The NSA is an organization to revered and respected.

[Jara sang]

As Americans we don't have the capacity to decide weather or not we should be spied on or not. It is in our own best interest that the NSA spy on us.

http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/photos/hitler_rally_steps+large.jpg

[...of J.Temperance]

1. The NSA is not spying on ordinary citizens

What is the point of spying on John Smith or Jane Smith just going about their daily business?

The NSA will be spying on those who for some reason have brought themselves under suspicion, by whatever they've been doing.

I hate to comment this, but if you've not been doing anything illegal already, then why would the NSA be wanting to spy on you or eavesdrop on your conversations?

I don't know anybody who have suggested to me, that they think that they're being spied on.

Okay, if my comments are considered wrong, then please feel free to delete them and I'll understand.

[Jara sang]

2. Why did the FBI keep a file on Martin Luther King Jr.?

You don't seem to understand how Eschelon works. It is a filter. They are collecting data on EVERYBODY.

[...of J.Temperance]

6. J. Edgar Hoover even had a file on himself, did you know that?

Why would Eschelon be collecting data on EVERYBODY? Say you're...Fred Jones and you work at a Chevron gas station...what would Eschelon be wanting data on somebody like that for?

Yes, the NSA eavesdrop on people, but they're a certain type of person, or a certain type of organization.

[kliljedahl]

44. Dream on N/T

Keith’s Barbeque Central

[formercia]

49. They want to be able to link everyone together

in a web of information. For example, joe Schmuck begins to say something they don't like, they not only have info on joe but everyone connected to him, this way they can also begin to listen to his contacts and associates to look for signs of a conspiracy. In a Big Brother World, there's no escape because they already know where you might go or what you might do before you even think of it. It might take a few years to collect enough data for their Total Information Awareness web but them more information they collect, the better their predictions become. They will develop patterns of behavior on persons of interest and as soon as one of them deviates from a normal behavior pattern, they will be flagged for additional scrutiny.

[FreedomAngel82]

56. Sometime try to find the film

"UnConstiutional" which is about the "Patriot Act." There is a guy on there who is in his sixties or maybe early seventies and he tells how one day he was at the gym around the time Iraq began and he and another person were talking about it and he was against it. The next day he was at home resting in the early afternoon and the FBI visited him. Turned out the guy he talked to was for Iraq and Bush and he turned this guy in.

[formercia]

60. That segment was also in F 9/11

Informants have always been a source but with computers and data mining software combined with programs that look for changes in behavior patterns.....Able Danger was one of the prototypes for this work.

[Protagoras]

58. Datamining can be used for ANYTHING

that means it can be used to identify who's part of a peacemovement. Who's teaching "liberal" policies in school. Who's likely to vote the wrong way.

When we talk about data nets, unless we directly see the filters they are using, we have no clue what they are looking for.

That being said...what are the reasons you have for trusting them? Seems to me that the record of republican administrations on this matter of honesty and respect for civil rights does NOTHING to make me believe they're using this gun for good purposes.

Power corrupts.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It's not just a theory.

[crispini]

4. I bet you fifty dollars they are spying on..

members of the peace movement, critics of the Bush administration, political opponents, journalists, etcetera.

Why else would Shrub NOT want to go through the FISA court? Because he KNEW that the judges would NOT approve his requests.

Wait and see.

[...of J.Temperance]

16. I would agree with

They are spying on critics of Junior, political opponents and journalists.

I agree that they're probably spying on those people, because this is within their nature, they're viscious, hate dissent and are vindictive against those who criticize and tell the truth.

So yes.

[annabanana]

52. guess what

"critics of Junior, political opponents and journalists"
ARE ordinary citizens...

and they are being spied on nontheless...

[Walt Starr]

5. I figure all who post on DU have been spied on.

:shrug:

The bullshit line about "I'm not doing anything wrong so why should I worry" is just that, bullshit.

[...of J.Temperance]

11. So, what are we doing, that warrants us being spied on?

This is an open internet forum, it's not like we're a secret internet forum...anybody can come here and lurk and read threads.

[Walt Starr]

13. We post critical statements about the Bush Administration

Eshalon picks it up and "BANG", we're on the list.

Otherwise, Bush would have followe the law. And any member of the NSA who did not refuse an order to spy on Americans illegally is every bit as guilty because they followed an illegal order.

Of course, there are some people on DU who don't ever post critical statements about Bush, but then again, are they really DUers?

[...of J.Temperance]

14. Well

I often post critical statements about Junior, and I've used colorful language shall I say.

So I suppose I'm on the list. I'm just saying, that I think we need to get more information about the NSA spying thing and then put that into some kind of perspective.

