KodiakJack wrote: Do you know if the content is being stored but not listened to?
We were told to believe that when Bush set up his warrantless wiretaps, and direct-taps into the West Coast AT&T backbone network in Room 641-A in 2006/2007... Do YOU know if the content was stored but not listened to?... It's been proven that there was no FISA Court oversight, no Federal Judges that authorized it, no oversight, and no warrants...
PrintSmith wrote: Now, I might be mistaken here, but the data the government is collecting is who is calling whom and how long the calls last. How is that an invasion of anyone's privacy? The content of the calls isn't being collected - unless the calls establish that a pattern which is suspicious is occurring, at which point a warrant to monitor the content of the calls is sought.
What the federal government is doing is really not that much different from your credit card company monitoring your buying habits and looking for something amiss, is it? That's a similar invasion of your privacy, isn't it? Only we like that one, because it helps save us money because fraudulent purchases are lessened, right?
Do you know if the content is being stored but not listened to? It took a leak to find out they were gathering and storing this information so how do we know the content isn't being stored as well? This reminds me of different types of commercial fishing I've done. I worked a few years on a dragger which involves dragging a huge funnel shaped net on the bottom of the ocean and it catches anything and everything but only certain fish can be kept and lots will be killed and wasted - plus it tears up the ocean floor. Then theres targetted fishing that only catches what is legal to sell at the time and no other species are affected. In my opinion the government is using a destructive dragger approach to finding terrorists when they should be using a targetted approach. Theres way to many good fish to sort through in order to find a few bad ones.
Do you know that it is? If so, please add to the available body of knowledge on the issue and stop keeping it a secret. I want you to think about this logically for a minute Kodiak. The federal government is going to the providers to obtain the records of who called whom and how long the conversations lasted, correct? If they are also obtaining the content of all of the calls, that would mean that your provider is recording all of your conversations and storing them. Do you think that is what Verizon, AT&T, CenturyLink, T-Mobile, Sprint and all the rest of them are doing? And if you do think that this is what they are doing, then you have an even bigger problem than you imagine you have to begin with, don't you?
I was just asking a question - I don't have secret knowledge about anything. But it just seems like every day we keep hearing more and more about the secrets the government never intended for us to know. I voted for Obama more as a protest against the last administration and didn't want Palin anywhere near the white house. I did buy into the hope and change thing because I really thought Obama was different and wouldn't continue the patriot act or expand on it. I was wrong - and now I feel like the goal of government is to know as much as they can about the people without getting caught. Show me the proof that they don't ever listen to content - didn't they just do that with a fox reporter?
As soon as you show me the proof that the warrantless wiretaps and spying on internet traffic from 20067/2007, then I'll see about the current FISA-Court controlled program...(which HAS been approved by Congress, the House AND Senate Intelligence Committees, and the three re-authorizations of the Act, with 100% Republican support.)
LadyJazzer wrote: As soon as you show me the proof that the warrantless wiretaps and spying on internet traffic from 20067/2007, then I'll see about the current FISA-Court controlled program...(which HAS been approved by Congress, the House AND Senate Intelligence Committees, and the three re-authorizations of the Act, with 100% Republican support.)
Well I never said anything about spying and warrantless wiretaps in those years but I did say I wasn't happy with the last administration. I don't agree with anything Bush did in those years in fact. But he's been gone for a while now and I was hoping that this new administration would fix or delete those mistakes. I just don't feel like I can trust whats being told to us anymore but maybe I'm just being paranoid.
PrintSmith wrote: Now, I might be mistaken here, but the data the government is collecting is who is calling whom and how long the calls last. How is that an invasion of anyone's privacy? The content of the calls isn't being collected - unless the calls establish that a pattern which is suspicious is occurring, at which point a warrant to monitor the content of the calls is sought.
What the federal government is doing is really not that much different from your credit card company monitoring your buying habits and looking for something amiss, is it? That's a similar invasion of your privacy, isn't it? Only we like that one, because it helps save us money because fraudulent purchases are lessened, right?
Wrong. I submit that your eloquent arguments regarding the difference between private charity and public assistance essentially apply here as well.
Meaning it's OK for AmEx to collect data on my purchasing habits and use that information to establish a pattern of purchasing that they can monitor for anomalies, or Verizon can keep the records of your calls and examine them for a pattern which might suggest to them a better plan to try and sell you on, but the government shouldn't involve itself in looking for patterns which suggest that something is oddly out of place so that it can investigate further to fulfill its constitutionally delegated responsibility to provide for the common defense of the States that belong to the Union. Have I summed up your argument appropriately?
I can choose to use cash or different credit card companies that presumably would not share data with competitors.
You can argue that I can also choose to conduct all my business in person or by snail mail but I do not find that reasonable.
I reject the notion that in order to provide for the common defense they have the right to use force to amass terabytes of data on the citizens of this country. "He who would trade liberty for some temporary security,"...
Re: your comments to Kodiak, since none of us have access to classified material, I regard it as a fools game to speculate. I am comfortable in my assessment that if they can they will. If they can't they want to.
this has been going on for a long time. even though a whistle blower sued AT&T in 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
, they are still doing it here. It is interesting that Twitter is not on the list this time.
I DO NOT LIKE THIS OVER REACH OF GOV'T. This is the kind of shit that makes me understand the tin foil hat UN Black Helicopter folk's point of view.
Wily Fox aka Angela wrote:
I DO NOT LIKE THIS OVER REACH OF GOV'T. This is the kind of sh** that makes me understand the tin foil hat UN Black Helicopter folk's point of view.
Wily, it is not necessary to be a tin foil black helicopter type to understand why our Founding Fathers designed a government of limited powers. Those limits are slipping, some would say disappearing.
Alas, "governments are people too".
Yeah, that was terrible about that ol' [ridiculously-named] "USA Patriot Act", and all of the warrantless, illegal wiretaps that started 7 years ago...And the number of briefings of the Congressional intelligence committees; and the number of reauthorizations, in the last 7 years; and the 100% participation of the Republicans on every vote...including every attempt to curtail the power, and shut down the programs.....
And I'm guessing that information about "Room 641-A" and the "AT&T" debacle has been posted at least 20 times, (and always brushed aside)...
And did you hear about the Titanic?...Wasn't that terrible?
Yeah, that was terrible about that ol' [ridiculously-named] "USA Patriot Act", and all of the warrantless, illegal wiretaps that started 7 years ago...And the number of briefings of the Congressional intelligence committees; and the number of reauthorizations, in the last 7 years; and the 100% participation of the Republicans on every vote...including every attempt to curtail the power, and shut down the programs.....
And I'm guessing that information about "Room 641-A" and the "AT&T" debacle has been posted at least 20 times, (and always brushed aside)...
And did you hear about the Titanic?...Wasn't that terrible?
Many have always known that republicans are too evil to be entrusted with power. Now we face the fact that not even a brilliant, benign constitutional scholar like President Obama can handle it.
Isn't it time to admit the they we need to reduce the size, power and scope of government?
