Spying on Us
The thought that telecommunications companies might be granted retroactive immunity from lawsuits for cooperating with the government’s warrantless wiretapping programs ought to keep lawmakers up at night.
On Monday, the telecom companies won an early round (which was later postponed) to make them accountable for violating the privacy of their customers without so much as alerting them to what was being done. That’s when, for reasons that defy sense and conscience, lawmakers voted to advance the bill, which is meant to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The act would protect telecoms from having to answer to their wronged customers in court.
Only 10 voted to halt the bill — among them Sen. Maria Cantwell — which leads us to believe that only few senators are able to see what is plainly put before them. According to The New York Times, some of those who voted to advance the bill said they did so in order to shoot it down later. Talk about convoluted strategey.
“For the last six years, our largest telecommunications companies have been spying on their own American customers,” said Sen. Christopher Dodd, who led the effort to kill the bill. “Secretly and without a warrant, they delivered to the federal government the private, domestic communications records of millions of Americans — records this administration has compiled into a data base of enormous scale and scope.” He also added that he’s never seen a president with “a contempt for the rule of law equal to this.”
Supporters of the dodgy electronic surveillance program say it’s necessary for national security. Oh sure. We couldn’t possibly have security in the Fatherland/Homeland without giving up your rights. Consider that, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the software used by the FBI to spy on phone calls intercepted 27,728,675 calls (or “sessions”) in 2006. And how many FISA court orders did the FBI get in the same year? Just 2,176, which means that one court order can cover a lot of ground. Just think of what they’re doing without the court orders.
As it turned out, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yanked the bill later on Monday, but the fight is far from over. It’s merely delayed. With telecoms looking to get off the hook, a government anxious to spy with impunity and a public and a president who has vowed to veto any bill that doesn’t protect the telecom companies from lawsuits, lawmakers have a moral obligation to fight to protect the rights of American citizens. Doing any less amounts to tossing us to the wolves.
©1996-2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
But the Bush administration began spying on Americans BEFORE 9/11. And would it surprise you to learn that the Clinton administration may have started it before Bush was ever elected? The question is whether the Clinton surveillance was domestic and done with a FISA warrant or not. From the link above:
If Clinton didn’t require warrants for domestic surveillance, then Bush was just following his lead and would certainly use this information to “blackmail” Democrats. Reid may be trying to protect his party by pushing to give the telcoms immunity — if the Democratic president gave orders for warrantless domestic surveillance [and that designation, “domestic”, is included in the linked report subheadline above], it would probably come out in these trials and create citizen fury as well as political chaos.
Hey, without the ability to gather dirt on potential political rivals, how do you expect an authoritarian government to hold on to power in the US?
Judges might actually be independent, and there might actually be a voice for citizens in the decision making process. Couldn’t have THAT!
No, the Clinton’s are no different from the Bush’s, just marginally smarter. Clinton gave us “favored crony” trade under the logo “free trade”, the first US military base in the Balkans, and continued the Iraq war begun by George Sr, killing about as many Iraqis as Bush Jr.
Now I understand why impeachment is “off the table”! Now I get it….Maybe Bill really did commit an impeachable offence that deserved investigation. And it sure as hell wouldn’t be a stupid stained blue dress. And I would venture to guess that Nancy and Harry knew about it at the time. And the plot thickens……or is that “gets slimier”?….
Rebel Farmer
I agree with you, and I’ve been wracking my brain for an answer about why the Democrats absolutely refuse to impeach Bush. I’ve kind of scoffed at the idea that he’s “blackmailing” them with something, but what if it’s this, and more that we don’t know about?
What do you think the effect would be if people were to discover that Clinton was doing it, too, spying on Americans without the warrants required by FISA? What would it do to the upcoming elections? Would it knock Hillary out of the Democratic race? Who would rise to the top then?
I truly can’t imagine what America’s response would be. For sure, they’d believe they were trapped between two parties that condone illegal spying with nowhere to turn.
It’s clear now that these people are totally out of control. From what I have seen of this government over the past several years, the only recourse unfortunately, is to not give them any more money. Our “elected officials” (including Verizon, AT&T and Sprint) are outright criminals. THEY are the ones who need surveillance.
This will not stand.