[Walt Starr]

15. You won't get any more information than we have

so all we can do is speculate the worst.

[...of J.Temperance]

18. Okay, I will accept that :) n/t

[Usrename]

45. It is reasonable to assume that they are making themselves rich.

Think about all the insider information they can abuse. Stuff that it would be illegal for anyone else to act on. Probably picked up a few extra billions just off the markets.

Or maybe we should just trust them to be fair. Hmmm...

[AngryAmish]

24. This is the sneaky thing about Echelon

It is run by the US, Great Britain, Australia and (I think) Canada. They all share information. So even if the US says we do not spy on domestic telecommunications, Great Britain can and they alert us under the table. Plausible deniability.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

61. and New Zealand

It's referred to as the USAUK Community.

For New Zealand's role, see:



http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/sp/

[tnlefty]

50. Don't forget that people were denied access to Bush/Cheney events for

writing LTTEs to the paper. Someone's watching. How about political contributions to candidates? Being the person who applied for a rally permit in a community? Making a brief on camera statement to the local news at a rally? Working on a campaign? Working to expose election shenanigans? I think there are many reasons that a lot of people who post on DU might be of interest.

[EST]

8. Uh--what they said was that NSA is "detecting"

The principal way they are detecting is by opening a big hose and filtering (by supercomputer) millions of conversations per hour, looking for key words and phrases.
We are not allowed to know what those words are.
How the hell is any citizen to know they are not being monitored? The only conclusion has to be that you must assume you are.
The purpose of government and the law, especially in times of danger, is to act as a shield, rather than a sword. More than this is tyranny.

[ddeclue]

55. Beautifully put.

The fact that is missed in this debate is that "somebody" is a mathematical subset of "everybody".

So they are taking down info on "everybody". That sounds harmless enough if viewed very superficially. But taking down info on "everyobody" also means that they are taking down info on a whole lot of "somebodies" (and "nobodies" for that matter) be they John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, Terri McAuliffe, Wesley Clark, Colin Powell, John McCain, Bill Richardson, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter or whoever they might fear.

Even if they don't specifically set out to use that information, it has been captured and stored somewhere in a secret building in Virginia full of hard drives so that at some point it CAN be looked at by President Bush or whoever for purposes other than finding Osama bin Laden or stopping al Qaeda from doing something.

In arms control parlance, it's a "dual use facility". Yes they can track the terrorists with it but also their political enemies. It is the ideal "enemies list" tool for any President. Back in the early 1970's when a computer meant an IBM 360 mainframe, the only people with this kind of intrusive computing technology were the IRS who had all our tax records. Nixon used this tool to order IRS audits of HIS enemies - are we, therefore, to trust George Bush with the NSA given the vast improvements in computer technology? Bush has already demonstrated many times that he lies and can't be trusted.

Bush didn't ask for a warrant because, in this country at least, there is no possible scenario under the law where you can ask for a warrant to watch all of the people all of the time. A warrant requires PROBABLE CAUSE. Probable cause requires a specific subject or subjects. It by definition can not be everyone.

The physical search analogy to what Bush has done would be to say that because someone was murdered in the city of Detroit last week that the Detroit Police Department is therefore entitled to enter and search every home, business, school, church, government office, factory, hospital, car, and gym locker in a 100 mile radius of Detroit because surely somebody within that radius committed the murder and will eventually be found by searching everyone.

Ultimately this is the Big Brother tool of George Orwell's 1984 and we must demand an end to it now.

Doug De Clue
Orlando, FL

[tx_dem41]

9. The fact of the matter is that the NSA is supposed to spy, period.

They are NOT the ones that determine the legality of the spying.

[Lars39]

12. You don't have to be doing anything illegal;

just belong to the "wrong" group. Like those pesky Quakers. :eyes:

[ddeclue]

59. Let's see now..

Quakers are pacifists.. how are they a "threat"???:eyes:

[ThomWV]

17. What If Your Crime Was Opposing Bush's Social Security Plan?

What if?

[formercia]

19. We are not ordinary citizens

We speak out and try to expose the illegitimate administration that is crushing the life out of the Constitution. We are a threat to them by our willingness to speak the truth to all who will listen.

Ordinary citizens are of no interest to them because they are but sheep that do as they are told and keep quiet.

[annabanana]

53. yes we are...

We are regular, day to day, American citizens who work, raise our families, pay our taxes and do our duty as citizens. The government works for us and it is OUR JOB to keep an eye on them. The people who are in thIS country and are called citizens and DO NOT DO THIS are shirkers. They are lazy and irresponsible and their behavior is distinctly UN AMERICAN!

