Topic: PRISM and Fed spying

[charlesoakwood]

I was split on this too. Now I am convinced that although this man may have thought he did right, he did not. There are methods that can be actual whistle blower routes if you believe something is illegal. You are not required to do it. What he did damaged intelligence collection. ALL THREE branches were involved in the oversight.  I am still open to new information, but with what I know now, this young man may have unwittingly betrayed his country.

ChrstnHsbndFthr, your thoughts catalyzed mine. I'm not attempting to rebut you, just express what's come together. Thanks.
 
I must go with, there's too much intelligence collection and the collectors are evil.
It's none of their business. Collecting any information on law abiding US citizens is corrupt and un-American, it facilitates nothing but their political agenda.  They are virtually ransacking our personal possessions and papers.  And their new defense -
if you're not doing anything wrong why do you care, Is police state 101.  They can take their little computers and direct them toward Iran, China, Russia and other dedicated enemies or they can go to hell.

Furthermore, going through allied nations computers is no less than violating their sovereignty without the boots.

[IronDioPriest]

The fact that all three branches were involved in erecting a system whereby personal privacy has been essentially destroyed gives me no cause to find moral fault with this young man.

Government has no moral authority. It should, but it does not. Legally, Snowden may or may not have been in the wrong. Morally - barring the introduction of new evidence - I think he is potentially the greatest hero of our time.

A country where Barack Hussein Obama is free and Edward Snowden's liberty is in question is a country with no justice, government run amok, and laws subject to the whims of men, with no tether to principle.

[charlesoakwood]

All you need is love. Yat da dat ta da

Candidate Obama debates President Obama on Government Surveillance

Ya, a whole lotta love for that sumbich.

[ChrstnHsbndFthr]

Knowledge is not evil, in and of itself. The issue as I see it is preserving the knowledge so it can be looked into later, IF the courts grant that it is necessary, as properly defined in the constitution.  If that is being done, within constitutional limits, what complaint do I have that overcomes law?  The rule of law is important, and the constitution the highest of laws of men. What right does any single man have to put himself above that law? None, to my way of thinking. That would make him Obama. He opposed Obama on this. I am slightly uncomfortable that Ron Paul is supporting this young man, but RP is not wrong on EVERYTHING....just mostly.

[Predator Don]

I don't consider recording everything I say as knowledge. It reminds me of commerce clause abuse to do your bidding and finding a judge to find it constitutional.

There is no "limit" here. It is an unlimited recording program. If this type of abuse can be even considered constitutional, then there are no rules.

[warpmine]

I was split on this too. Now I am convinced that although this man may have thought he did right, he did not. There are methods that can be actual whistle blower routes if you believe something is illegal. You are not required to do it. What he did damaged intelligence collection. ALL THREE branches were involved in the oversight.  I am still open to new information, but with what I know now, this young man may have unwittingly betrayed his country.

.....and all three branches failed at the main goal of the constitution which is to protect our rights. Did you fail to understand that simple charge form the Founding Fathers?

BTW, I might be in that group. As of late , my country has betrayed me and everything else it stood for in the Constitution. You of all people should understand that God is supreme, not the state.

[Sectionhand]

The fact that all three branches were involved in erecting a system whereby personal privacy has been essentially destroyed ...

Add Obamacare to that ... forcibly taking our personal medical records and placing them in a central government data base . It's ALL about control !

[Pandora]

Knowledge is not evil, in and of itself. The issue as I see it is preserving the knowledge so it can be looked into later, IF the courts grant that it is necessary, as properly defined in the constitution.  If that is being done, within constitutional limits, what complaint do I have that overcomes law?  The rule of law is important, and the constitution the highest of laws of men. What right does any single man have to put himself above that law? None, to my way of thinking. That would make him Obama. He opposed Obama on this. I am slightly uncomfortable that Ron Paul is supporting this young man, but RP is not wrong on EVERYTHING....just mostly.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Where is the probable cause, and what is it, regarding each and every one of us, to collect and store the data that they are?  Where are the Warrants with our names on them as specified in the 4th Amendment?   And this gross -- GROSS -- violation of "the right of the people" is deemed necessary for *our* security, when they invite into our country and our government, and succor and cosset, the very ones by whom we are threatened? 

Now you want to accuse Snowdon of putting himself above the law, when what Warpmine states is THE issue:  all three branches of government colluded to violate the Constitution -- and don't talk to me about the law -- and the privacy of each and every one of us?

Oh hell no.

