it's hitting the fan

[Michchamp]

anybody else following all these leaks of NSA spying?

wondering where it goes from here.

 

[tinselwolverine]

anybody else following all these leaks of NSA spying?

wondering where it goes from here.

The ones they're talking about pertaining to the Obama administration on MSNBC?


Yes, I've been heen hearing about it...work calls have been busy...haven't really had a chance to change over to CNN after Mika and Joe....

 

[Michchamp]

The ones they're talking about pertaining to the Obama administration on MSNBC?


Yes, I've been heen hearing about it...work calls have been busy...haven't really had a chance to change over to CNN after Mika and Joe....

obama goes on and says it's all necessary to "keep us safe"

Senators Wyden and Udall (both democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee) release statement saying none of that is true.

It should be formally investigated now.

none of the statements of this being a necessity to combat terrorism (going back to Bush) ever held water or stood up to closer scrutiny, but the mainstream press never seemed to care, and most people are too dumb and/or disinterested to. Maybe this time will build a critical mass of opposition to it.

 

[zyxt9]

This is stupid shit. Who didn't already know this was happening? This isn't News, it is Olds. I don't care if Obama did expand on what was started by Bush, they cannot use any data without court approval. If an investigation into terror reaches a point where the courts approve access to this info, then I'd rather it be available than not and havee the end result being more death and destruction due to terrorists.

Baffles me how this "suddenly" became such a hot topic. People are acting like the NSA is listening to their every word. They don't have those kinds of resources.

 

[Thumb]

This is stupid shit. Who didn't already know this was happening? This isn't News, it is Olds. I don't care if Obama did expand on what was started by Bush, they cannot use any data without court approval. If an investigation into terror reaches a point where the courts approve access to this info, then I'd rather it be available than not and havee the end result being more death and destruction due to terrorists.

Baffles me how this "suddenly" became such a hot topic. People are acting like the NSA is listening to their every word. They don't have those kinds of resources.

I would not underestimate the resources of the NSA and it's Super-Cray mainframes. They don't need an individual person to listen in, only a program running an algorithm that notes keywords and phrases, then it would be passed up the ladder for more intense scrutiny.

Old news or new, you have to admit with all emails, phone calls, text messages, and browser searches being monitored, were getting in to some pretty Orwellian shit here.

 

[zyxt9]

It isn't even worth the money that will be spent investigating.

How many people have been wrongfully arrested due to the surveillance? In fact, I would wager the surveillance passed up with court approval has been used to find more people innocent than guilty.

But let's all get our panties in a bunch because the government is doing the same thing it has always been doing. Do you think for a second that there weren't people listening in on conversations long before this process was established? And those practices were likely far more "illegal" than what is being done now where the courts are involved and the agencies have to obtain court authorization to go digging deeper into the records.

It's just a bunch of paranoia that now is gripping America because the media has finally decided to latch onto something everyone has known about for over a decade. Why now? Was the MSM dropping in followers one day so they finally had to crack this egg open? The paranoia is being completely generated by the media. Anyone with an ounce of sanity and a grasp of reality recognizes this is a bunch of nothing. Even if the media manages to eliminate this process, another one will replace it, maybe not tomorrow but soon. And how much wrath would the MSM pour upon the government if another terrorist act took place that would have been prevented had the MSM not forced the shutdown of this practice? Will we hold the MSM accountable for such an event? No, we will blame the government because that is what the MSM tells us to do.

I'd rather the government use its time, money, and effort at developing more effective ways at stopping Russia and China from their continuous cyber-warfare efforts. You think the US is Orwellian??? Those two countries probably have even more detailed info than the US on US citizens because they have more resources and are not limited by the law in what they are doing with electronic surveillance. Russia had warned about the Boston Bombers before they committed their act of terror, but did anyone bother to dig and find out exactly HOW the Russians obtained their information about two people living in the US? The simple mind says they only used information gathered from surveillance of Russians, just like the simple mind didn't already know the US has been doing what they have for over a decade and now the simpletons are being led by the MSM to turn it into a big problem when there is zero evidence anyone has been negatively impacted by it.

Hell, the MSM gets ahold of text messages sent by politicians, celebrities, and athletes and openly reports their sexual liaisons or non-PC comments resulting in public shame and humiliation, often leading to divorce, loss of jobs, and other things. By that token, the MSM has been far more guilty of violating those individual's rights to privacy and all the other things they are pointing fingers at the US government and screaming about at the moment. Hypocritical, they name is MSM.

When it comes to doing evil in this country, MSM >>>>>>>>> US Government.

 

[Michchamp]

zyxt... go read up on COINTELPRO. Or the findings of the Church Committee.

read about things like this.

or the way the police infiltrated and were all over the occupy protests from day one.

You may disagree with protesting in general, and reflexively hate and despise people who do, but if they're not damaging property they're acting on their constitutional rights of assembly and speech.

this widespread surveillance is used solely to prevent them from doing that. It's unconstitutional.

the claims it's needed to "keep us safe" are so obviously false at this stage, you'd have to be a fool, or willingly put your head in the sand to think otherwise.

 

[Michchamp]

the revelations that this stuff was occurring should've lead to investigations, and an impeachment of Bush, or at least forced resignations and possibly even criminal charges for the officials who ordered it and oversaw it, and I'm being consistent here in that I hope the same thing happens now to Obama & his administration and I would be very happy if it did.

