NSA is keeping logs of phones calls in the US

Take the kiddies gloves off...

I know that it is difficult and all, being your one of those walking and talking live and breathing contradictions and hypocrites, when you get around to confronting and/or responding to the points I made, let me know, dgtempe, because your deflection attempts are growing and have been pointless.





seekerof

Originally posted by dgtempe
Violent- yes, we are all prisoners now.

NO, we're not. Not yet - and as long as we are armed and have the ability to communicate with each other, there is still hope.

There is still hope up until the day martial law is declared, and everyone is forced to register at a local post office for assignment to work details. Even then, as long as there is the will to be a free people and fight for our freedoms, there is still hope.

That future is COMPLETELY insane and impossible right?

I want to believe so, but think for just a moment about this scenario. Its probably familiar to you if you want to listen to the fear mongering of our government.

There is an outbreak, a bio terror attack, or some nuclear attack on american soil. The communication grid of phone, television, internet access has failed for the public at large, but the protected tied in NSA and government systems are all in place. How hard is it to use the very databases we are discussing to pinpoint and purge the populace of dissendents and organize the people into work camps in the name of national security?

It isn't that today the NSA surveillance system is in place and being used to protect us (if you want to believe that) - it is the world of the very near future and the uses such a system could have in the hands of people that would like to gain total control over the nation. Germany elected Hitler, and gradually he seized complete control over the society. I don't believe the German people as a whole were advocates of the genocide and conquest of the regime, but it didn't take everyone working together to put that power system in place. It took some organized groups to take control and cow the rest of the populace. He wanted the people to fear the terrorists abroad too. None of this is new.

It isn't that today your calls to grandma are logged.
It's that tomorrow you may want to protect your freedoms and be subjected to a system that can quickly define, profile, catalogue and deal with anyone that wants to upset the power structure.

Exactly, Violent. Its a little bit each day, crossing that line everyday more and more that will lead to a prison America.

So, Why worry now? We see it coming and it is almost here. Its like a terminal illness. How sad. How very very sad. :shk:

Originally posted by thermopolis
People, people, people................this "program started in 1997, was challenged all the way to US Supreme Court who ruled to OK..........

The "Pat act 1" also authorized this program............get a grip.

I hate BUSH but not for this.............

Thats what I've been thinking reading through this entire thread. I guess some here never heard of the "Echelon" program. But what do ya do. People can think what they want.

and like a terminal illness - if you decide it is your time to die and want to give up and allow the disease or injury to kill your spirit, then you WILL die.

But if you believe your time is important and you want to make an impact on life, it is almost never too late to make changes. You may not be able to save yourself, but you can write, you can speak to people, you can make lifestyle changes and turn the illness around in a lot of circumstances.

If you give up and feel there is nothing you can do, and nothing will change your fate, then you will create that destiny for yourself and you will be right. And I will mourn another soul that imprisoned themselves to their own manifested destiny.

However, if you take an active role and look at your life seriously and truely, there is every chance that you can address the causes of the illness, be it medical, societal, mental or physical - and treat it as best you can. Become pro-active and extend your life. And make a difference. Even if its only a difference to your family, friends or even yourself - you are not powerless and never will be unless you believe that you are.

One person CAN make a difference. And one person working with others to find a better future for themselves can make a revolution. Even if its just in thought.

I guess some here never heard of the "Echelon" program. But what do ya do. People can think what they want.

I think that actually is the case - I don't think the populace at large was aware of Echelon and Carnivore and the other systems at play here. This IS new to a lot of the people, and the attention it is getting is underscored by continual backtracking by the administration.

First there was no circumvention of FISA. Then it was just for specific cases and only for international-domestic calls. Then it was categoric circumvention with no oversight on the part of the NSA. And now it is coming out that it is millions of logged information about people in America.

And anyone informed on the issue knows that they are STILL not getting the full scope of what is really going on. It's not that the Bush administration is being villianized, its that they are being caught in their coverup.

The same thing would have happened if the media had given this much attention to the system in Clinton's years. Or Reagan's. Its the current political climate, the use of sketchy and questionable intelligence that our administration has taken drastic measures on like Iraq, and the secrecy and disdain this administration and Congress has for their constituents.

It's not a LEFT vs RIGHT problem. If Clinton had taken us to war over faulty intelligence and then backtracked on the extent of Echelon in light of that, he would be under the same scrutiny. Same as Bush Sr. or Reagan. They have all had access to forms of this system. But there wasn't a war, there wasn't a daily pounding or terrorist\pandemic fear on the public, and there wasn't scandal after scandal of secrecy and coverup's with any of those previous administrations.

[edit on 12-5-2006 by Violent]

[edit on 12-5-2006 by Violent]

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Just ran across this real issue:

May 12, 2006 — Americans by nearly a 2-1 ratio call the surveillance of telephone records an acceptable way for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, expressing broad unconcern even if their own calling patterns are scrutinized.