[Matariki]

21. this is a dangerous train of reasoning

"if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about". I'll let you reason out *why* for yourself.

There are safeguards built into the law against abuses of power and Bush is circumventing those safeguards. Do you understand that he could be (and probably is) spying not (only) on 'terrorist suspects' but political opponents? Do you get the problem with this?

[Toots]

26. How do you know who they are spying upon?

Are Quakers not ordinary people? How about "war protesters"? What is your definition of ordinary citizen. I am going to sound like a Republican here but here it is, It isn't about the spying..It is about evading the law.. They could have spied all they wished legally by just asking. They chose to do it in an illegal manner which would indicate to me there is much more involved.. They chose to break the law when they didn't have to for the purpose they described. They broke the law. The US Constitution in fact.

[shraby]

28. I have a genealogical website. I put a search engine

on it and get reports on who visits the website. The DoD has visited. Why do you suppose they'd be interested in a genealogy website? Maybe because I get emails from all over the world asking about their family tree, as well as people from all over visit it.

[Warpy]

29. You are wrong, of course

There were two reasons to sidestep what was essentially a rubber stamp court whose judges were all handpicked by Rehnquist:

First, the net was too wide and the wiretaps were unspecified. That means that large numbers of domestic lines were involved and searched for words and phrases that would arouse suspicion (a massive fishing expedition, in other words, completely against the fourth amendment), or

Second, the net was small and names were specified, but they were names that would have been recognized instantly by the FISA judges and questioned. Examples would be opposition Congressmen as well as GOP moderates, judges, media personalities, and opposition party leaders.

We know that Nixon did the second. What is especially troubling is that Stupid's administration seems to have done both of these things. All that remains is for Congress to realize that they've been tapped for at least a couple of years now, and probably longer.

That's when we'll see some action. In the meantime, recitation of right wing talking points will probably continue on this board and be debunked as soon as they are posted.

[Rex]

40. Who gets to decide what is right and wrong?

And how do you know they are going about their daily business? The terrorists want you to think they are John & Jane Smith, that's the whole point. IMO, the NSA has been doing clandestine spying operations here at home. They are afraid that people will find out that the NSA has been spying randomly and without a warrant. You ask why anyone would be afraid if nothing illegal is going on, do you trust an organization that has been spying illegaly on American citizens? I'm sure we at DU are on a list somewhere and I have no doubt the NSA has spied on some of us, probably the most active members.

I'm sure the Good Germans thought, 'hey, I'm not doing anything illegal so why worry about the Nazi party?' They should have worried.

[DistressedAmerican]

43. Prove It.

[alarimer]

46. "If you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to

worry about." This kind of thing is bullshit. The NSA or anyone should not be allowed to spy on anyone without a warrant. Period. All this talk about "protecting us from terror" is bullshit. It is a data mining, fishing expedition basically.

[journalist3072]

51. Ordinary citizens ARE being spied upon by our government

For example, it recently became public knowledge that the Pentagon spied on a campus protest at the University of California- Santa Cruz.

Some of the students there held a campus protest to speak out against military recruitment on college campuses.

The Pentagon found out about it, and they identified it as a "credible threat." And they spied on them.

All these students were doing, was excersing their first amendment right to peacefully assemble and speak out against a government policy: military recruitment on campus. They are not terrorists.

I talked about this on my blog last night:

http://progressiveminds.bloghi.com/2005/12/29/ucsc-chancellor-calls-for-spy-investigation.html

[SPKrazy]

57. I think you are partly right

However, I think they were abused by * to spy on his political and economic enemies

Why else would he not use FISA?

[tx_dem41]

3. Your beef is with the Administration....

not the NSA. If you want to live in a world where you think everyone is good EXCEPT the United States, be my guest. Just don't drag this forum and the Democrats into it.

[...of J.Temperance]

7. Stop that...you're making sense

:)

We need to put this NSA thing into some kind of perspective, we do.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[High Plains]

47. My beef IS with the NSA

If the agency is complying with unlawful, unconstitutional demands from the Bush administration.

And there are deeper issues about the role of intelligence gathering in a democracy. Where in the Constitution does it say the NSA can scan my email or overhear my conversations without a warrant? What's up with this "vacuum cleaner" approach to intelligence? What's up with secret prisons and "rendition" of suspects to foreign countries? What's up with the use of torture?

These are serious issues. Democrats once cared about such things. Do you remember the Church Committee back in the 1970s?

I don't know where you got the idea the original poster thinks everyone is good except the United States.

The Democrats damn well better be dragging themselves out of their stupor and looking into this.

And please don't try to tell me I don't have anything to worry about if I haven't none anything wrong.

