More Spying Revealed:
 

LIBERTARIAN PARTY NEWS RELEASE:

American Government is
Out of Control.... White House and Corrupt Two-Party System Destroy Balance between Security and Liberty

(Washington, D.C.) USA Today reported this week that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of innocent Americans, and compiling them into a federal database. This discovery was preceded by the recent leak of domestic spying abuses along with the abuses that have stemmed from powers granted by the Patriot Act.

"The fear of terrorism was used to create this database shortly after September 11th, just as it was used to pass the Patriot Act and ignore the rule of law with increased domestic spying," stated Michael Dixon, chairman of the Libertarian Party. "However, our history proves that these programs will be abused regardless of the intended purpose. We witnessed this with the Clinton administration and its use of FBI files for political purposes. More recently, the Patriot Act has been used against business owners in Nevada rather than al-Qaeda."

This database, it is assumed, will be used to analyze the calling patterns of Americans to determine possible terrorist suspects, even though its establishment comes at the expense of the privacy of millions of innocent American citizens.

It is clear that the NSA’s domestic spying program, a program that should not legally exist, is far larger than originally anticipated. USA Today reported that, in order to develop this program, the government agency used private phone records provided by three major companies, AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., and Bellsouth Corp.

Notably, one major carrier, Qwest Communications, did not provide the information demanded by the government, citing concerns over privacy. Despite repeated demands and harassment, Qwest remained loyal to its customers and America, failing to cave in to bureaucratic pressure.

“Under the Bush Administration, the federal government has demonstrated that it has no respect for the inherent rights of Americans, and neither Republican nor Democratic politicians have done a thing to stop this madness despite repeated abuses,” Dixon stated. “This country needs a change and the leaders within the Libertarian Party are working to make that happen.”

________________

BIG kudos to Qwest Communications for resisting the pressure government put on them to reveal their customers' personal, private phone records.

Mike

Once an excuse (some prefer to use reason) is found to explain why something is done it can get substantial mileage. If you say it is done in the interest of national security and anyone questions it they can be accused of many things. Since the millions of phone calls subject to "pattern monitoring" have taken place, how many terror related arrests in this country have been made? Do they really think that the listening public and even the terrorists are so stupid as to make these types of mistakes? They have had much greater success when they raid some of the holes in foreign countries and capture those phones. The laws exist to allow them to back track and get useful info. Ahh, if I doubt their reasons and/or methods I must be pro-terrorist . . .

Soon the US Supreme Court will be offering their written opinion on a First Amendment case whereby, in all likelyhood, the 1st Amendment protection provided to public employees will be at least diluted if not evaporated. It took the two newest appointees to get a quick rehearing on the case after Sandra retired. Bush wants nothing better than making it so government employees cannot rat on their superiors doing anything underhanded . . .

Big Brother is alive and thriving. Our constitution is being perverted, our privacy as American citizans is being invaded, peoples homes and properties are being seized so commerical developers can build businesses that benefit no one but private investors, illegal immigration is rampant, budgets are out of control, 10's of millions of American are without health insurance, our national debt is soaring, our jobs are being exported, energy costs will soon cripple the economy, were in another war we'll never win, almost the whole word hates us, and so on .......

Thank you Mr. Bush, your doing a fine job protecting the American public.:rolleyes:

This was discussed on All Things Considered today. The power of the gov to therecords was adjudicated decades ago in favor of the gov. The favoring argument (as I understand it) is that the records of calls are already in the hands of a third party, the phone company, so there is no expectation of privacy. The phone company does not have that same possession of the conversation so the conversation is protected under the assumption of expectation of privacy. So, the gov must obtained a warrant from a judge to tap a conversation but a simple order is all that is needed for phone records.

I first learned of this watching "Law and Order", in which Lenny told the perp he was going to get the records anyway as they are not protected by law. So between the Supreme Court upholding it and Lenny claiming it, I think the gov is on legally safe ground.

But is it "right?" That's a whole 'nuther question.

Not anymore, they had an excuse and bent the law for that too.

They must have a judge sign off if both parties are citizens, even if one of them is outside of the USA.

Now let's pretend we're Al Queda and we live in ohhhh, say Saudi Arabia. We want to activate a cell. Should we do it by: Flying over to the states? Carrier pigeon? Smoke signals? Semaphore? Telephone? Internet?

Let's say you get wildly creative and choose telephony and you live in KSA.

Now let's assume something really crazy: Let's assume you want to stop an attack.

Bot

I sincerely want to believe that and hope thats the way it's done, but I personally have my doubts. I think the NSA,CIA,HLS,FBI and countless covert agencies we don't even know about do what they want to since 9/11.
Don't get me wrong, whatever it takes to stop more attacks I can live with, but I just have a deep respect for privacy and hate to see abuses by our goverment. Maybe that doesn't makes sense, but what does anymore?

It's just the tip of the iceberg guys.

Yep.

I'm not sure I even want to know how deep it goes.... :eek:

Mike

The gov didn't seize the information as a matter of national security, they BOUGHT it, paying the com companies undisclosed amounts of money. The only holdout was QWEST, which was subsequently threatened with loss of government contracts, among other things.

This is what happens when military heads are put in charge of our agencies with vast amounts of computer power at their disposal.

up skirt or down blouse?????????:confused:

This sort of thing started out during the Clinton years with the Eschelon program, recording all phone calls, sifting through them looking for certain key works.

Personally, I don't have any problem with the Feds tracking phone numbers looking for terrorist cells because they are not recording them and/or listening in. The Terror War requires new techniques to fight it, and the phone pattern database is one of them.

The Gov't is looking at all sorts of patterns in the Drug War, Smuggling operations and others. Don't ask how I know.

Yes, it makes me uneasy, too. A radical change in government (like say, a coup) in the USA is highly unlikely. We just have so much social inertia that citizens would be literally up in arms.

But well-meaning incremental diminution of rights is a long term danger. All I have to do is recall how my grandparents spoke of their lives in the early part of the previous century to realize how much we have lost by turning-over responsibility for much of our lives to the bureaucracy. We all generally embrace it as "good" because of the benefits it provides. But these very benefits are themselves the threads of silk and gold which tether freedom in the name of security.

OTOH, what if those mad bastards were successful in attacking the USA? Wouldn't we all be clamoring for more government intervention to kill the bad guys? All I have to do is think back to the first few weeks post 9/11 and recall the fear palpable in the population. Had the Administration taken full advantage of that fear we could be living under martial law and be grateful for it for a decade or so. That's the sequence that happens in lots of cases when weak democracies are threatened by murderous insurgencies. The people DEMAND that the military step in and DO SOMETHING.

For example, look at Hurricane Katrina.

What is considered the turning point in rescue and relief efforts? It's an easy question--when an Admiral and a General were put in charge of operations. That is exactly how military dictatorship starts. people are so desperate for relief that they say to forget the constitutional separation of powers, forget Posse Comitatus, send in the troops whether the Governors ask or not.

Cry Havoc!

I try not to get too upset about it. The way I look at it is they are most likely violating my rights in much worse ways that I am not aware of everday.

I think the only people worried about phone records are the people who were up to no good. Personally I have nothing to worry about because I was not making calls to people doing things I was not supposed to e doing.