The U.S. government has a long history of pardoning the criminals and terrorists who work for them, from former presidents to the wet-work artists like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles who blew up a Cuban airliner with 73 people on board. And it is rather naive to think that they just began spying on their own citizens with the last couple of presidents. The only new revelation can be one of scale, if even that is a surprise. A real surprise will be when evidence surfaces of their undeclared and unpromoted secret agency that no one is supposed to know about and which is referred to only in whispers as “SA”, and who knows what they must work on.
It’s patently obvious that the US government BEFORE Bush II was not a group of angels singing on high.
The Clinton administration allowed HOW many Iraqui children to die? Who was that capricious little elf that bombed the shit out of the former Yugoslavia?
The US government has always been a bully–Teddy Roosevelt just made it official when he talked about carrying a BIg Stick.
And one must understand that the majority of folks who have voted for those governments do not want to face the reality: that THEY have been a consistent target for bullying.
Bush has become The Devil (paz, Hugo Chavez) so that folks can keep ahold of the illusion that when he goes, everything will be hunk dory.
It won’t. It will be the same.
Can we please kick out the Clinton and Bush monarchies? Patriots I think its time for another Tea Party!
Rebel Farmer
I’m going to have to retract something I posted. Apparently, Clinton did NOT conduct warrantless domestic wiretapping. This is from the “expanded” version of the link I posted, and it contains this information:
While some of us are outraged by the warrantless spying, has it occurred to anyone that many (maybe even “most”) Americans condone it as well?
“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”;
“Spying keeps us safe from the bad guys”
And other homilies mindlessly repeated by the brainwashed.
anney: Thanks for the clarification.
What’s next from these thugs - retroactive immunity for Hitler and his Nazis?
i can only speak for myself-I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE.spy all they want,it is because THEY ARE AFRAID…i do not like them or approve of them and i really hope there IS a hell,so they can go back to where they(bushmasters)came from….it is no secret,how i feel…my closet is an outhouse and the skeletons are cage-free.
Lots of people think this way, and I have some questions for them (not you since you don’t like it at all).
Tell us your age, what you do in your spare time, your name, your gender, your job, your salary, the names of everyone you talk with and email, the contents of those phone conversations and emails, whether you’re married or single, the names of anybody you’ve been sexually or romantically involved with, any crimes or misdemeanors you’ve committed, whether you have insurance, how much you pay for it, whether you rent or own and how much you pay for rent or morgage, what organizations you belong to, what church, how much time you spend online, what kind of car you drive, and any other thing we want to know.
No, I don’t want anybody to tell us these things, but people just like us who are employed by the government have information like this about us. And they got it illegally from the telcoms.
anney-what you fear is true-because they are masters of using even innocent things against people…such as identity theft or even death in cyberspace….remember it has been said,there would come a time,when only those who ‘co-operate’ will be able to buy or sell….dont get me wrong,i deeply value my privacy and of those around me…….what i was implying is that it is the fears of the ‘ones on the hill’that drive them to want to control us,because deep down,they know that it is really ‘them”the greedy deciders on the hill,that is the evil….
Whether you think you have anything to hide or not is hardly the point. You’re only seeing the ‘thin end of the wedge’ symptoms of a much larger picture — a detailed cataloging of the entire herd, so to speak.
The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, images of irises and faces. etc., a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of all their background checked employees.
And, in case anyone thinks that kind of police state mentality is a new phenomenon in the US, think again. The New York Times reports that a newly declassified document shows J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan as far back as 1950 to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Does anyone doubt that many people posting here might qualify? Now think about what real purpose underlies those newly constucted US mass detention centers.
You may have “nothing to hide” in your own opinion, but so did a lot of other innocent victims of other police states.
That evil scum which currently runs the U.S. are the ones who are beginning to know the fear. They have access to more information than most and they can see clearly that they are going down, the same as any experienced hand would perceive on a sinking ship. Their totalitarian moves are only a desperation clutching at retaining their current position, but there is no way in hell that those scum will be allowed to retain their hold on power.
only if you very very rich,can you afford to be anything other than a “sitting duck”…the vast majority of us are ’sitting ducks’unfortunately we are forced to work within our limitations…as they tighten our perimetors…we are forced to wage our grievances against them,in full sunlight.unprotected and exposed to the unforgiving elements……,only the very wealthy can afford not to be a sittin duck…..we will have to suck it up and deal with it….