 

[redandguilty]

But let's all get our panties in a bunch because the government is doing the same thing it has always been doing.

It's not the same. When the odds go from almost nil to pretty good odds that they're tracking any given random citizen, that a significant change.

Why now? Was the MSM dropping in followers one day so they finally had to crack this egg open? The paranoia is being completely generated by the media. Anyone with an ounce of sanity and a grasp of reality recognizes this is a bunch of nothing.

Why now is a pretty good question, but that doesn't make this a bunch of nothing. There are lots of things going on that we should be upset about. We just don't have enough outrage to point at all the things that deserve it.

I'd rather the government use its time, money, and effort at developing more effective ways at stopping Russia and China from their continuous cyber-warfare efforts. You think the US is Orwellian???

That someone else is worse is not a valid justification for a behavior.

Those two countries probably have even more detailed info than the US on US citizens because they have more resources and are not limited by the law in what they are doing with electronic surveillance.

They do not have more resources than we do. China may have more people involved, but we have the most advanced capabilities. The first Stuxnet attack was in 2007.

I once had a cell phone conversation on how a free, independent internet could be built and which turned to some darker corners of the internet. As we discussed it, we heard a couple clicks on the line. My friend said it mean they were recording us because we said too many key words that got their attention. He was joking, but we talked briefly on whether or not it would even be possible to screen everything like that, in realtime (and to reject the idea that you'd hear any clicking.) I don't think we're there, but not because of any technical limitation, just the scale. My garmin is already listening for a key phrase all the time, that's nothing new. You just need a lot of processing power. It would be impossible to keep it a secret. I think it would have to be a big facility and since all the call data would have to go through it, it wouldn't be a secret to the phone companies. It would probably have to be built into their infrastructure hub. This isn't tapping into a wire somewhere; it's beefing up the scale of their infrastructure. People in the business would know something was up just from the size of the facilities.

Russia had warned about the Boston Bombers before they committed their act of terror, but did anyone bother to dig and find out exactly HOW the Russians obtained their information about two people living in the US?

The Russian info we know of stems from meetings held in Russia with Islamic militants. If they did have info from say efforts in the US, they wouldn't have told the FBI of that capacity anyway. You can speculate about it, but what the Russians told us did not tip their hand.

When it comes to doing evil in this country, MSM >>>>>>>>> US Government.

Again, that someone else is worse is not a valid justification for a behavior.

 

[TheVictors]

This is why we always referred to weed, aka marijuana as "Larry" when speaking on the phone. As in, "Have you seen larry lately?"

But now it's legal so we just say, "Hey do you have any weed because I'm out of weed."

 

[Michchamp]

that only works if you don't have any friends named Larry.

 

[TheVictors]

that only works if you don't have any friends named Larry.

Which reminds me of a funny story where a buddy of mine (who wasn't in the loop of us using "Larry" as a proxy for weed) was talking about how a few folks were going to be getting together on the upcoming Thursday at Casey's (a pseudo Irish Pub) and said Larry would be there too.

So about forty-five minutes after we'd all filtered in, I asked if John knew where "Larry" was and as if in cue, his buddy and former business partner Larry walked in the door.

Oh, so you meant Larry .....not "Larry."

 

[redandguilty]

 

[Diggler Cometh]

This is why we always referred to weed, aka marijuana as "Larry" when speaking on the phone. As in, "Have you seen larry lately?"

But now it's legal so we just say, "Hey do you have any weed because I'm out of weed."

Down south it's Reggie for regs and Chris for chronic.

 

[redandguilty]

 

[TheVictors]

Any irony to the fact that NCIS has been the #1 show on TV for years -- plotlines predicated on consistent and intrusive government surveillance in order to solve crime -- and this "outrage" about the NSA??

And why are people on forums like Facebook bitching about "privacy" and politicizing the story when nobody seemed upset when Bush was tapping phones?

 

[byco42]

I'm not comfortable when a government employee tells me there's nothing to worry about. Makes me think the exact opposite. It's pretty clear that our rights are no longer inalienable. They are sanctioned.

 

[redandguilty]

Any irony to the fact that NCIS has been the #1 show on TV for years -- plotlines predicated on consistent and intrusive government surveillance in order to solve crime -- and this "outrage" about the NSA??

I don't think so. That was a main point in Watchmen. We'd never actually approve of the characters we find entertaining as fiction. We'd side with Luthor before Superman.

 

[TheVictors]

Then there's the Voyeur, as expressed throughout Hitchcock's work and so many others. As much as we object to invasion of privacy, there is a curious obsession with trying to be that 'observer' and maybe we like the NCIS-like disconnection we get with the show..?

 

[Michchamp]

just a little food for thought: should read up on COINTELPRO... right-wing police state enthusiasts might not see the problem with it, but that is the problem.

or read about Jean Seberg ("Seberg is also one of the best-known targets of the FBI COINTELPRO project. Her victimization was rendered as a well-documented retaliation for her support of civil rights and activist groups in the 1960s.") At which point do they stop serving to protect Americans and actually start harming them outright?!

or this quote from Senator Frank Church (of the Church Committee), 1975:

“Th[e National Security Agency's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.“
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link:

As James Bamford wrote about Church’s reaction to his own findings about the NSA’s capabilities, “he came away stunned.” At the time, Church also said: “I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
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