Lending support to the administration's defense of its anti-terrorism intelligence efforts, 63 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say the secret program, disclosed Thursday by USA Today, is justified, while far fewer, 35 percent, call it unjustified.

Phone-Records Surveillance Is Broadly Acceptable to Public

seekerof

This has nothing to do with right wing or left wing politcs, the NSA is not an organ of the conservatives or liberals, it is a government agency. Lets stop worrying about how to label each other and address the issue.

Originally posted by signs
What good is freedom to a dead man?

Haven't you ever heard the phrase "Liberty or Death"???

Is any of that info being used maliciously? How do you know that it isn't?

There is a difference between private companies using the information that you give them, and the government clandestinely taking this information in bulk.

dgtempe
Of course they are listening and keeping track

I don't know about that, it'd be an awful waste of manpower to say the least. It doesn't really matter what you are saying, they are using this to identify networks of people that are connected to each other, who is in direct contact, who is on the periphery of a network, etc. This has a use in anti-terrorist investigations, but not much, they're expecting us to beleive that an unknown cell will be identified through this networking datamining, and that that justifies this incredible amount of governmental excess.

Very few people trust the government enough to let them get away with this.

dgtempe
I'm afraid voting, at least voting so that your vote counts is a thing of the past also.

I wouldn't say that. Voting along simple partisan lines isn't going to cut it though. That sort of voting is what gave a guy who supports open borders and won't lift a finger against gay marriage (not that I think he should) to be voted in by conservatives and the religious right. They got duped, but there's no reason why the rest of us should be.
In the 2004 election, the major issue, despite all the blather, was security. The Public backed the president because they, at least, perceived him as being active on security. The democrat's ideas werent' all that different, hell, based on the same intelligence, they mostly supported the iraq war too. People voted for Bush just as much as they voted for 'Lets take action'. It could've as easily been an interventionist democrat candidate that represented that course.

But now that security issue is comming around again, in the form of internal powers of government. People don't have to vote democrat or republican, but what they need to vote for is "This is Unacceptable". Who, amoung the politicians, is backing that?

It's nobody's business if you call Rosie's Massage Parlor

....
How did you know about that!!!???

Muaddib
Why is it that the same people

Becuase some people don't make sense.
Lets stick to the topic and not make it into a discussion about board members though.

westpoint23
Heck, the government should have just used them, much quicker and cheaper.

They didn't use those services because the very legality of them is being questioned all over the country. AT&T themselves have been suing companies that distribute this information.

There is no question that this is, minimally, in a very gray legal area. The NSA went to people in the Att. Gen. office, they refused to sign off on it because it didn't look legal.

Gonzales doesn't know what he is talkign about now?

They wouldn't go to the FISA for approval either, because they beleived it wouldn't be approved, BECAUSE ITS NOT LEGAL.

was that multiple private companies have just as much information available to them as the US government

And that is the problem, that the information is beign used by the government. We have restrictions in law over what the government can do, because the government is an entirely different creature than some private company.

aggroskater
Well, Lawsuits are out of the question.

There are already lawsuits pending against AT&T over the Narus debacle, and there will certainly be some over this, the NSA itself is perhaps harder to sue. Also, AT&T has sued companies over......collecting phone logs of their customers. And those peopel that collected them didn't strong-arm AT&T into giving it to them.

Id say this is a best bet, assuming you can inform millions of people and get them to join you

It would be interesting to see the same volume of people in the streets over this as over the illegal immigration issue or the anti-war issue. Unfortunately the american publicis just too pig stupid to see this as a problem.

obsidian468
Remember, this country was founded to free our citizens from oppression

Indeed. It wasn't founded to establish a geo-political hegemony over the planet, to create the world's most powerful army, or even to monitor dissent, the government was specifically created so as to control those in government. It was recognized that, they'd allways abuse their powers, and that one of the best ways to keep them in line was to set them against one another, IOW, seperation of powers in coordination with checks and balances. NOW people want to undo all these kinds of things, in order to make them phsyically safer from an enemy that, while dangerous, while it should be hunted into the ground, simply does not warrant fundamentally changing the character of the country.
The post-colonial americans made a social contract with their government, 'stay the heck out of our business and we'll let you run administration'. Even when the british invaded and burnt down the white house, they didn't renegotiate that contract. Al-Qaida is real and is dangerous, but its not something that should cow us into re-negotiating our social contract.

Violent
November will be the litmus test

Indeed, it will be fascinating to watch the next series of federal and even gubernatorial elections will be.
Do the american people want a fundamentally more 'european' like system in which their data is the property of the government, where their movements and associations are something that they can review at will? Or not?
?

