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| 5/24 |
| 2006/5/11-14 [Politics/Domestic/President/Clinton, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:43016 Activity:nil |
5/10 NSA Has Massive Database of American's Phone Calls
http://csua.org/u/ftd (Yahoo! News)
\_ Need the phone records for a terror suspect? No need to present
evidence to the phone company to get 'em -- you already got it!
The last thing we need is a mushroom cloud over a major American
city.
\_ What, you're willing to trade any freedom, tolerate any
oppression, just so that someone can't nuke a US city? Guess
what: they'll still be able to nuke the city, but politicos
will be able to use the information for personal purposes.
Just look at the antics of the FBI under Hoover.
\_ I like how Al Franken put it this morning:
"What President Bush doesn't realize is that the next guy in
office might not be as trustworthy as him ..."
\_ he's right. it's gonna be Hillary.. we are all screwed
\_ Man, berkeley's standards seem to get lower every year.
\_ Seriously, pp doesn't even remember history from
8 years ago.
\_ obTrollbait.
\_ http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/11/105237.shtml?s=ic
Carl Limbacher of http://newsmax.com says, "USA Today NSA Scoop Not News".
Now tell me what's wrong with this article.
\_ OMG!!!11! it's all CLINTON'S FAULT!!! WHY DIDN"T I THINK OF THAT?
Fuck off and die.
\_ I'm replying to myself, but key problems with the article are:
(1) The Clinton-era program had FISA approval and focused on
international surveillance
(2) The program under dispute is ALL domestic.
(3) Qwest asked for a FISA review before turning over records,
but the NSA didn't want to ask FISA.
(4) Dubya is trying very hard not to let this undergo judicial
scrutiny, perhaps not until a Democrat takes power, to
decide the issue of whether the "unitary executive" theory
enables Dubya to break laws as commander-in-chief in a time
of war ("interpret differently via signing statement")
\- have you read the standard article on signing statements?
http://csua.org/u/ftr
i had not really heard of them until last year. these
seem crazy to me ... consdered in light of say
CLINTON v CITY OF NEW YORK. --psb
\_ yep. the interesting aspect to me is the different
ways they've been keeping it from judicial review.
\- the new view of limited govt: no judicial review.
\_ We'll just limit the government part that
keeps the other government part from
becoming unlimited. |
| 5/24 |
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| csua.org/u/ftd -> news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060511/ts_usatoday/nsahasmassivedatabaseofamericansphonecalls;_ylt=AhZ4c.z9agTtbRbrX7xTk2XB4FkB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl USA TODAY NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY Thu May 11, 7:21 AM ET The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY. The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans - most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews. The NSA record collection program "It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added. For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made - across town or across the country - to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others. The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said. The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop - without warrants - on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database. In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States." As a result, domestic call records - those of calls that originate and terminate within US borders - were believed to be private. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information. Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency's operations. "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law." The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. "There is no domestic surveillance without court approval," said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping. She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States." The government is collecting "external" data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting "internals," a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a US intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together. Carriers uniquely positioned AT&T recently merged with SBC and kept the AT&T name. Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T are the nation's three biggest telecommunications companies; they provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200 million customers. The three carriers control vast networks with the latest communications technologies. They provide an array of services: local and long-distance calling, wireless and high-speed broadband, including video. Their direct access to millions of homes and businesses has them uniquely positioned to help the government keep tabs on the calling habits of Americans. Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants. Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database. Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest. But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services - primarily long-distance and wireless - to people who live in Qwest's region. Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area. Created by President Truman in 1952, during the Korean War, the NSA is charged with protecting the United States from foreign security threats. The agency was considered so secret that for years the government refused to even confirm its existence. Government insiders used to joke that NSA stood for "No Such Agency." In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named "Shamrock," led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping. Enacted in 1978, FISA lays out procedures that the US government must follow to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches of people believed to be engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States. A special court, which has 11 members, is responsible for adjudicating requests under FISA. Over the years, NSA code-cracking techniques have continued to improve along with technology. The agency today is considered expert in the practice of "data mining" - sifting through reams of information in search of patterns. Data mining is just one of many tools NSA analysts and mathematicians use to crack codes and track international communications. Paul Butler, a former US prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes, said FISA approval generally isn't necessary for government data-mining operations. Social Security numbers and street addresses - can't be included as part of the search. "That requires an additional level of probable cause," he said. The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes. Historically, AT&T and the regional phone companies have required law enforcement agencies to present a court order before they would even consider turning over a customer's calling data. Part of that owed to the personality of the old Bell Telephone System, out of which those companies grew. Ma Bell's bedrock principle - protection of the customer - guided the company for decades, said Gene Kimmelman, senior public policy director of Consumers Union. The concern for the customer was also based on law: Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person ... |
