Aguila Blanca
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That isn't a stretch, that's a fabrication.RealGun said:
Gonzales' appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee
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Aguila Blanca
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There you go again. To the best of my knowledge, information and belief, I personally have not been denied any freedoms by the so-called "war on terror." However, as has been pointed out to you on numerous prior occasions, other American citizens HAVE BEEN deprived of fundamental and Constitutionally-guaranteed rights. Jose Padilla and the Muslim attorney in Oregon, the one who was incarcerated for several months without being charged because the FBI chose to ignore the fact that Spain told them he could not be the suspect, are two prime examples.Camp David said:
Why do you continue to insist that each person who brings this up be PERSONALLY affected? It doesn't matter which person is affected, the fact is that people are being detained for lengthy periods, in secret, without charges being brought. This is wrong. Do you disagree? If the FBI were to arrive at your house this evening and haul you away to an undisclosed military detention center because for some reason they thought you either are a terrorist or might have information about terrorists ... would you still think what they are doing is right and proper? Remember, when they haul folks away like that the people don't get legal representation, they don't get charged with anything so there's nothing to defend against, they don't get brought before a judge so they can't even argue that what's being done is illegal. They simply ... disappear.
Aguila Blanca
Member
benEzra may (or may not) agree, but I certainly do not.Camp David said:
You honestly do NOT think the 4th amendment is being abridged?
Kodiaz
member
If things keep going the way they are we are going to be the "insurgents".
Lobotomy Boy
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I guess it boils down to a matter of how much faith we have in our elected officials. Camp David is clearly an intelligent and rational person--one of the few defenders of the actions of the current administration who fits that description, it seems--and unlike some, he doesn't seem to be motivated by stupid fear, but rather he seems motivated by ideology and a genuine concern for what he believes to be the greater good. Apparently he simply has more faith in the men and women running our country than I do. I don't trust them as far as I could throw them. Personally I don't see how it's possible to have much faith in these people since Watergate, and all the examples of leaders behaving in a fallible and human fashion ever since. That's why I think it critical that we maintain a healthy system of checks and balances and not let one branch of government assume too much authority.
Lone_Gunman
Member
You sound dangerously like the insurgents!
(Those working in at Independence Hall in 1787)
Bartholomew Roberts
Member
jfruser said:
WHEN were they briefed? Were they briefed in 2004 when the administration knew the game was going to be exposed or were they briefed in ~2001 when the program was begun?
RealGun said:
As Biden noted, FISA was amended five times since 2001, including twice under a Democrat-majority Senate. How much of that do you recall reading in the papers?
Another thing that bothers me is that recent articles by the Washington Post indicate that as many as 5,000 Americans were targeted by this program and of those only 10 were forwarded to FISA for actual warrants to pursue further intelligence. If 10 out of 5,000 isn't a fishing expedition then I don't know what is.
At the end of the day, I don't have any problems with NSA listening to Americans if it is deemed necessary in order to expose terrorists. I do have a big problem with the administration unilaterally deciding it has that power and only briefing Congress when it becomes apparent the story is going to leak anyway.
Right now it appears the administration ignored both Congress and the Judiciary (FISA court) and ordered surveillance that is at best highly debateable under the 4th Amendment. If such drastic measures are required, then OK; but the Executive branch should not be the sole judge of that and if they have been they need more than a wrist slap if this is going to have any future deterrent value.
JerryM
Member
I believe that what is being done is legal , necessary and correct to protect the nation.
Citizens have not been spied upon, unlesss they have received calls from potential terrorists. When things like 9/11 occur some modification to what we normally perceive to be privacy rights must take place.
I think that history will show that the President has the authority to do as he has done, and that it was the correct course of action. If the Congress had know what was taking place there would have been much shouting for no reason than to try to gain a political advantage.
GWB is an excellent president, and one of the best during my lifetime. I voted for him twice, and if he could run a third term I would vote for him again.
Jerry
Citizens have not been spied upon, unlesss they have received calls from potential terrorists. When things like 9/11 occur some modification to what we normally perceive to be privacy rights must take place.
I think that history will show that the President has the authority to do as he has done, and that it was the correct course of action. If the Congress had know what was taking place there would have been much shouting for no reason than to try to gain a political advantage.
GWB is an excellent president, and one of the best during my lifetime. I voted for him twice, and if he could run a third term I would vote for him again.
