… to have the New York Times dragged kicking and screaming to run an article on A1 about NSA gathering the CONTENTS of emails and text messages:
The N.S.A. is not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas, a practice that government officials have openly acknowledged. It is also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners, like a little used e-mail address, according to a senior intelligence official.
While it has long been known that the agency conducts extensive computer searches of data it vacuums up overseas, that it is systematically searching — without warrants — through the contents of Americans’ communications that cross the border reveals more about the scale of its secret operations. […]
Hints of the surveillance appeared in a set of rules, leaked by Mr. Snowden, for how the N.S.A. may carry out the 2008 FISA law. One paragraph mentions that the agency “seeks to acquire communications about the target that are not to or from the target.” The pages were posted online by the newspaper The Guardian on June 20, but the telltale paragraph, the only rule marked “Top Secret” amid 18 pages of restrictions, went largely overlooked amid other disclosures. […]
The official said that a computer searches the data for the identifying keywords or other “selectors” and stores those that match so that human analysts could later examine them. The remaining communications, the official said, are deleted; the entire process takes “a small number of seconds,” and the system has no ability to perform “retrospective searching.”
The official said the keyword and other terms were “very precise” to minimize the number of innocent American communications that were flagged by the program. At the same time, the official acknowledged that there had been times when changes by telecommunications providers or in the technology had led to inadvertent overcollection. The N.S.A. monitors for these problems, fixes them and reports such incidents to its overseers in the government, the official said. […]
The senior intelligence official argued, however, that it would be inaccurate to portray the N.S.A. as engaging in “bulk collection” of the contents of communications. “ ‘Bulk collection’ is when we collect and retain for some period of time that lets us do retrospective analysis,” the official said. “In this case, we do not do that, so we do not consider this ‘bulk collection.’ ”
Oky doky, so let me get this straight. It is as if the police can walk through any neighborhood, let themselves into the homes when no one is there, take a quick look around, and if they see nothing and are out in a short period of time, no harm no foul, right?
I mean, it is not like it’s a real search-search.
If you haven’t done anything wrong, why worry?
Indeed.
Tagging the problem with “NSA” as in “NSA scandal” is a damn shame, since the problem isn’t the NSA but the usurpation of the Constitution of the US by politicians and political parties who don’t give a damn about preserving that lovely instrument with its attendant checks and balances, but wish to see to the utter abandonment of it — for the sake of their own power.
The architecture of the Constitution, if faithfully followed, is made precisely to prevent our temporary politicians from turning the necessarily powerful tools and agencies of national security inward on the political behavior of the people of the nation. The problem is the miscreants put in power by the erroneous choices of the majority of voters, who may now pay for their mistake with the pains they can expect from a surveillance state, and who even now don’t recognize their foolishness but blame the wrong cause instead. I spit on such as these.
– sdferr, if the political apparatus of the country allows politico’s to esentially ignore the Constituytional safegaurds, and the voters are such low info morons, then they deserve exactly what they’re getting.
– Sorry, I gave up having any sympathy for the bullshit electorate a long time ago. Even if you’re of a mind to sympathize its a waste of time. The only way it will change is when things get so bad the idiots can’t hide from it any more.
– That is the only way anything ever changes. When the oxe gets gored.
piggy piggy NSA spyfags spend money like hip hop stars and NFL thugs
spend spend spend
spy spy spy
The rest of us don’t get shit out of this deal.
God bless Mr. Snowden but the bestest thing he did was reintroduce the idea that there are principled politicians on the opposite side of the spectrum. Socialists and staunch conservatives alike can look at a Wyden or a Randpaul and say oh wow there’s for reals principled people on the other side what respect freedom and love America.
That whole concept had disappeared for many many years.
Thank you Edward.
NSA is also part of the DEA-SOD [let’s fake up the evidence] program.
Re-creating a new reality for public consumption is very popular, fun, and easy to do with professional guidelines. By Any Means Necessary.
If you gather information, you will have a strong temptation to use it.
an old dirt road is what the piggy piggy NSA spyfags is missing
self-important cocksuckers
no wonder Meghan’s coward daddy has a stumpy lil geriatric hardon for them
so massive civil disobedience begins with declaring oneself amish. if the fed gov’t tries to define it johnroberts will say it is a tax. thanx w.
link
The Sex Pistols – Anarchy in U.K
Obamacare is DOA. It’s just a matter of time until it’s unwound. Yeah, yeah: It’s law. So? Congress and all the civilian employees are exempt. There has to be a procedural strike or massive non-compliance to come.
Snyder said he understands that those groups that were exempted from Social Security when it was created in 1965 are also exempt from the insurance mandate.
– The exemption was created in 65 not SS. Poor writing.
obamacare is supposedto fail catastrophically to where we have no choice but to create special food stamps for healthcares
supposed to
– It’s law.
– Lack of Congressional funding, continuous modifications that stall any actual application, or simply non-enforcement.
– Any of the three can kill any law. Bumblefuck has already done a slew of exceptions and stalling dates for enactments to the point where the other two road blocks may not matter.
– Roberts bullshit not withstanding, the law is unconstitutional from multiple aspects, and will be challenged endlessly, even if by some miracle it actually gets into operation.
– Just for starters both private and public sector Unions are already mumbling loudly.
BBH, Aetna, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and a couple of other big underwriters just opted out today.
We’re broke, happy. Single-payer isn’t going to happen.
– Well Leigh, Obama’s magic economists have convinced themselves they don’t want or need any stinking insurance companies, so for them thats a feature, not a bug.
– That 3 trillion a year of medical coverage (medical social security) is the socialists wet dream. All they have to do is keep printing money and poof!, its funded, just like that.
– Then one day the FED does a treasury bond sale and no one buys them, and then it all comes apart at the seams.
– After the civil collapse future generations of post- moron moron voters will say “Well wtf…..who was dumb enough to believe you can produce wealth out of thin air.”
– Mirrors will be outlawed for a time.
Yeah. *Poof* we’re Zimbabwe.
Nah. There’s plenty of money that the govenment doesn’t have yet. Keith Ellison says so.
hi jho
How ‘Monopoly’ Perpetuates Myths About Capitalism
The classic board game models the Left’s view of the economy.
=
One legislator accused me of having a nineteenth-century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an eighteenth-century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law-abiding citizens should be one of the government’s primary concerns.
Address to the Republican State Central Committee Convention, (7 September 1973)=
link
As Mark Levin noted, everyone said Medicare was unworkable and would die, and look where we are now.
rust never sleeps
link
eff it
Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Rust Never Sleeps (1979) Full Album
The lesson plan leaves out the best part: the local terrorist militia dressed up like a feared and hated minority in order to deflect blame and stoke hate.
havel @ page 165 potp
As Mark Levin noted, everyone said Medicare was unworkable and would die, and look where we are now.
John Roberts took this house of cards and made it a concrete bunker.
As for NSA overreach, perhaps far too much of this stuff may actually have legal precedent. If so it’s the biggest case of “give them an inch and they’ll take a light-year.” Like so much in the Nation Below Canada, state power has been insanely broad but forebearance in the past hid its extent. Not much forebearance in this crew. Bush wasn’t much better.
“leigh says August 8, 2013 at 10:05 pm
Yeah. *Poof* we’re Zimbabwe. ”
Nope. Zimbabwe got lots of aid to prop them up as they fell. Nobody will aid us.