Is it because he's black?

[DirkGently]

179. Wow. The apologist ammo bucket must be empty if shameful racial animus

is all that's left.

Are the ACLU racists? The Electronic Frontier Foundation? Chris Hayes? Please, explain the racist motivations of these people, given it's apparently easy to ascribe such motives to members of "Democratic Underground."

Facts facts facts? Have some facts.

A Google News search of "NSA scandal" pulls 259 million hits. 81 million for "NSA Obama." The media is giving it a little play.

Yes, the NSA does spy on Americans. Clapper's weasel wording about "wittingly" kind of gave that away. That is the problem that people have a possibly non-racist problem with. Who wouldn't?

ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging Constitutionality of NSA Phone Spying Program

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union today filed a constitutional challenge to a surveillance program under which the National Security Agency vacuums up information about every phone call placed within, from, or to the United States. The lawsuit argues that the program violates the First Amendment rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment. The complaint also charges that the dragnet program exceeds the authority that Congress provided through the Patriot Act.

"This dragnet program is surely one of the largest surveillance efforts ever launched by a democratic government against its own citizens," said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. "It is the equivalent of requiring every American to file a daily report with the government of every location they visited, every person they talked to on the phone, the time of each call, and the length of every conversation. The program goes far beyond even the permissive limits set by the Patriot Act and represents a gross infringement of the freedom of association and the right to privacy."

The ACLU is a customer of Verizon Business Network Services, which was the recipient of a secret FISA Court order published by The Guardian last week. The order required the company to "turn over on 'an ongoing daily basis' phone call details" such as who calls are placed to and from, and when those calls are made. The lawsuit argues that the government's blanket seizure of and ability to search the ACLU's phone records compromises sensitive information about its work, undermining the organization's ability to engage in legitimate communications with clients, journalists, advocacy partners, and others.

"The crux of the government's justification for the program is the chilling logic that it can collect everyone's data now and ask questions later," said Alex Abdo, a staff attorney for the ACLU's National Security Project. "The Constitution does not permit the suspicionless surveillance of every person in the country."

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-files-lawsuit-challenging-constitutionality-nsa-phone-spying-program

What the NSA claims is that it aims for at least "51%" foreign surveillance. Supposedly. If that's even a reasonable standard to begin with. Which is verified by precisely nothing. Which is also what we know about what happens if it un"wittingly" gathers more than 49% domestic surveillance.

This is the same organization that batted not an eyelash when Bush ordered it to wiretap unconstitutionally. Then they listened to people's "sex calls" for fun.

So yeah, "trust" is kind of out the window here. Words are not going to be enough when we've already seen that "no, not wittingly" is the standard of truth we're working with.

As recently as 2011, this administration unconstitutionally violated the law on which PRISM is based. The precious FISA court said so. That means you are being spied on. Or were, within the past two years. We really don't know, because there is no transparency and no accountability and no public oversight of how the laws, including the despicable Patriot Act, are being interpreted.

Nor can we know how it's now interpreting things that supposedly fixes the unconstitutionally spying that we already know has occurred.

A 2011 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruling found the U.S. government had unconstitutionally overreached in its use of a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The National Security Agency uses the same section to justify its PRISM online data collection program. But that court opinion must remain secret, the Justice Department says, to avoid being "misleading to the public."

The DOJ was responding to a lawsuit filed last year by the Electronic Frontier Foundation seeking the release of a 2011 court opinion that found the government had violated the Constitution and circumvented FISA, the law that is supposed to protect Americans from surveillance aimed at foreigners.

The part of the FISA law addressed in the opinion in question, Section 702, is the same one the NSA is now using to scoop up email and social media records through its PRISM program.

But the court that released the opinion under dispute is no ordinary legal body. Made up of federal judges on loan from other courts, FISC conducts its highly classified business in secret. Its rulings, too, are classified -- which means Americans don't know how the law governing surveillance is being interpreted.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/justice-department-prism_n_3405101.html

So, besides disgracefully accusing people who are concerned about a fundamental threat to the basic Constitutional protections of Americans of being racist, this "hypothesis" is just flat-out wrong.