[Libertas]

What would have happened to Snowden if he tried to come forward using the system?  Maybe nothing, but his information would have never seen the light of day.  he would never have been allowed to enter a congressional hearing.  Under the Patriot Act and succeeding acts he would have been detained indefinitely.  I still say he is the voice for someone higher up the food chain, perhaps the only higher echelon mover interested in protecting the people and their rights within the confines of the constitution.  Let us for arguments sake Snowden did break the law, fine, if breaking the law to defend a higher principle embedded in our most sacred law is the only way to have a chance at saving the whole then that is a crime worth doing time for.  The real crimes are being done to us every minute of every day and with little outcry...and the guilty are still at it.  Couch it in terms of right and wrong, moral and immoral, evil and righteous...the conclusion is the same...government right now is wrong, immoral and evil.  Fight it or don't fight it, there is no middle ground.

New info here, ZH has Booz Allan and its ties to the Carlyle Group...a who's who of movers and shakers...Big Government types...the kind of Pubbies that do business with their Big Government counterparts in the DemonRat pack...give us the kind of bloated bureaucracy and intrusiveness that gives every Obamite a major jones to assault those on their enemy lists.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-10/911-prismgate-how-carlyle-group-lbod-worlds-secrets

Isn't it swell to see Big Govt crony capitalists and Big Govt pol's working hand-in-hand to undermine our freedom and liberty?  Doesn't that just fill your heart with patriots pride?!

I'm pretty sure that swelling feeling I am experiencing is pure righteous rage!!!

You?!

[IronDioPriest]

Knowledge is not evil, in and of itself. The issue as I see it is preserving the knowledge so it can be looked into later, IF the courts grant that it is necessary, as properly defined in the constitution.  If that is being done, within constitutional limits, what complaint do I have that overcomes law?  The rule of law is important, and the constitution the highest of laws of men. What right does any single man have to put himself above that law? None, to my way of thinking. That would make him Obama. He opposed Obama on this. I am slightly uncomfortable that Ron Paul is supporting this young man, but RP is not wrong on EVERYTHING....just mostly.

You seem to be saying that collecting this kind of data is not equivalent to using it, am I right? If so, I give you this graphic illustration and its explanation to highlight why I think you're wrong...

So What Can You Find Out With Metadata?

A lot more than you think. Your social and financial interactions and internet activity pretty much define your personal world.

And if the British had been a bit more savvy in ye olde social networke theory and had a rudimentary analytical engine (or perhaps a team of mentats), it would have been dead simple to identify a Mr. Paul Revere as a critical person among the colonial rabble rousers.

And by rounding up a handful of other nodal pre-traitors they could have nipped the whole insurrection in the bud.




What a nice picture! The analytical engine has arranged everyone neatly, picking out clusters of individuals and also showing both peripheral individuals and-more intriguingly-people who seem to bridge various groups in ways that might perhaps be relevant to national security. Look at that person right in the middle there. Zoom in if you wish. He seems to bridge several groups in an unusual (though perhaps not unique) way. His name is Paul Revere.

Once again, I remind you that I know nothing of Mr Revere, or his conversations, or his habits or beliefs, his writings (if he has any) or his personal life. All I know is this bit of metadata, based on membership in some organizations. And yet my analytical engine, on the basis of absolutely the most elementary of operations in Social Networke Analysis, seems to have picked him out of our 254 names as being of unusual interest.

...At the present time, alas, the technology required to automatically collect the required information is beyond our capacity. But I say again, if a mere scribe such as I-one who knows nearly nothing-can use the very simplest of these methods to pick the name of a traitor like Paul Revere from those of two hundred and fifty four other men, using nothing but a list of memberships and a portable calculating engine, then just think what weapons we might wield in the defense of liberty one or two centuries from now.

CHF, we do not have the obligation to obey laws that are not just, moral, or constitutional. Our obligations as chartered by our Declaration of Independence insist that it is our duty to resist, not obey.

Unless new evidence comes to light, Snowden resisted tyranny. That is just.

[Pandora]

Eye on the ball:

A senior U.S. intelligence official on Monday said there were no plans to scrap the programs that, despite the backlash, continue to receive widespread if cautious support within Congress. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive security issue.

[Libertas]

Big Govt boys of all stripes rallying around each other...

..time to surround them and lop all the heads off these snakes!

[Pandora]

A concise summary (if this has been posted elsewhere, mea culpa):

"Last Wednesday, the Guardian published a formerly top-secret court order from April requiring telecommunications giant Verizon to fork over to the National Security Administration “all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad” as well as all calls “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls” for a three-month period. Verizon hosts approximately 100 million customers who generate about a billion calls daily, all of which was being vacuumed up into government databases. (Former NSA employee gone rogue William Binney has told the Associated Press that the agency gathers records on up to three billion calls daily.)

On Thursday it was revealed that fellow telecom titans AT&T and Sprint, as well as credit-card companies, are also part of the massive surveillance initiative. It was subsequently disclosed that the recent three-month order affecting Verizon has been part of an ongoing NSA policy that has been renewed every quarter for the past seven years. Verizon officials declined to comment because they are under a gag order.

Although the court order covered only the calls’ “metadata” rather than the calls themselves, its has already been alleged that NSA officials eavesdrop on American citizens, sometimes for fun.

The follow-up punch came on Thursday with the revelation that the NSA has been tapping into user data from nine of the world’s largest tech corporations. The formerly top-secret program, code-named PRISM, allegedly started in December 2007 when Microsoft—who are running an ad campaign with the tagline “Your privacy is our priority”—signed on, followed in order by Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. (To its credit, Twitter has reportedly refused to join the herd.) The program gives the federal government access to users’ audio, video, chats, photographs, social-network details, and email. It has resulted in nearly 80,000 intelligence reports.

One by one, the companies allegedly involved in the PRISM program denied any knowledge of its existence, presumably for legal reasons. It remains unclear whether PRISM allowed the NSA direct access to the companies’ servers—as was initially reported—or whether they were obtaining information that companies provided to them as a result of specific requests.

On Thursday, scrotum-faced Director of National Intelligence James Clapper deemed the PRISM leak to be “reprehensible,” claiming the program was designed to “protect our nation from a wide variety of threats,” which presumably doesn’t include the threat of the federal government using technology to track its own citizens like a psychopathic stalker. Jeremy Bash, chief of staff to former CIA Director Leon Panetta, defended the program’s breadth thusly: “If you’re looking for a needle in the haystack, you need a haystack.” We are left to assume that so-called “terrorists” are needles, while everyone else is merely hay.

US Senators seemed to shrug, yawn, and wonder what the fuss was all about. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) bemoaned America’s “culture of leaks” while offering a passive-aggressive “We’re always open to changes, but that doesn’t mean that there will be any.” Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said “This is nothing particularly new.” Lindsey Graham (R-SC) assured Americans that “We don’t have anything to worry about,” adding, “I’m a Verizon customer. It doesn’t bother me one bit for the NSA to have my phone number.” And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) awoke from his slumber to say that “Everyone should just calm down.”

On Friday, Barack Obama, whose administration has prosecuted more alleged leakers than all his predecessors combined, claimed that “every member of Congress has been briefed” on the telephone surveillance program, which according to some members of Congress is not true. Obama added, “In the abstract you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a program run amok, but when you actually look at the details, I think we’ve struck the right balance.” Last month Obama delivered a commencement address at Ohio State University that included the following admonition:

    Unfortunately you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all of our problems. Some of these same voices do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.

... The public has now been informed that we’re all merely fleas under a huge federal magnifying glass. Every breath we take, every move we make, they’re watching us. Welcome to the Panopticon, whether you like it or not. It’s not as if you have a choice in the matter, at least not in this “democracy.” More and more it becomes evident that “hate speech” is whatever the government hates and that “terrorism” is whatever scares the powers that be."

H/T American Digest

Make sure to click on that "sometimes for fun" link.

[RickZ]

I was split on this too. Now I am convinced that although this man may have thought he did right, he did not. There are methods that can be actual whistle blower routes if you believe something is illegal. You are not required to do it. What he did damaged intelligence collection. ALL THREE branches were involved in the oversight.  I am still open to new information, but with what I know now, this young man may have unwittingly betrayed his country.

I disagree with the bolded.  Remember, Eric the Red is in charge of the DoJ.  Besides, this administration goes after whistle blowers who say anything against the Admin but are more than willing to leak info the Admin finds useful.  I do feel Snowden was placed in a moral zugzwang position with tough no-win choices.

Here's my $.02:  Snowden broke the law for supposedly good reasons.  I'm happy he did, but he broke the law.  He should be charged and let a jury decide, not Holder or Obama.

There's too much precedent being set by the Admin as it is and not prosecuting Snowden sets a really bad 'National Security leaks are okay' precedent.  Obviously, this solution sucks, but if we are to believe in the Rule of Law, not the Rule of Men, then he must be charged and go to trial.  Standing on principle has a cost, which is why Congress has no principles.

[Pandora]

He broke the law put in place to protect the Feds in their lawbreaking and violations of our Constitutional protections?  That law?

Pu-leeze.

[ChrstnHsbndFthr]

Be aware that he did NOT stand on principle. He ran. To an enemy country.(China) And we do not know where he is today. He has made himself a public target for people who desire information, by stating that he knows a lot about every NSA, CIA, and military officer. He speaks well. He thinks poorly, if he intended to help Americans. 

Also, the issue of the data is debatable. This is not really about reading your emails. It is about access to the garbage dump of data. It can be accessed later with a court order. The court order is allowed even to search your home. What is the difference here except information put out in the public is LESS intrusive?

I do see this from two sides. There is much here that makes me uncomfortable. But,  I do desire us to prevent future 9-11's. I do desire us to catch people like the Boston-Chechen bombers. This is not easy to just say government cannot look at all. It has to be allowed, as ANY evidence can be retrieved, after a judge signs off.

Consider the alternatives. None are good. There does come a point we must be more concerned about putting honorable men in office. Yes, reduce all their power. But, government does not wield the sword in vain. Some power is necessary.  Let us just carefully define the limits to the power, thoughtfully, while making sure only decent men are allowed to hold power at all.  I say this all the while acknowledging that the current lot should not have the power to give a parking ticket, with their ethics.

[Pandora]

Be aware that he did NOT stand on principle. He ran. To an enemy country.(China) And we do not know where he is today. He has made himself a public target for people who desire information, by stating that he knows a lot about every NSA, CIA, and military officer. He speaks well. He thinks poorly, if he intended to help Americans.

He ran because he knows his name is now Mudd.  

Also, the issue of the data is debatable. This is not really about reading your emails. It is about access to the garbage dump of data. It can be accessed later with a court order. The court order is allowed even to search your home. What is the difference here except information put out in the public is LESS intrusive?

This is about them accessing anything and everything as they damn well please -- and do not tell me they are not reading emails when I posted a link describing how they listened in and passed around salacious phone recordings -- and doing with it as they damn well please.

It is NOT their information, it's ours.

I do see this from two sides. There is much here that makes me uncomfortable. But,  I do desire us to prevent future 9-11's. I do desire us to catch people like the Boston-Chechen bombers.

Yeah, that worked out well, considering what they've been doing was in place and they either missed it or ignored it.

This is not easy to just say government cannot look at all. It has to be allowed, as ANY evidence can be retrieved, after a judge signs off.

What judge?  What court?  You're trying to tell us they collect the "metadata" and the go get a warrant to look at pieces of their collection?  I was born at night, CHF, but not last night.

Consider the alternatives. None are good. There does come a point we must be more concerned about putting honorable men in office. Yes, reduce all their power. But, government does not wield the sword in vain. Some power is necessary.  Let us just carefully define the limits to the power, thoughtfully, while making sure only decent men are allowed to hold power at all.  I say this all the while acknowledging that the current lot should not have the power to give a parking ticket, with their ethics.

No, no "lot" should have this kind of power.  The Founders warned against entrusting government with this kind of sweeping authority, warned us against expecting "ethical" from government, and wrote the Constitution to limit the very excess of authority they've appropriated for themselves in spite of it.

[AmericanPatriot]

I fear my government more than any camel screwing muzzy.
The court they have to go to for warrants is the secret FISA court.

That's the one that enabled the PRISM program.

Time after time they had info to foil plots that didn't involve spying on every one of us.

From the Russian warnings about the Marathon Bombers to the 20th 911 hijacker.

They dropped the ball every time.
Probably on purpose.

Yet they sexually abuse 7 year old girls and 80 year old cancer stricken grandmas. They go after Tea Party and freedom lovers to suppress by fear.

Snowden is a hero

[trapeze]

*Note: In the following opinion the terms "us" and "we" do not include liberals, leftists, centrists, RINOs, moderates, most so-called independents and all others who would be included in the category of "low intelligence voters."

This situation, or something like it, has been going on since the early days of post 9/11 and there was no leaker, no Edward Snowden, no person of "conscience" willing to come forward and put their own freedom in jeopardy to shine a light on it. Why do you suppose that was? (Note: Bradley Manning is excluded from this discussion for reasons that I will not go into at this time)

I think that most of us, those who invest any amount of time at all pondering such things, were "aware" that the NSA was probably collecting anything that it could with its vast array of listening and monitoring capabilities. I think that we knew this subconsciously and yet chose to not consciously dwell on it. It was a seemingly benign tumor that we were willing to mostly ignore. Okay, a benign tumor is not a very accurate analogy...I'm not sure what would be but let's, for the sake of argument look at this a little more closely.

We were willing to ignore it because 1) we saw the "necessity" of it post-WTC/Pentagon attacks and 2) as we were "aware" of it we were also seeing the benefits of it in zero attacks on the homeland plus 3) we were somewhat reassured in the system's benevolence in the hands of GWB...someone that most of us thought we could trust. Now, suddenly, we are very consciously aware of it and we don't like it at all. Again, why?

The reason that I am uncomfortable, actually antagonistic, toward this domestic spying situation is that I do not like and do not trust the people who are in charge of it. And with good reason. I do not trust BO. I never have and I think that it is safe to say that no one on this forum has ever trusted him, either. He is a thug and he has, since his early days in Chicago, always been a thug. Nevertheless, I still had some degree of confidence in the mechanisms of the state, those systems put in place by different administrations and congresses over the last several decades. I believed that this large mass of people were more good than bad and that since they were governed, ultimately, by the Constitution that they would be relatively trustworthy in looking after my interests. I knew that there would be some "bad" people in various places but I believed that the vast majority of civil servants being "good" people would be an adequate safeguard against the machinations of the others. I was wrong.

That fantasy that I was invested in may have never existed or, if it ever did, was corrupted at some point in the past. Perhaps I was taken in by the term "civil servant" into believing that that was actually their function...that they served the greater good of society. I don't know. I do know that my son works for the federal government in the armed forces and I know that he is not corrupt and I assume that most of his fellow soldiers are not corrupt and perhaps that helped me to stay in this fantasy longer than I otherwise would have. I don't know.

At any rate, I no longer have any faith in the federal (and most other forms of) government. The reasons have been accumulating at a breathtaking pace...

- The Secret Service scandal
- The IRS scandal
- The Benghazi scandal
- The EPA scandal
- The State Department scandal
- The Department of Justice scandal
- The GSA scandal (remember that one?)
- The NSA scandal
- The comprehensive immigration bill
- The Sebelius influence peddling scandal
- The HHS insider trading scandal

Incredibly, there may be one or two that I have left out and the day isn't over so (hard to believe, but) conceivably a new scandal could emerge at any moment.

What a difference four years and a new president can make. I (and I'm speaking for myself here) used to more or less trust the government and now I don't. I knew that the feds were more or less spying on me before and I didn't care all that much about it. Now I know that they are spying on me and because they have proven their hostility and malevolence toward me due to my religious and political beliefs I am very much concerned. I have become antagonistic toward government at pretty much all levels because I no longer trust them.

I don't trust them to keep me safe anymore. This feeling was more than borne out with the attack in Boston but there is also the non-enforcement of border security. The government has had over a decade to secure our borders and they have not done it. There is absolutely no way that this is an accident or some sort of oversight. They have purposefully left our border wide open to anyone who cares to enter our country. Our government has purposefully ignored the very real threat of islam and of (potentially) all muslims. The government purposefully looks the other way regarding domestic muslims regardless of what they say and how they behave.

I look at this situation as something like being forced to hang around with a bi-polar drunk who is in possession of a very powerful handgun. The guy has the power of life/death over me and I am not in a position of being able to escape his presence, disarm him or render him harmless. Instead I am forced to co-exist with him knowing that any moment he could squeeze of a round or two and if the gun happens to be pointing at me, well, that's just too bad. That's actually a much better analogy than the benign tumor thing.

I believe that what the Snowden guy did was technically illegal but I don't think it was wrong. Unlike Manning, there is no evidence that he has put anyone's life in jeopardy. That may turn out to not be true but as things stand now it is. I believe that if the Snowden guy hadn't come forward then someone else would have done some kind of a document dump that would have accomplished the same thing. I hope so, anyway.

Arguably, the government can not be trusted with this kind of power. Not this government and not this administration. Maybe GWB could be trusted but he is gone. Moreover, as has been argued by others, there is more than enough recent evidence to support the notion that the government is not morally and ethically neutral but is instead immoral and unethical. There is, to paraphrase a wealthy immoral moron, no controlling moral authority. There is most definitely a controlling legal authority but it uses the legal system as a cudgel to punish its perceived enemies. The government is no longer deserving of the responsibility of protecting all of its citizens.

Not that it makes any difference. I have to be realistic and know that there is absolutely zero chance of the federal government ever giving up this power and going back to the way things were, returning to a constitutional mind set.

It's hard to admit it but we are pretty much screwed now forever. We are trapped in what used to be called a dystopian future. It's the present, it's now and there is no way, short of a very violent revolution, that we are going to return to what was and what is supposed to be.

There is, though, always resistance such as it is...

Brazil (9/10) Movie CLIP - Harry Wastes Central Services (1985) HD

[charlesoakwood]

He broke the law put in place to protect the Feds in their lawbreaking and violations of our Constitutional protections?  That law?

Pu-leeze.

He broke Obama's Law but he obeyed the Constitution;
whether he did right or wrong depends on one's allegiance.