Originally posted by Seekerof

This is non-news and has been.
Those are instances of them listening in on calls by tapping switches. This is different, this is a datamining operation involving the turning over of phone logs by the telecos to the government, for all previous communication and updated regulalry. The form of the data being obtained now is completely different from any of the previous cases, and the sheer size of the datasets here is perhaps what's most disturbing. Its "total".

It is all part of the "Domestic Spying" scandal though, yes.

Ok.. so we all pretty much agree that these taps and what the NSA is doing is illegal.. Why are they above the law? Because there are people like this moron

"I think anything they can do to get rid of the terrorists needs to be done," Martin, a 76-year-old retired customer service worker living in Colorado Springs, Colo., said in a telephone interview Thursday. "I have nothing to hide."

Sour ce

People like this give the government their power to do the things they do

Originally posted by marg6043
Just to see our democracy crumble into ruins and our constitutional rights step and soiled make my eyes fill with tears.

What happening to our nation is just beyond explanation when it comes to our corrupted government and we know that our democratic systems is fix to help with this problem.

But whats happening with the people in our nation is what is worrying me the most, where are the outrage and cries and demands for justice are we so submissive that we can not see any evil?

To make this blatant take over of our constitutional rights we have our own elected President making sure that the people he surrounds himself with are going to do just what he wants.

Now the CIA appointee is nothing better than the same man that was behind the illegal surveillance while been a member of the NSA.

And by the standards of Bush supporters in these boards I am supouse to shut my mouth and behave like a good American.

What a shame.

Oh, boo hoo.

We were attacked by terrorists and now people are "gasp" listening to phone calls to catch terrorists. What a shock! I can't believe that all of those 900- calls I'm making are being mined. Man, won't my wife be upset when the NSA comes to my door to give her the transcripts!

Folks, from now on in this thread I want to hear your proposals for ensuring that terrorists do not succeed at attacking us in such as way again. My only proposal that isn't being done is to build that wall on the southern border and deploy the national guard troops to secure that sieve.

But now your thoughts. How do we thwart complex terrorist attacks without looking through phone calls and internet traffic? Your thoughts now...

I've been following this stuff and it occurred to me - so what? What is the big deal? Why now?

Echelon has been in places for literally decades, Carnivore and other programs have been filtering and surveilling communications for over 15 years at least. So what is the big stink about with the public knowledge of just one aspect of a much larger system, call logs? So what?

And the answer, for me anyway, is that this administration more than those in the past has been caught backtracking and manipulating information. Combined with the secrecy and disdain for the general public of the Bush administration and Congress, our current trends toward war, and the complicity of a media that shys from dissent has lead to a climate where I just plain don't trust our government.

I didn't feel this way during Bush Sr. and I didn't feel this way during the Clinton years. But this system was in place then too, and thinking back, I knew about it as early as 1995 because my father worked on it during the 80s and told me about it.

For anyone not familiar with the capabilitise in place, check the following link:

fly.hiwaay.net...

Since Troubleshoota has come to the discussion, I'd really appreciate his review of the link for veracity.

How do we thwart complex terrorist attacks without looking through phone calls and internet traffic? Your thoughts now...

Hey! That's fair! And I'd love to see this discussion develop into one about real ideas and solutions! So, for whatever its worth, here's my stab at it-

How do we thwart terrorist without looking through phone calls and internet traffic?
By doing exactly what we are already doing effectively- by developing human intelligence resources on the ground, to infiltrate the groups. By paying the locals that are involved with the terrorists for information and using that information to pinpoint where they are. By becoming a source of hope and helping build up the nations that house terrorists so that they support us and understand that development and education and economic infrastructures can change their lives for the better and that we are genuine about aiding them without stealing their resources or culture.

How do we thwart terrorist without looking through phone calls and internet traffic?
By doing what you say you are doing and not lying to the world and to your own people about the reasons behind your actions. By turning over the government of Iraq to the people of Iraq and not building up military complexes the size of cities and obvious permanence. Their countries history needs to be dictated by the peoples that live there, for better or worse, and we need to bring our troops home and let their history be their history.


How do we thwart terrorist without looking through phone calls and internet traffic?
By taking care of our own nation now - bring the troops back and bring the money back. Finance AMERICA'S infrastructure secure out borders. Focus on improving our society - it is past time. But ultimately, by ceasing imperialistic policies over other parts of the world that create the terrorists in the first place. Are we forgetting who created The Database (Al-Qaida) - let me remind you then. It was us.

en.wikipedia.org...
"Al-Qaida, literally 'the database', was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."

[edit on 12-5-2006 by Violent]

Dissinformation by the major networks is coming in now. How is it it matters to us but not the public at large??

I watched tv last night and it seemed pretty much this news is an uproar. Its been around for awhile but combined with all the other signals and signs from this administration, things are coming to a peak now, a roaring boil, and it is a direct path toward dictatorship.