Jerry
Camp David
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Hawkmoon said:
Thanks for your post... I believe I have stated my position already so there is no point me repeatedly restating it. Suffice it to say that few on the national stage have offered an alternative plan to the president's on addressing terror; instead most criticize his plan yet they neglect to surface a coherent alternative strategy. Since the president's plan has the most success so far in the War on Terror, I am willing to trust him on this 4th Amendment issue you mention and trust him with our rights. He does not have a record of abridging personal freedoms; when he does I might consider changing my support. That explains in a nutshell my belief and the reasoning behind my support of the administration.
Lobotomy Boy
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History hasn't been too kind to any president so far, and I see nothing in this president's actions to indicate that it will alter course for his sake. I think the warrantless wiretaps will go down in history about as well as FDR's internment of Japanese Americans and Nixon's wiretapping of the people on his list of personal enemies. But we're going to have to be a little patient before we find out which of us is correct.
Bartholomew Roberts
Member
JerryM said:
Well, if (per Washington Post) we have listened to 5,000 Americans and have only pursued 10 of those, then it would seem by definition that citizens have been spied upon without receiving calls from potential terrorists unless the administration simply felt that the other 4,990 people talking to potential terrorists weren't worth the effort.
I'm amenable to that argument; but it is not the place nor the right of the President to make that decision unilaterally without consulting the other branches. The whole checks and balances thing doesn't work very well when we institute secret programs that bypass the other two branches.
JerryM said:
How do you figure out who the "potential" terrorists are? I'll tell you. Each and every single person in the US is a "potential" terrorist. They're using this wiretapping thing to seperate the "definites" from the "potentials." How else do you propose that they "know" who to wiretap and who not to?
Things like 9/11 don't warrant a by-and-large recall of the Bill of Rights, because if we were set up to block any type of 9/11 event, then there would be no Bill of Rights and we wouldn't be a free country.
Less free countries will continue to throws rocks at us in envy, so long as we're the most free and prosperous country in the world. Do you know what it takes to avoid being picked on? Real simple... Don't be the most free and prosperous country, or at least more free and prosperous than your enemies. Are you sure that you're clear on what you're advocating by saying that 9/11 events require a rescinding of rights? When do we get our rights back? There will never be a lack of threats to our country, so by your idea... I don't think we'll ever get more free... only less.
I won't challenge your issue of Bush being the one of the best presidents of your lifetime. That's purely opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own. I will throw out a cliche and say that he was indeed the "lesser of two evils."
BuddyOne
Member
NSA's been around for a while. Is anyone so naive that they believe that signals intelligence began with President Bush? If the legislative branch hadn't been consulted there would have been no leak of the activity...
Checks and balances work very well when a political party doesn't become an adjunct of the enemy.
Buddy
Checks and balances work very well when a political party doesn't become an adjunct of the enemy.
Buddy
benEzra
Moderator Emeritus
I believe that both are important, and that the 4th is being encroached upon.
"Warrantless" means "without a search warrant," not "unwarranted." The 4th Amendment says a search requires a warrant. A secret intelligence court (the FISA court) exists to provide search warrants to allow secret surveillance of suspected terrorists.
What has us all scratching our heads is why the administration secretly avoided getting search warrants via the secret court, choosing instead to conduct surveillance of U.S. citizens inside the United States without search warrants. THAT is the problem. Not whether or not searches were done, but that searches were done without warrants even though warrants are legally required (both by the 4thA and by the text of the FISA law), and a special court exists to issue such warrants 24/7.
Lone_Gunman
Member
It is my understanding as well that getting a court order from FISA is easy for the government to do. Something like 95+ percent of all requests for surveillance have been granted by FISA, and it takes very little time as well.
Given statistics like that, I don't understand why Bush didn't choose to play by the rules instead of getting himself into a messy Constitutional quandry.
Given statistics like that, I don't understand why Bush didn't choose to play by the rules instead of getting himself into a messy Constitutional quandry.
Lobotomy Boy
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The actual number is higher than 99 percent. You raise an excellent question: Why?
The official explanation is that answering that question would compromise national security; those conducting the warrantless wiretaps simply ask that we trust them. The most well-reasoned support of the administration's Constitutionally messy program is the one put forth by Camp David: "Yes, we should trust them."
I wish I could, but there has not been a president in my lifetime that I completely trust. Even Ronald Reagan, in hindsight arguably the best president since Ike, engaged in illegal activity (though to his credit he admitted he had made a mistake in a nationally televised apology). While this president has yet to be caught red-handed committing an impeachable offense, at the very least his administration cynically manipulated questionable intelligence to drum up support for our current war. Whether or not you agree with the decision to go to war you can't legitimately argue that the administration's spin leading us into the war was ethically questionable. That fact enough makes me unwilling to buy into the "trust us" argument, especially when it comes to something as irrevokable as stripping Constitutional rights.
