Now Spying on America, NSA

[Just Lucky]

Do you feel more free now? I think everytime we as Americans lose more of our civil liberties Al-Qaeda gets another victory.
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<TABLE id=morePhotos><TBODY><TR><TD>U.S. President Bush speaking from the Diplomatic Reception Room commented on Thursday about a newspaper report that the National Security Agency was collecting records of tens of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls. (AP / Ron Edmonds)


</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>U.S. spy agency secretly monitoring calls: report

Updated Thu. May. 11 2006 1:48 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
U.S. intelligence agents have been secretly collecting the details of phone calls made by tens of millions of Americans, USA Today reported Thursday.
The newspaper alleges three phone companies have been handing over call records, including calls made within the United States, to the National Security Agency (NSA) since 2001.
It says the program did "not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations."
After the report was published, U.S. senators immediately said they would order the phone companies involved to testify about the claims.
The three phone companies -- AT&T, Verizon, and Bell South -- all told USA Today they had not broken any laws.
The firms together serve at least 200 million customers.
USA Today said its sources for the story were "people with direct knowledge of the arrangement," but it did not give their names or describe their affiliation.
Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, reacted with anger to the report.
"We need to know what our government is doing to spy upon Americans," he stormed in a committee meeting Thursday.
Facing intense criticism from Congress, U.S. President George Bush did not confirm the work of the NSA, but sought to assure Americans that their privacy was being "fiercely protected."
"We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,'' Bush insisted Thursday, before leaving for a commencement address at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Biloxi.
Bush has previously defended the controversial program of monitoring overseas calls, saying it was aimed at uncovering links between international terrorists and their domestic collaborators.
But USA Today said that calls originating and terminating within the United States have not escaped the NSA's attention.
The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within U.S. borders, "it's the largest database ever assembled in the world," the paper quoted one source as saying.
A White House spokesperson told the newspaper that the government did not engage in domestic surveillance without court approval.
Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and was nominated by Bush on Monday as director of the CIA, would have overseen the call-tracking program, the paper said.
He is due to face confirmation hearings from the Senate soon.



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[TAPPY]

They are welcome to listen in on all of my phone calls !!!

I think this has been going on a long time any way (shrug) !! Way before Bush ! and way before 9/11.

[sideways]

All they're recording is the numbers your calling, not voice conversations.

[Just Lucky]

We are talking about US law here. They are supposed to get a warrant and have a reason.

[sideways]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

We are talking about US law here. They are supposed to get a warrant and have a reason.

Your right....and this has never happened before...

I'm shocked that it took 9 hours for this to make a thread...

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by sideways

Your right....and this has never happened before...

Yes it has happened before. It has caused people who broke the law to go to jail before. I think the best we can hope for is that they go to jail. This has a major Constitutional impact. Remember Senator Church's committee?

[Life_N_Cancun]

You’re not surprised are you?
I remember years ago, before 9/11 the government admitted to having systems in place that scanned nearly every email that passed through the US telecom system for certain “keywords”, and that they routinely collected data from ISP’s as to which users visited “questionable sites” as well as other surfing statistics. I have always presumed that since phone companies keep records of calls for years and years that the government was without a doubt browsing through them, as police often do as well.

The US is turning into a Police State, and has been for years. If anything, the fact that certain members of congress are upset at these “revelations” (although I find it hard to believe that they were so naive as to not know this was going on) might lead to putting more controls into place.

Privacy is a thing of the past, you get captured on hundreds of cameras everyday, all your electronic purchases are recorded, and your position tracked via cell phone, whenever you use it. So, if you think you can expect any privacy now days, you’re in a dream world. Its just a matter of time before we all get “chipped” and have government monitored surveillance devices in our living rooms. Sad I know, but its what the world is coming to.

[sideways]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

Yes it has happened before. It has caused people who broke the law to go to jail before. I think the best we can hope for is that they go to jail. This has a major Constitutional impact. Remember Senator Church's committee?

I guess you didn't get my sarcastic smiley . I think it happens quite often. Me, personaly, don't care if they watch phone numbers to determine internal contacts in the US for a foreign enemy. We are at war, and as with most wars since the beginning of our nation, we have sacrificed certain liberties. If we were not in a war, I would be more concearned.

[Just Lucky]

Originally Posted by sideways

I guess you didn't get my sarcastic smiley . I think it happens quite often. Me, personaly, don't care if they watch phone numbers to determine internal contacts in the US for a foreign enemy. We are at war, and as with most wars since the beginning of our nation, we have sacrificed certain liberties. If we were not in a war, I would be concearned.

I think it's fine if you'd like to wave your rights. Did everyone you called wave their rights? The greatest dangers ever posed to this country were World War II and ,arguably, the Cold War. We felt no need to do this amount of surveillance during those periods.

[sideways]

Originally Posted by Just Lucky

I think it's fine if you'd like to wave your rights. Did everyone you called wave their rights? The greatest dangers ever posed to this country were World War II and ,arguably, the Cold War. We felt no need to do this amount of surveillance during those periods.

We also didn't have the technology and information systems we do now back then. Do you believe the NSA has not survielled American citizens before without their knowledge?

[Just Lucky]

No, I don't believe it's been done on this scale or without a warrant. Edit: Here's a link to a one hour old Time story. http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...193478,00.html

[Life_N_Cancun]

Originally Posted by sideways

Do you believe the NSA has not survielled American citizens before without their knowledge?

Let's not forget about the FBI, CIA, NRO, NGIA, NIC, NCTC, DIA, DHS, DPS, DSS, DARPA, USNCB, INR, and all the other agencies that we might not even know about or those working for other governments.

[sideways]

Originally Posted by Life_N_Cancun

Let's not forget about the FBI, CIA, NRO, NGIA, NIC, NCTC, DIA, DHS, DPS, DSS, DARPA, USNCB, INR, and all the other agencies that we might not even know about or those working for other governments.

YEAH...THEM TOO.
Lucky, the original story was on the front page of USA Today this Morning also:p

[Just Lucky]

Yes I know it was in USA Today I was hoping for more information later in the day or I would have posted earlier. I am suprised that no one seems concerned about the civil liberties issue. Here's some NSA history:From the early 1960s until 1973, the Church Committee found, the NSA “compiled a list of individuals and organizations, including 1,200 American citizens and domestic groups, whose communications were segregated,” transcribed and the disseminated within the intelligence community. Among the missives the Church Committee found in Cold War NSA files were discussions about a peace concert, an anti-war activist’s request for a speaker in New York and a newspaper correspondent’s report from Southeast Asia to his magazine in New York. The NSA also examined vast numbers of telegrams. Despite the scale and intrusiveness of these efforts, the intercepts had “little intelligence value."’ Most were personal or private in nature.
The Church Committee’s disclosures, fiercely resisted by the Ford administration and Attorney General Edward Levi, prompted significant statutory reforms. In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the product of two years’ intense debate. Known as FISA, the act established a secretive foreign intelligence court, staffed by federal judges, to authorize intelligence-related warrants. The NSA today, however, bypassed even the FISA court, which imposes only a minimal check. But why?
The Church Committee highlighted the pivotal role of legal guidelines and opinions for sound intelligence operations. Noting that Congress hadn’t given the NSA a statutory charter, the committee argued that the NSA’s methods and goals passed without meaningful debate. Today, the NSA’s mandate is still embodied in an executive order, not a law. Moreover, the NSA’s domestic eavesdropping was authorized by secret presidential order. The president uses these secretive laws to order and implement many controversial intelligence programs, such as “extraordinary renditions,” whereby terrorism suspects are transferred to other nations’ custody for coercive interrogation and even torture.
This legal vacuum had two important consequences. First, the Church Committee found that an agency without a legal mandate easily becomes an agency operating beyond the law. The NSA, concluded Church, had simply “not applied at all” the legal standards and procedures for electronic surveillance. Other agencies, including the FBI, simply failed to look into the legality of their actions.

[sideways]

Personaly, like I said, I don't feel like it's a unwarranted effort. In the true sense of the law? Who knows? It will be dissected now as far as the legalities. I look at it like this...If INTEL pans out regarding undisclosed AlQuida cells operating here in the US previously unknown, then to me It's justified. Now, if we were talking about someone actually listening to my voice conversations without cause, I would feel differently.
I understand your concearns, and I'm not trying to say they are unfounded legally. I just don't have a problem with this particular issue.