[tx_dem41]

48. I would never tell you that. So, please don't read things into my

posts that I never said or implied.

My comments about the "everyone is good except the US" go back a few threads with the OPer. Sorry you got in, in the middle of the thread.

Again, we agree on just about everything you wrote. My only point is that the NSA is not there to determine legality. That determination is made by FISA, which is being "run-around" by the Administration, NOT by NSA.

Also, NSA has nothing to do with "secret prisons" or "rendition". The beef there is with the CIA...and again...the Administration.

I'm trying to point out that we are being distracted by the REAL target on this issue...the Administration...when we erroneously give powers (Administration powers) to the agency that is the NSA.

[stillcool]

20. The Secret Team....

The structure of our government has allowed this to happen..and obviously for a very long time...as Col Prouty's book The Secret Team, and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World was published by
Prentice Hall in 1973. http://www.prouty.org/

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

22. "First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Martin Niemoller

[Perky]

23. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.....THE ISSUE IS NOT SPYING

IT IS DOING DO WITHOUT A COURT SAYING IT IS OK FIRST OR WITHIN 72 HOURS.

THAT IS THE LAW (FISA) AND ANYTHING SHORT OF THAT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!!!

[tx_dem41]

27. Ahhhh....like a cool drink of water to a thirsty man.

Thank you. :)

[AnnieBW]

30. Can We Stop With the Nazi Stuff Already?

Is there a way to invoke Godwin's Law on DU? NSA is NOT the Nazi or Communist Party. They are NOT the KGB. It's not even like in Saudi Arabia or Iran, where if you express an opinion against the government, you're thrown into jail. (Cindy Sheehan TRIED to get arrested, dammit!) A lot of NSA people had issues with this stuff, or we wouldn't be talking about it. However, the issue is the Administration bypassing all of the legal safeguards to order NSA to do it. Whatever POTUS wants, POTUS gets.

Yes, the NSA spies on foreign threats. Big fucking deal. You think the Chinese, Russians, Israelis, etc. aren't doing it to us? Much less our allies, like the French? There ARE people out there that want to kill us. Some of them have come into this country illegally (or legally) and should be monitored. Goddess help us if there's another incident like the London bombings, where it was an internal threat. Then everyone will be bitching because the intelligence community didn't do their jobs.

[Jara sang]

34. I don't know what Godwin's Law is.

But then again, I don't concern myself with trivial internet pop culture.

[AnnieBW]

37. Godwin's Law

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi analogies) is an adage in Internet culture that was originated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states that:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

Although the law does not specifically mention it, there is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

It is considered poor form to arbitrarily raise such a comparison with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized codicil that any such deliberate invocation of Godwin's Law will be unsuccessful.

[Jara sang]

41. Here is one of my own laws.

I don't suffer fools.

[kittenwithmittens]

42. Stone

Meet glass house.

[rman]

62. which part of warrentless spying on US citizens did you not understand?

[bigtree]

31. no other questions for your government spooks?

What if reason was overuled on the FISA court? Are all of its decisions reasonable and correct?

[AnnieBW]

33. Contrary to Popular Belief

The FISA rules are pretty tough. That's why *Co wanted to get around them.

[bigtree]

35. Judge Robertson seemed to me to be a friend of Democrats on many issues

I could recall them if you want. Are you convinced that there doesn't exist, on the court and in the NSA itself, an opposite bias which might have influenced some of the administrators and judge's decisions?

[AnnieBW]

36. I suppose

But, I believe that the process has to be vetted through enough people that there is no appearance of bias.

[bigtree]

38. Did you know that Chief Justice Roberts will choose the judge who replaces

James Robertson?

Reinquist, I suppose chose the others.

[AnnieBW]

39. Yeah,

That gives me a nice, warm fuzzy feeling inside. :sarcasm:

[boobooday]

54. Thank you.

Bush had his secret court, and he could even order the wiretaps and THEN ask for the warrant.

Why couldn't he do that, if he was really only targeting "bad guys?"

[Jara sang]

25. The problem with the NSA "showing up" at my door is two fold.

First, NSA is not a law enforcement agency. Second, for them to show up at my door because of something I posted at DU would confirm that they monitor ordinary citizens. If they don't do anything about John Young at Cryptome http://www.cryptome.org/ which is basically a site that could be called a blueprint for terrorists, then they damn sure won't do anything about me sending an email to the Iranian embassy which is entirely legal and was posted as a joke anyway. Damn, some people here are way too paranoid.

[AnnieBW]

32. NSA Will NOT Show Up At Your Door

They are not a law enforcement agency, and have no arrest powers. You've been watching too many episodes of the X-Files.

Now the FBI, OTOH...