The question that still, still remains unanswered: what is the real point of all the illegal spying? Let’s say a government decided that all citizens are potential terrorists - guilty until proven innocent. So said government decides to do a background check on all of us - men, women, the elderly, infants, etc. Said background checks - which, for the vast majority, would only take minutes - confirm that said vast majority of American citizens are not terrorists, nor harbor thoughts of “violent radicalization” or whatever.
So why, then, does the government feel the need to maintain dossiers on said non-terrorists? Why continue spying on the 299,999,000 of us who are clearly never, ever going to blow up anything other than our own minds? Why isn’t anyone asking: what is the goddamn point?
Frank1569
There are apparently people who rise into government ranks who are close to paranoid. I suspect it’s Dick Cheney these days. But America has a dark period of history with J. Edgar Hoover, though he didn’t have as much power as Cheney. Look at this report:
But wait, that isn’t all that J. Edgar Hoover wanted to do! From an earlier report:
The point is that from all accounts, J. Edgar Hoover was just downright weird, inhabiting a world that he believed was filled to the brim with people trying to overthrow the government, who had to be controlled. Some of the Bush administration language and actions reflect the same strange fearful mindset, and I think it originates in Cheney, with Bush’s cowboy mentality quite willing to play along.
Huh… you cal this a democracy? And you call the “Democratic Party” an opposition party ? Or ooppps they ARE the majority party in a two party fascist duopoly.
FRANK 1569 — You ask “the question … what is the real point of all the illegal spying? … why, then, does the government feel the need to … continue spying on … us who are clearly never, ever going to blow up anything … what is the goddamn point?”
The point is sharp and a bitterly poisoned one as well :
It may sound far fetched and conspiratorial, but the ultra-rich have a plan to subvert education and public programs, to create a properly subservient (dumbed-down) feudal (but still consuming) low class of docile sheep (+ people = sheeple).
They don’t like wanna be middle class grabbing hold of upper middle class, nor anyone being able to grasp onto lower-upper class coattails (while they’re down slumming and whoring with us).
The long range goal (so close that they can taste it) is the formation of a real solid two party system:
anney December 22nd, 2007 7:23 pm wrote I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE Lots of people think this way, and I have some questions for them
You asked some interesting questions, but that material is all collated and available online NOW. If I cannot google it, $50 will buy me the answers to everything else you asked. Most of this information have 2 things in common. Your name and SSN.
FWIW, I use cash wherever I can. I suggest y’all do as well.
ANNEY: Thanks for sharing the material on Einstein.
ARVY: Quite chilly the fragile nature of the “presumption of innocence” when what you believe is on someone else’s shit list. Our best hope here is that all the data creates the equivalent of a “needle in the haystack” result.
I remember when NASA lost a multi-million dollar space vehicle because the teams of scientists were not all using the metric system for their calculations. How many times does one branch of our exquisite (ha) law and order system not communicate with another, so that the target falls out of reach. (Bin Laden, any one?) There’s amassing info, but then there’s “shit happens,” too. Things are known to go missing, just ask “the borrowers.”
SIOUX ROSE — hubris is the driving force of un-natural disasters, because those pinheads have no desire to overtly lose capital nor influence.
It’s often also a game “space chicken” of two gamblers racing toward each other, each waiting for the other to blink first, to clean off the table’s winnings. Both are overly confident of winning, both hate to loose, but there can only be ONE top dog.
The really “good” gamblers never loose, because their opponents somehow just fail to appear at the finish line. Maybe we should ask the borrowers whence they went?
Seymour Hersch exposed CIA spying back in Ford’s time, 1974 or so? In fact, I came across the headline in a local newspaper here on microfilm when I was doing some genealogy. Government spying on its own populace isn’t anything new.
Now real news would be if we read about a citizen watchdog group that made it a point to spy on its own government, to keep THEM honest.
If you want some good entertainment, check out the movie “The Listening”.
Big story.
From personal experience, I would say that anyone who thinks telecommunication companies are anything but arms of the corporate/military (Homeland Security) is really naieve.
If I had the time I would write a story of stalking/surveillance and interruption activities involving Comcast that would blow your mind. In short, they lie, produce false documents to cover their activities and lies, then lie some more when those are discovered, allow police to cancel or interfere with service requests and appointments, and on and on and on.