NSA spying on US Citizens

[Bort]

Great, what next, roving CIA death squads in the streets of the USA? Way to go George, just when I thought you couldn't sink any further.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4534488.stm

[August]

Some officials said the programme had helped to uncover several terror plots, including one by a Ohio lorry driver who was jailed in 2003 for supporting al-Qaeda and targeting a New York bridge for sabotage.

[Bort]

In my opinion the sucess or failure of the NSA's domestic spying is moot. What is at issue here is the moral and ethical boundry that has been crossed by allowing an intelligence agency to spy on its own citizens without legal boundries.

[August]

Originally Posted by *[FOX

* Bort]In my opinion the sucess or failure of the NSA's domestic spying is moot. What is at issue here is the moral and ethical boundry that has been crossed by allowing an intelligence agency to spy on its own citizens without legal boundries.

Unless its members of your family that are killed in one of the terror attacks it prevented...

[Skybird]

The path to arbitrariness is paved with good intentions.

In principle there must not be anything bad in preemptive monitoring. But there needs to be a countercontrolling instance making sure this monitoring gremium gets not abused; and the countercontrolling gremium itself also needs to be beyond doubt of having different interests. A basic principle of every democratic system: countercontrol. Bypassing it must be followed by penalty. Practices must be correctly labelled. Rules must be followed. No matter what the intention is.

[Neptunus Rex]

..."The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said eavesdropping in the US without a court order and without complying with the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was "both illegal and unconstitutional"...

The same ACLU that considers the public display of Christmas Trees to be illegal?

[U-214]

Great, what next, roving CIA death squads in the streets of the USA? Way to go George, just when I thought you couldn't sink any further.

No,that's more likely in Europe.In fact i am shocked that the EU has still avoided to start investigation about CIA illegal flights and deportation of immigrants ,although there are similar alleged cases in many EU countries.Only a Swiss Senator said pubblically that the claims are credible and asked the Council of Europe to do something:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4524864.stm

It's a disgrace that EU isn't asking for investigation of such serious allegations.Probably because,if proven true,it would hurt politically all the governing parties...

[Etienne]

Originally Posted by Neptunus Rex

..."The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said eavesdropping in the US without a court order and without complying with the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was "both illegal and unconstitutional"...

The same ACLU that considers the public display of Christmas Trees to be illegal?

First, I don't see any contradiction in the two ideas.

Second, the ACLU does not consider the display of Christmas Trees to be illegal. What it fight against is the support of a religion by the government - and, by extension, by public services and agencies - of the United States. As forbidden by some obscure article of law.

You can display a tree all you want. But the government, a publically funded school or a courthouse cannot use tax-payer funded ressources to promote a religion - And yes, that might include a Christmas tree, unless efforts are made to make the display non-denominational.

A boatload of people would get angry if the local post office had a ramadan display. It's the same damn thing. The government cannot support a religion, any religion. Christian or otherwise.

And that's a damn good principle of law. I wish Canada had it.

As for randomly listening to people's conversations - There's a thing called the right to privacy, and... I don't remember the wording, and I don't have the US constitution bookmarked anymore (DONE! DONE with Poli-sci!), but... Illegal search and seizure, anyone?

Unless its members of your family that are killed in one of the terror attacks it prevented...

It's hard to be killed in a terrorist attack that didn't take place. You have to be REALLY unlucky.

What you're doing is a crass appeal to sentiments ; there is no way to know who, if anyone, would have been killed in those "Terrorist attacks". Would they have ever taken place? Who knows. Would attempts really have been made to perpetrate them?

Randomly listening in on law-abidding citizens is kind of akin to randomly arresting people and interrogating them. Just to check. Or randomly searching people on the street - Once in a while, just once in a while, you might catch someone with a knife, and that knife could have been used to kill someone!

So what if the guy had just borrowed it from a friend to carve a turkey? If he'd killed members of your familly with it, you'd think otherwise!

[Neptunus Rex]

And the Chinese, Japanese, Soviets, and any other techically capable nation, or those that can pay others for such equipment are not monitoring cell phone usage or those of other nations!

If it's on the air waves, it is being monitored by someone, somewhere.

