Thread: And You Blame It All On The Republicans

Dems pass warrantless wiretapping bill, Bush signs
Posted by crushliberalism on August 8th, 2007

The Democrat-led Congress passed a bill that allows for warrantless wiretapping, and Bush signed it. The NY Times headline reads “Bush Signs Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping”, though it could just as easily have read “Democrats Pass Law to Widen Reach for Wiretapping”. Yeah, fat chance of that happening.

Anywho, I have to wonder: Are the Democrats going to “impeach themselves” over this?

I mean, Jim “fellating Cambodian boy” Webb (D-VA) wanted to hold Bush by the testes on the warrantless wiretapping issue in March. In August, he voted to allow such wiretapping. DiFi (D-CA) shrieked in horror at the thought of domestic surveillance in May. In August, she too voted for the program. The roll call is here.

Zogby’s polls supposedly showed that America wanted to impeach Bush over the warrantless wiretapping, and Democrats responded by…uh…voting with the President. I’ll be waiting to see if Congressional Democrats fire themselves over the matter.

So, as long as it is the Democrats idea it makes it okay? I remember in not so distant history the dems up on their soap boxes crying foul on this, but yet, now that they control Congress who are they going to point the finger at?

And you blame Bush?

Of course they blame Bush! It's just more of "the big lie!"
Liberal socialists do it so well! If they constantly blame the Republicans
like Bush,Cheny,Rumsfeld etc.,it takes the spotlight off what they're doing behind our backs! That's why the liberal agenda pi$$e$ me off so much!
It's dishonest and reactionary!

Gee, and all this time I thought Democrats hated wiretaps and warrantless surveillance.
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/201...uadrupled.html







Justice Department documents released today by the ACLU reveal that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.

The documents, handed over by the government only after months of litigation, are the attorney general’s 2010 and 2011 reports on the use of “pen register” and “trap and trace” surveillance powers. The reports show a dramatic increase in the use of these surveillance tools, which are used to gather information about telephone, email, and other Internet communications. The revelations underscore the importance of regulating and overseeing the government’s surveillance power…

In fact, more people were subjected to pen register and trap and trace surveillance in the past two years than in the entire previous decade.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-se...-huge-increase

..

For the government, the usual goal of a pen/trap tap is to identify who you are communicating with and when. In particular, individuals can often be identified based on the IP address assigned to their computer. IP addresses are generally allotted in batches, semi-permanently, to institutions such as universities, Internet service providers (ISPs), and businesses. Depending how the institution distributes its IP address allotment, it may be more or less difficult to link specific computers, and users, to certain IP addresses. It is often surprisingly easy. ISPs often keep detailed logs about IP address allotment, and as we’ll discuss later, those logs are easy for the government to get using a subpoena. Similarly, if the government is collecting email addresses with a pen/trap, it’s easy for them to go to the email provider and subpoena the identity of the person who registered that address.

Another purpose of pen/trap taps is to access information about your cell phone’s location in real-time. When your handset is powered on, it connects to nearby cell towers to signal its proximity, so that the towers can rapidly route a call when it comes through. Law enforcement can use pen/trap devices to monitor these connections, or “pings”, to pinpoint the physical location of the handset, sometimes within a few meters. And although Congress has made clear that pen/trap orders alone cannot be used to authorize this sort of location surveillance, it hasn’t yet clarified what type of court order would suffice. So, although many courts have chosen to require warrants for location tracking, others have not, and the government has routinely been able to get court authorization for such tracking without probable cause.

https://ssd.eff.org/wire/govt/pen-registers

..

Even more alarming, the latest figures — which were for years 2010 and 2011 — open only a tiny window into the U.S. surveillance society.

Consider that last year mobile carriers responded to a staggering 1.3 million law enforcement requests — which come from federal, state and local police, as well as from administrative offices – for subscriber information, including text messages and phone location data. That’s according to data provided to Congress that was released in July.

The nation’s major phone providers said they were working around the clock and charging millions in fees to keep up with ever-growing demands…

All of this only concerns disclosed monitoring. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in ongoing litigation, claims the National Security Agency, with the help of the nation’s telecoms, is hijacking all electronic communications.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...illance-stats/

..