Lobotomy Boy
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Those of you who support the administration's warrantless wiretaps, please reread the transcripts from Gonzales' appearance and engage in the following intellectual exercise:
Imagine this is the AG from a future Democratic administration, and the topic is the warrantless wiretapping of gun owners. Considering gun owners potential terrorists is not so far fetched, since more Americans die of gun violence each year than have ever been killed by terrorists, and if this precedent is allowed to stand, we will see the practice of warrantless wiretaps spread like cancer.
In this scenario, are you still willing to support a program of warrantless wiretapping?
Imagine this is the AG from a future Democratic administration, and the topic is the warrantless wiretapping of gun owners. Considering gun owners potential terrorists is not so far fetched, since more Americans die of gun violence each year than have ever been killed by terrorists, and if this precedent is allowed to stand, we will see the practice of warrantless wiretaps spread like cancer.
In this scenario, are you still willing to support a program of warrantless wiretapping?
It is my understanding that House & Senate leadership (Rep & Dem) as well as the chairmen (Rep) & ranking members (Dem) of the Intel committees have been in the know from the get-go. In addition, GWB reviewed & re-authorized the operation every 45 days (compared to Clinton's every 180 days for similar operations). In 2004, the GWB admin spoke with the entire Intel committees to discuss the matter of changing FISA to make it amendable to the operation.Bartholomew Roberts said:
No one who knows definitely what the NSA is doing is willing to talk in detail, but a likely scenario is as follows:
1. All phone numbers are being captured & sifted through, coming & leaving USA, against numbers suspected to be used by terrorists. (FWIW, US Gov't has never needed a warrant to get phone number information from the telcos, even in domestic to domestic calls, as that information is in the open. I don't agree with the practice, but that is my understanding. It isn't just the NSA that does this.)
2. When a match is made, the domestic number is noted for more scrutiny.
3. Then a sampling of the audio of those sifted numbers is later captured and sifted against word lists, algorythms, etc. to try to detect terroist communications.
4. If the automated system gets a hit, it is them shunted off to humans for more scrutiny.
A similar regimen would likely do similar analysis of email in & out of the USA.
It is a logical reduction of data that is in the realm of the do-able, given current tech. Similar such reductions occur in analysis every day in operations research outfits in industry & gov't.
It is not perfect and can be thwarted by use of encryption, steganography, etc. Luckily for us (until the operation was revealed), most of the bad guys get lazy. I suspect they have been given more motivation to maintain better communications security from now on. More's the pity.
I suspect several two reasons FISA was shunted aside by GWB & the NSA:
1. No president has acknowledged the authority of FISA/Congress to restrict the executive branch's Constitutional power to perform foreign surveillance or commo going into or out of the USA. Not Carter, Reagan, GHWB, Clinton, or GWB; since FISA. Not any president before FISA. The principle is that Congress can not take away power given to another branch by the US Constitution. For similar reasons, the War Powers Act has always been treated as a red-headed stepchild by the executive branch.
2. FISA is unworkable, given the automated nature of the analysis & collection. Those judges would be signing thousands of warrants at all hours to authorize audio sampling & automated analysis. I doubt that the 10-12 judges involved have enough time in the day to sign warrants to authorize every sampling.
3. House & Senate leadership (Dem & Rep) as well Intel committe leadership (Rep & Dem) never squawked when briefed.
Capturing the phone numbers for calls in & out of the USA does not require a warrant.Bartholomew Roberts said:
Does the phone number capture (but not capturing content) constitute spying? Does linking an American's phone number with a known bad guy's phone number give enough justification to cature & analyze some of the call's content? These are questions that must be answered & I am not yet sure. I do know that I am a bit uncomfortable, but I know that anything sent overseas is open to be listened in on by foreign gov'ts, anyway.
Of course, remember that phone numbers are analogous to email addresses and audio content of phone conversations is analogous to the email's body.
An ugly scenario, but it does not fit the current situation. You are assuming domestic to domestic calls, whlie the NSA is doing its business on call that are entirely outside the USA or one end is entirely outside the USA.Lobotomy Boy said:
I would work under the assumption that the FBI already knows which numbers/email addys we all use & who we call/email.
Bartholomew Roberts
Member
jfruser said:
The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence committee says she was briefed since 2003. I'd be curious to see whether that coincides with the start of the program or not.
The WaPo story indicated the 5,000 number referred to the number of Americans passed on by automated systems who were listened to by actual people.