If I talk in public, I can expect someone other than the person I'm talking to be listening! Using a cell phone is just the same as yelling across a room. Cell phones are fancy radio's, aren't they.

This is not to defend the NSA, but to note the hippocrisy of a story based on a document (released by persons whose intent is not known) that has not been verified by second sources. Seems to me that the media is using the authors credibility as the validation.

Hey, they did try to verify the story, but received a no-comment or non-comment, that should be good enough. Hey, wait, they can use the media created refrain, "We offered them the opportunity to deny the story, they didn't, so it must be true!

[MadMike]

BSKYB IRDWW EAREW ATCHI NGYOU HAVEC ELLRE SERVE DGITM OSORR YNOJA GERSC HNITZ ELORC OLABI ERHEL LONEAL

Yours, Mike

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Etienne

First, I don't see any contradiction in the two ideas.

Second, the ACLU does not consider the display of Christmas Trees to be illegal. What it fight against is the support of a religion by the government - and, by extension, by public services and agencies - of the United States. As forbidden by some obscure article of law.

You can display a tree all you want. But the government, a publically funded school or a courthouse cannot use tax-payer funded ressources to promote a religion - And yes, that might include a Christmas tree, unless efforts are made to make the display non-denominational.

A boatload of people would get angry if the local post office had a ramadan display. It's the same damn thing. The government cannot support a religion, any religion. Christian or otherwise.

And that's a damn good principle of law. I wish Canada had it.

Acutally, the separation of church and state was established to prevent the formation of a goverment sponsored church, ie The Church of England, which is where most of the founding fathers had come from. It was never intended to prevent the public celebration of any religious holiday on public or private ground. In fact, Sunday Christian services were held in the Capitol Building until the early 20th Century. Thusly, the notion of government-enforced secularism is a strictly modern sentiment.

Furthermore, if the postmaster is a follower of Islam, I would encourage him to demonstrate his adherance to faith. After all, we do allow people to pray at Giant's Stadium. The taxpayers of the state of New Jersey seem to have no issue with that.

[Bort]

I found this statement, on the NSA's website- linked right from the front page http://www.nsa.gov/coremsgs/corem00003.cfm
well, so much for that... Bush may have commited a serious violation of the law. Also, the NSA is a partially military agency, commanded by an Army General and employing large numbers of military personnel, unlike the CIA. Posse Comitatus anyone?

[August]

Originally Posted by Etienne

What you're doing is a crass appeal to sentiments ; there is no way to know who, if anyone, would have been killed in those "Terrorist attacks". Would they have ever taken place? Who knows. Would attempts really have been made to perpetrate them?

I'd say that planning would certainly be a precursor to the implementation, wouldn't you?

Randomly listening in on law-abidding citizens is kind of akin to randomly arresting people and interrogating them. Just to check. Or randomly searching people on the street - Once in a while, just once in a while, you might catch someone with a knife, and that knife could have been used to kill someone!

First off, its not random surveillance, nor was it done outside both congressional and judicial review.

Here's the link to the original story:
here

Note the liberal use of statements by "unnamed former officials" and heresay mention of undisclosed reports. As a matter of fact there doesn't seem to be one single directly attributable statement of wrongdoing by anyone from the government in the entire article.

Make up your own mind what you want to believe, but FYI the NY Times just about defines the term "liberal rag". They have a history of making stories up (google Jayson Blair), and are owned by Viacomm whose Chairman Sumner Redstone descibes himself as a "Liberal Democrat" that has given huge amounts of money to the Democratic party. Viacomm also owns CBS. Remember the Dan Rather forged documents scandal?

Shame on the BBC for buying into partisan politics like that.

[Torpedo Fodder]

What I don't understand is, if they wanted to spy on the communications of US citizens, why didn't they just get the British GCHQ to to it and relay that information to the NSA through ECHELON?

[Zachstar]

Because we are toooo good to depend on other countries to help our fasist ways.

Watergate anyone?

Lets put this into comparason.

Clinton nearly impeached for having sex.. harmed: 1
Nixon resigns and nearly is impeached... harmed: A party
Bush commits this serious violation of the law.. Harmed: A country