More troubling still, says Crump, is just how hard the surveillance data was for the ACLU to obtain. Despite requirements that the warrantless surveillance orders be reported to Congress annually, Congress hasn’t bothered to publish the data for the last two years. The ACLU instead was forced to file Freedom of Information Act requests for the data and then sue the Department of Justice in May to force it to comply.

Even the documents the ACLU has succeeded in publishing, Crump points out, only cover the Department of Justice. That means surveillance orders by the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and every state and local police force aren’t included. In reports of wiretaps, those state-by-state orders often outnumber the federal surveillance cases.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygree...n-ever-before/

'Everyone in US under virtual surveillance' - NSA whistleblower
Published: 04 December, 2012, 18:01

The FBI records the emails of nearly all US citizens, including members of congress, according to NSA whistleblower William Binney. In an interview with RT, he warned that the government can use this information against anyone.

Binney, one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in the history of the National Security Agency, resigned in 2001. He claimed he no longer wanted to be associated with alleged violations of the Constitution, such as how the FBI engages in widespread and pervasive surveillance through powerful devices called 'Naris.'

This year, Binney received the Callaway award, an annual prize that recognizes those who champion constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.

RT: In light of the Petraeus/Allen scandal while the public is so focused on the details of their family drama, one may argue that the real scandal in this whole story is the power, the reach of the surveillance state. I mean if we take General Allen – thousands of his personal e-mails have been sifted through private correspondence. It’s not like any of those men was planning an attack on America. Does the scandal prove the notion that there is no such thing as privacy in a surveillance state?

William Binney: Yes, that’s what I’ve been basically saying for quite some time, is that the FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of virtually everybody in the country. And the FBI has access to it. All the congressional members are on the surveillance too, no one is excluded. They are all included. So, yes, this can happen to anyone. If they become a target for whatever reason – they are targeted by the government, the government can go in, or the FBI, or other agencies of the government, they can go into their database, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all. So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least.

RT: And it’s not just about those, who could be planning, who could be a threat to national security, but also those, who could be just…

WB: It’s everybody. The Naris device, if it takes in the entire line, so it takes in all the data. In fact they advertised they can process the lines at session rates, which means 10-gigabit lines. I forgot the name of the device (it’s not the Naris) – the other one does it at 10 gigabits. That’s why they're building Bluffdale [database facility], because they have to have more storage, because they can’t figure out what’s important, so they are just storing everything there. So, emails are going to be stored there in the future, but right now stored in different places around the country. But it is being collected – and the FBI has access to it.


RT: You mean it’s being collected in bulk without even requesting providers?

WB: Yes.

RT: Then what about Google, you know, releasing this biannual transparency report and saying that the government’s demands for personal data is at an all-time high and for all of those requesting the US, Google says they complied with the government’s demands 90 percent of the time. But they are still saying that they are making the request, it’s not like it’s all being funneled into that storage. What do you say to that?

WB: I would assume that it’s just simply another source for the same data they are already collecting. My line is in declarations in a court about the 18-T facility in San Francisco, that documented the NSA room inside that AST&T facility, where they had Naris devices to collect data off the fiber optic lines inside the United States. So, that’s kind of a powerful device, that would collect everything it was being sent. It could collect on the order over of 100 billion 1,000-character emails a day. One device.


RT: You say they sift through billions of e-mails. I wonder how do they prioritize? How do they filter it?


WB: I don’t think they are filtering it. They are just storing it. I think it’s just a matter of selecting when they want it. So, if they want to target you, they would take your attributes, go into that database and pull out all your data.


RT: Were you on the target list?

WB: Oh, sure! I believe I’ve been on it for quite a few years. So I keep telling them everything I think of them in my email. So that when they want to read it they’ll understand what I think of them.


RT: Do you think we all should leave messages for the NSA mail box?

WB: Sure!

RT: You blew the whistle on the agency when George W. Bush was the president. With President Obama in office, in your opinion, has anything changed at the agency, in the surveillance program? In what direction is this administration moving?