| www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/5/11/105237.shtml?s=ic The USA Today "scoop" on the NSA's massive telephone surveillance program isn't really news at all - though liberal media outlets have been blaring the story as a shocking revelation all Thursday morning. The Agency, the paper announced ominously, "has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans . The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans most of whom aren't suspected of any crime." as NewsMax noted in December - back when the New York Times tried to ballyhoo a similar story about the NSA's terrorist surveillance program - CBS's "60 Minutes" blew the lid off the agency's domestic wiretapping in Feb. "60 Minutes" host Steve Kroft introduced the segment by saying: "If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency." NSA computers, said Kroft, "capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world." Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told "60 Minutes" that the agency was monitoring "everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs" Mr Frost detailed activities at one unidentified NSA installation, telling "60 Minutes" that agency operators "can listen in to just about anything" - while Echelon computers screen phone calls for key words that might indicate a terrorist threat. Now, more than six years later, the big media is pretending that this is all brand new - something cooked up by President Bush in a mad rush to shred the Constitutional rights of every American. But even USA Today had to admit in its own report that the NSA wiretapping program has "been done before, though never on this large a scale." |
| csua.org/u/ftr -> www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/ Nation Bush's contention that he can ignore provisions of the Patriot Act, whose renewal he ushered last month, has drawn scrutiny. Bush's contention that he can ignore provisions of the Patriot Act, whose renewal he ushered last month, has drawn scrutiny. The Boston Globe Bush challenges hundreds of laws President cites powers of his office By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 30, 2006 WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional. Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power. But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override. Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military. Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts. Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House. For the first five years of Bush's presidency, his legal claims attracted little attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act. Bush administration spokesmen declined to make White House or Justice Department attorneys available to discuss any of Bush's challenges to the laws he has signed. Instead, they referred a Globe reporter to their response to questions about Bush's position that he could ignore provisions of the Patriot Act. They said at the time that Bush was following a practice that has ''been used for several administrations" and that ''the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution." But the words ''in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution" are the catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history. Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work. Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed. Military link Many of the laws Bush said he can bypass -- including the torture ban -- involve the military. The Constitution grants Congress the power to create armies, to declare war, to make rules for captured enemies, and ''to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces." But, citing his role as commander in chief, Bush says he can ignore any act of Congress that seeks to regulate the military. On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels. After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief. Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation, such as the ''black sites" where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned. Congress has also twice passed laws forbidding the military from using intelligence that was not ''lawfully collected," including any information on Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches. Congress first passed this provision in August 2004, when Bush's warrantless domestic spying program was still a secret, and passed it again after the program's existence was disclosed in December 2005. On both occasions, Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the military. In October 2004, five months after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq came to light, Congress passed a series of new rules and regulations for military prisons. Bush signed the provisions into law, then said he could ignore them all. One provision made clear that military lawyers can give their commanders independent advice on such issues as what would constitute torture. But Bush declared that military lawyers could not contradict his administration's lawyers. Other provisions required the Pentagon to retrain military prison guards on the requirements for humane treatment of detainees under the Geneva Conventions, to perform background checks on civilian contractors in Iraq, and to ban such contractors from performing ''security, intelligence, law enforcement, and criminal justice functions." Bush reserved the right to ignore any of the requirements. The new law also created the position of inspector general for Iraq. But Bush wrote in his signing statement that the inspector ''shall refrain" from investigating any intelligence or national security matter, or any crime the Pentagon says it prefers to investigate for itself. Bush had placed similar limits on an inspector general position created by Congress in November 2003 for the initial stage of the US occupation of Iraq. The earlier law also empowered the inspector to notify Congress if a US official refused to cooperate. Bush said the inspector could not give any information to Congress without permission from the administration. Oversight questioned Many laws Bush has asserted he can bypass involve requirements to give information about government activity to congressional oversight committees. In December 2004, Congr... |
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