveillance machinery is in place and it's never, ever going away. We are well and truly boned.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Demimonde
Quote:
And I think it’s interesting that there are some folks on the left, but also some folks on the right who are now worried about it who weren’t very worried about it when it was a Republican president. I think that’s good that we’re having this discussion.
Fuck you. Seriously, just fuck you. You are in your second term. It is clear that you are no longer campaigning. But if you think that you can get a pass for your administration rubber stamping the policies of Bush, you are sorely mistaken.
I had harbored an infinitesimally small hope that First Term Obama wasn't Real Obama, and that we'd see Real Obama -- an uberprogressive of historic and heroic proportions -- soon after Inauguration Day #2. Despite its minuscule size, that hope was remarkably persistent. lol not any more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Watser?
Anyway, so finally a real scandal! Is Fox aware of this?
Meh, they're far too busy with manufactured scandals about Benghazi and the IRS being mean to teabillies.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
I wish I could be outraged by this, but I'm not surprised by anything anymore. By default I assume that everything, aside from what the inside of my colon looks like, is being monitored by the government.
[White House Talking Point]There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That regime has been briefed to and approved by the Court.
Activities authorized under the Act are subject to strict controls and procedures under oversight of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FISA Court, to ensure that they comply with the Constitution and laws of the United States and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties.
Don’t worry, the White House concludes. The legal review designed not to be robust is robust.
And to be fair, the FISA Court has, on at least one occasion, told the Administration they were violating the Fourth Amendment. Though apparently DOJ and ODNI thought this Fourth Amendment violative collection was kosher, as they had to be slapped down by the court, so I’m not sure what purpose their purported oversight serves.
But as I pointed out this morning, there’s a flaw to this argument that is grounded in the Administration’s refusal to admit this is a real FISA Court order.
Standing.
The government, over and over and over and over, assures us this is all very Constitutional. Even while the government, over and over and over and over, goes to great lengths to ensure citizens don’t learn how they’re being surveilled, which would (in addition to pissing them off) give them the ability to sue.
Until the Americans who have been surveilled are permitted to challenge this in a court — precisely what the government has gone to great lengths to prevent — White House claims to constitutionality ring hollow.
as these whistleblowing acts becoming increasingly demonized ("reprehensible", declared Director of National Intelligence James Clapper yesterday), please just spend a moment considering the options available to someone with access to numerous Top Secret documents.
They could easily enrich themselves by selling those documents for huge sums of money to foreign intelligence services. They could seek to harm the US government by acting at the direction of a foreign adversary and covertly pass those secrets to them. They could gratuitously expose the identity of covert agents.
None of the whistleblowers persecuted by the Obama administration as part of its unprecedented attack on whistleblowers has done any of that: not one of them. Nor have those who are responsible for these current disclosures.
They did not act with any self-interest in mind. The opposite is true: they undertook great personal risk and sacrifice for one overarching reason: to make their fellow citizens aware of what their government is doing in the dark. Their objective is to educate, to democratize, to create accountability for those in power.
The people who do this are heroes. They are the embodiment of heroism. They do it knowing exactly what is likely to be done to them by the planet's most powerful government, but they do it regardless. They don't benefit in any way from these acts. I don't want to over-simplify: human beings are complex, and usually act with multiple, mixed motives. But read this outstanding essay on this week's disclosures from The Atlantic's security expert, Bruce Schneier, to understand why these brave acts are so crucial.
Those who step forward to blow these whistles rarely benefit at all. The ones who benefit are you. You discover what you should know but what is hidden from you: namely, the most consequential acts being taken by those with the greatest power, and how those actions are affecting your life, your country and your world.
The entire piece is worth reading. His argument extends to his belief that the more the government tries to crack down and control, the more they will bring scrutiny on their actions, and the more the vestiges of actual journalism will point a spotlight on this.
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