WB: The change is it’s getting worse. They are doing more. He is supporting the building of the Bluffdale facility, which is over two billion dollars they are spending on storage room for data. That means that they are collecting a lot more now and need more storage for it. That facility by my calculations that I submitted to the court for the Electronic Frontiers Foundation against NSA would hold on the order of 5 zettabytes of data. Just that current storage capacity is being advertised on the web that you can buy. And that’s not talking about what they have in the near future.

RT: What are they going to do with all of that? Ok, they are storing something. Why should anybody be concerned?

WB: If you ever get on the enemies list, like Petraeus did or… for whatever reason, than you can be drained into that surveillance.


RT: Do you think they would… General Petraeus, who was idolized by the same administration? Or General Allen?

WB: There are certainly some questions, that have to be asked, like why would they target it to begin with? What law were they breaking?

RT: In case of General Petraeus one would argue that there could have been security breaches. Something like that. But with General Allen – I don’t quite understand, because when they were looking into his private emails to this woman.

WB: That’s the whole point. I am not sure what the internal politics is… That’s part of the program. This government doesn’t want things in the public. It’s not a transparent government. Whatever the reason or the motivation was, I don’t really know, but I certainly think that there was something going on in the background that made them target those fellows. Otherwise why would they be doing it? There is no crime there.

RT: It seems that the public is divided between those, who think that the government surveillance program violates their civil liberties, and those who say, 'I’ve nothing to hide. So, why should I care?' What do you say to those who think that it shouldnt concern them.


WB: The problem is if they think they are not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does, the central government defines what is right and wrong and whether or not they target you. So, it’s not up to the individuals. Even if they think they aren't doing something wrong, if their position on something is against what the administration has, then they could easily become a target.

continues...

RT: Tell me about the most outrageous thing that you came across during your work at the NSA.

WB: The violations of the constitution and any number of laws that existed at the time. That was the part that I could not be associated with. That’s why I left. They were building social networks on who is communicating and with whom inside this country. So that the entire social network of everybody, of every US citizen was being compiled overtime. So, they are taking from one company alone roughly 320 million records a day. That’s probably accumulated probably close to 20 trillion over the years.


The original program that we put together to handle this to be able to identify terrorists anywhere in the world and alert anyone that they were in jeopardy. We would have been able to do that by encrypting everybody’s communications except those who were targets. So, in essence you would protect their identities and the information about them until you could develop probable cause, and once you showed your probable cause, then you could do a decrypt and target them. And we could do that and isolate those people all alone. It wasn’t a problem at all. There was no difficulty in that.

RT: It sounds very difficult and very complicated. Easier to take everything in and…

WB: No. It’s easier to use the graphing techniques, if you will, for the relationships for the world to filter out data, so that you don’t have to handle all that data. And it doesn’t burden you with a lot more information to look at, than you really need to solve the problem.

RT: Do you think that the agency doesn’t have the filters now?

WB: No.

RT: You have received the Callaway award for civic courage. Congratulations! On the website and in the press release it says: “It is awarded to those, who stand out for constitutional rights and American values at great risk to their personal or professional lives.” Under the code of spy ethics – I don’t know if there is such a thing – your former colleagues, they probably look upon you as a traitor. How do you look back at them?

WB: That’s pretty easy. They are violating the foundation of this entire country. Why this entire government was formed? It’s founded with the Constitution and the rights were given to the people in the country under that Constitution. They are in violation of that. And under executive order 13526, section 1.7 – you can not classify information to just cover up a crime, which this is, and that was signed by President Obama. Also President Bush signed it earlier as an executive order, a very similar one. If any of this comes into Supreme Court and they rule it unconstitutional, then the entire house of cards of the government falls.


RT: What are the chances of that? What are the odds?

WB: The government is doing the best they can to try to keep it out of court. And, of course, we are trying to do the best we can to get into court. So, we decided it deserves a ruling from the Supreme Court. Ultimately the court is supposed to protect the Constitution. All these people in the government take an oath to defend the Constitution. And they are not living up to the oath of office.

http://rt.com/usa/news/surveillance-...-citizens-178/ video at link ...

You would think if they were this upset about wiretaps ... then armed drones authorised by the "Assasination Czar" to target those suspected of "acting against American Interests" would be a REAL ISSUE.

:crickets: