Something we can all agree on

Hey - this is not an exclusive US NG - so piss off and discuss it in alt.daft.yanks or whatever.

Tam

Nope. Its still a small crime. That's the whole point behind the 'rule of law'.

Ever make a phone call to someone in the USA? Then it certainly is your business.

But then, since the NSA is NOT prohibited from intercepting foreign telecommunications, the calls you place to practically anyone else have been fair game for years.

OK, a small crime. Maybe it will rate a footnote in a history book or two. Don't place any bets on impeachment.

If, as I hear people saying, "They could get proper warrants in a hour or two" then why does it matter? Sounds like jaywalking to me.

John

Not just the NSA!

"You have no privacy. Get over it"

- Scott McNealy

John

Easy for you to say. Not only have you been gloating excessively over our political scene for the last five years (a scene 65% of the country now rejects), you and a few others have been constantly shoving its ugliness in our faces.

There is, as George Will points out, not a slippery slope, but rather a continuously shifting equilibrium between civil liberties and public safety. The more we are seriously threatened, the more we must intrude on things like "privacy." He points out that when threats decline, the boundary has always shifted back.

What's wrong with that? Too reasonable to justify shrieking?

John

Legislation is rarely revoked, and this particular threat will never decline, since the enemy will never be identified let alone defeated. Do you think that if we caught bin Laden today (or expand the scope as far as you like - all his deputies, everyone that's ever spoken to him, whatever), we'd have a National Freedom Day tomorrow and revoke all these power-grab laws?

Anyway, the issue at hand is that there was an established legal process for doing this type of monitoring. Bush ignored the legal process and signed an order saying "I am above the law and unaccountable to anyone, and here is a 45-day pass that makes you above the law and unaccountable also".

The thing that baffles me, however, is how anyone could believe electronic communications to be private unless securely encrypted (and by this I mean an end-to-end secure system including key management, not merely a "secure" code used for the bulk channel). Regardless of how this debacle plays out, you should assume that any electronic communication channel is being monitored by _someone_.

That's an awfully slippery razor blade to find oneself sliding down.

Thanks, Rich

That's why I fear that Bush is using it more to monitor ordinary citizens who somehow fall on his radar screen, rather than "known terrorists" --- who would surely be using encrypted communication by now. When Bush says, "people with known links to Al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations," I suspect that leaves a loophole big enough to drive a FEMA Katrina truck through. In the last few years many people with virtually no connection, or only remotely connected to things in the mideast, have been subjected to extreme US action, because they made a certain charitable donation, talked to someone, or did some other innocent activity. It appears these things qualify to Bush as "known links."

Some have said he's simply intercepting the US side of an overseas conversation with an Al-Qaeda terrorist. If that was so, wouldn't Bush come out and say so, instead of hiding behind weasel words?

Get real. Think about how many people it would take to monitor any other than the few suspects we're trying to keep track of.

...Jim Thompson

OK, you asked, so watch out! ;-)

Did anybody see George W. Bush's speech on TV Sunday night? (12/18) The guy's clearly paranoid. He sees a terrorist behind every tree the same way Joe McCarthy saw a communist there.

Commiting "a little crime" in the name of "preventing" a "bigger crime" is a very insidious way of weaseling your way out of responsibility for your own crime.

There is never any justifiable excuse for violating the Constitution of the United States. Period.

Anyone who does so is guilty of high treason, and needs to be hanged or shot, after a fair trial, of course. ;-)

It's pretty much that simple. Does the Constitution say, "The president is allowed to spy on US citizens without bothering to get a warrant"?

No?

Then he's not only a dangerous fool and neocon sympathizer, but he's a traitor, and it is our duty as citizens to see to it that he is brought to justice.

Thanks, Rich

Whoa!!! Whoa!!! Do you have any idea of the size of the NSA? It's supposed to be a big secret, but it's widely known. Give their massive computers carte blanche: stand back and watch out.

Are we surprised ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

The USA, in cooperation with other countries, has been operating the Echelon system for decades. The object here is to attempt to intercept every international call, fax, or email on the planet and scan them automatically for keywords, then examine the interesting ones. If this is a crime, all the Presidents for the last many years, and a good hunk of Congress as well, are criminals. How does one get warrants for, say, a million intercepts per second?

One legal issue may be that evidence gathered without a warrant will be inadmissable in court, and will be supressed anyhow to avoid revealing methods. Assuming the Supremes allow that US citizens have a right to public trial by jury, which so far they haven't.

John

Because our gov't may very well be snooping in places that a court would never approve. Today, if they just slip a few political espionage jobs in with the anti terrorism stuff, who will notice? If a court has to review each request, at least we know the administration won't try to slip a bug into the DNC headquarters.

When Nixon got caught covering up his complicity in the Watergate job, I doubt he thought it was anything like jaywalking.

^^^^^

Apparently, he has a symbiote in his pocket.

You've just made the list. It is a crime to threaten the president (actually, disagree with him, since he apparently feels threatened by that). The gestapo will be arriving shortly to take you to gitmo for your 'interrogation'.

Bush distances himself from those kinds of details and probably doesn't have an answer.