You can see it thru Rose colored glasses, but i dont buy into that one bit.

Not me.

Originally posted by Nygdan
And that is the problem, that the information is beign used by the government. We have restrictions in law over what the government can do, because the government is an entirely different creature than some private company.

Some private company who is accountable to whom? Some private company who is based where? Some private company who is willing to give to anyone with 100$ much more in then the government will. If you are concerned about personal information this is the real issue not some statistical database hype.

Originally posted by Nygdan
Unfortunately the american publicis just too pig stupid to see this as a problem.

WTF? Anyone who does not see this as a problem is “pig stupid”? :shk:

[edit on 12-5-2006 by WestPoint23]

Originally posted by WestPoint23
WTF? Anyone who does not see this as a problem is “pig stupid”? :shk:

Yes.

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. -- Benjamin Franklin.

[edit on 12-5-2006 by loam]

You have voted loam for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

Thank you.

As I stated in the related thread, IF NSA is keeping track of calls made within the USA, then I believe it is much more likely that they are keeping track of all calls made by opposing political
parties and individuals deemed a threat to this administrations agenda.

All it takes is a few loyal insiders who's livelihood depends on this administration staying in power.

I can pretty much assure you that they have call records of every single opposing congressman and any organization deemed a political threat.

oops double post mods delete please

[edit on 12-5-2006 by FallenFromTheTree]

Corruption and Trust

I think for most people who are upset about this, it isn't just this one issue. This issue by itself really isn't new and it isn't really unexpected from a government which we know has operated with some level of corruption for many years.

AND this wouldn't be a big deal for me at all if we could trust that the NSA is REALLY doing this to catch the bad guys. I think many of us just cannot believe altruistic motives after what we've seen happen in this country for the past 5 years. As I said, if I really thought the NSA was doing this for the protection of US citizens, I'd not be nearly so opposed to it.

Yes, it's against the law and they're being slimy by breaking the law, but if it were really for my safety, I think I could find it in my heart to cut them some slack.

The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back (again)

But I don't believe that. And I don't believe that because of what I've been watching come to pass over the past 5 years. It's not just domestic spying. It's the lies and corruption I see day by day that make me suspicious of every action the government takes. It's:

The questions surrounding the elections
The 9/11 story
WMDs fiasco
The Downing Street Memo
Fake Video Tapes (bin Laden)
PNAC
The Forged Yellow Cake Documents
Torture Scandals
""Mission Accomplished"
Mainstream Media becoming worthless
Internet Interference
Katrina Response Failure
Depleted Uranium
Cover up of Cheney's shooting accident
Environmental Disregard
Overall Rise of Fascism
Cronyism
Next Stop: Iran
Loss of Separation of Church and State

These are just off the top of my head. No single one of these events would cause me to come unglued. And no one can explain them all away.

Nothing New

And I'm not saying this hasn't been coming for many years. The fact that this has been happening before this administration is no reason to let it keep happening. I'm not living under the illusion that everything was peaches and cream before this president took office, but in my opinion, things have gotten exponentially worse in the past 5 years.

This NSA spying, wiretapping and logs of domestic calls is just the latest in a loooooonng list of issues I have with the government today. And I couldn't care less what political party is doing it. It isn't the party that's doing it, it's this administration that has taken governmental corruption to all-new heights. People of every party should be concerned.

Suspicious Minds

And one more thing. Yes, I'm suspicious. I'm cynical about this government. I haven't always been. There was a time when I trusted George Bush. I heard him speak and tears would come to my eyes. I trusted him to tell me the truth. But I have learned not to.

Is That All There Is?

And if we're just now finding out about a program that's been happening for a few years, what secret program are they involved in NOW that we won't find out about for several years hence? What are they doing NOW that we're innocent and naive about? How many secret programs have been developed and in process for years? Are we gullible enough to imagine that they're acting in our best interest?

I'm not.

lately Ive been questioning why I even bother anymore. For every person that says freedom should come first theres a hand full of people to come back and say security is more important. How can we say such things? The same people saying this are insulting the hundreds of thousands that have died in the previous wars we fought. the wars before all this BS political agenda by corporate america. Wars like the revolutionary war, wars like world war 2, where it wasn't about how much money you could make, but rather the powerful countries like england or dictators like hitler threatened our very country.

These wars weren't fought over oil, it was fought over the foundations of our country. I wish there were still slaves alive so they could tell you just how stupid you sound right now. I'm sure the security of there master was worth more then freedom right? If they had new back then I'm sure thats what it would be reporting.

headlines would read:
"Slaves would rather be save with there master then free and in danger polls show"
That would explain why they were all running and why the free slaves fought to death to free other slaves? That explains why black soldiers tried to fight in the civil war? I doubt they were fighting to keep the south with the union. In the end

"You never know what something is worth until its gone."