Foreign governments will listen to us and they will likely pass that information on to our government when it serves their purposes. The question now is whether we will tolerate allowing our own government to say that the 4th Amendment is meaningless as long as one end of the conversation is held outside of the U.S. I don't think that is a good precedent to set.
I am assuming no such thing. I am well aware that one end of the call is outside of the U.S. What I had assumed (wrongly apparently) is that most Americans would not tolerate being told that the President's powers to gather foreign intelligence were so broad that he could listen to any conversation an American had with a foreigner on the basis that this person MIGHT be a foreign agent or terrorist.
Your rights are like your muscles. If you don't use them, they atrophy and they are a lot harder to build back than they are to maintain. The only question I see here is whether we plan to maintain our rights or hand them over to the Executive branch (and not just THIS executive; but future ones as well).
CAnnoneer
Member
A few small points:
1) The damages to checks and balances that this administration has continually done will be with us for a long long time and may prove irreversible.
2) "Klintoon did it too" is a childish argument that no self-respecting adult should stoop to, no matter how hardpressed. It may be better to remember we are all in the same boat, so previous bad decisions are no justification for current and future ones.
3) Those who support the Imperial Presidency and think the executive does not have enough power yet, should read the "GULag Archipelago" by Solzhenitsin and "Cicero" by Everitt. (Svetonius and Tacitus would not be a bad idea either). Read them, dammit! That's the least you can do.
4) What the track records are of the Bidens of the world is irrelevant if at this juncture they do something to defend your freedoms, regardless of ulterior or partisan motives. Kicking them for who they are while they are doing something useful to you is just as bad as #2.
5) In a two-party system, the checks are provided by your opponents, whether you like it or not.
1) The damages to checks and balances that this administration has continually done will be with us for a long long time and may prove irreversible.
2) "Klintoon did it too" is a childish argument that no self-respecting adult should stoop to, no matter how hardpressed. It may be better to remember we are all in the same boat, so previous bad decisions are no justification for current and future ones.
3) Those who support the Imperial Presidency and think the executive does not have enough power yet, should read the "GULag Archipelago" by Solzhenitsin and "Cicero" by Everitt. (Svetonius and Tacitus would not be a bad idea either). Read them, dammit! That's the least you can do.
4) What the track records are of the Bidens of the world is irrelevant if at this juncture they do something to defend your freedoms, regardless of ulterior or partisan motives. Kicking them for who they are while they are doing something useful to you is just as bad as #2.
5) In a two-party system, the checks are provided by your opponents, whether you like it or not.
Camp David
member
New information ben that might give you an answer, or at least further define threat and its potentiality...benEzra said:
Bush: U.S. thwarted al Qaeda attack on L.A.
Thursday, February 9, 2006; Posted: 12:04 p.m. EST (17:04 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/09/bush.terror/index.html
The U.S. Bank Tower, center, is the tallest building in Los Angeles, California.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Shortly after 9/11, al Qaeda began planning to use shoe bombers to hijack a commercial airplane and fly it into the tallest building in Los Angeles, President Bush said Thursday. The details were the first about the West Coast airliner plot, which was thwarted in 2002 and initially disclosed by the White House last year, Bush said.
Lobotomy Boy
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That's not the conclusion I came to after reading the Gonzales transcripts excerpted at the beginning of this thread.
RealGun
Member
Bartholomew Roberts said:
He CAN do that, certainly with FISA clearance. The question is whether there is accountability and a procedure that serves to head off abuse.
There is a lot of breast beating about rights being violated. That is mostly nonsense. The issue is whether surveillance without FISA court concurrence is legal. Under the right conditions, they can still do whatever is believed necessary, rights be damned. Those who want to curtail that argument propose that the WoT does not involve war powers. There is a conflict between wanting to find fault with the administration and approving that someone is doing what needs to be done to protect the country's security.
Bartholomew Roberts
Member
RealGun said:
I'd go one further and say that the question isn't just whether there is accountability and procedure; but oversight by one of the other branches of government. DoJ currently has procedures designed to limit abuse. I am just not comfortable with one agency determining A) who to collect on, B) whether that collection is legal and C) whether that process is being abused. That is a process that will be abused at some future point if it isn't being abused yet.
I'd also say that just the fact the other guy is a foreigner is not enough to support the Presidential powers being claimed. If the President has the ability to conduct warrantless domestic/international surveillance of Americans without having a reasonable belief that the person on the other end is a foreign agent or terrorist then the exception is big enough to swallow the rule.
RealGun
Member
Bartholomew Roberts said:
I believe Congress delegated to the FISA court.
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