About FISA the NSA and "new technology"

[underpants]

I may be simply stating the obvious but here goes.

Tom Ridge finished up an appearance on CNN American Morning about two hours ago in which he repeatedly offered the excuse for the necessity of warrantless wiretapping being that technological advances have changed everything related to this issue. We no longer actually tap the wires basically. Okay fine.

There is a good recap of his appearance here


Aside from not understanding why someone no longer in the administration continuing to parrot their talking points and aside from the fact that no one in the administration is willing to do it themselves (or is it just that Ridge doesn't have the stench of sh*t on him that permeates through the TV screen like everyone still serving their Dear Leader?). Okay aside from all that here is the point.

Technology hasn't only affected one part of the process or this issue. There aren't DoJ lawyers sitting in dark rooms with green visors crouched over writing in pen under banker's lamps for crying out loud. They have these thingies called cell phones too. They should have some sort of organization set up to file for warrants from the FISA court anyway I mean they do don't they? Please tell me they do please tell me that that rudimentary assumption has been covered.

Oh and one last thing-They have 72 HOURS AFTER THE TAP BEGINS TO FILE FOR THE WARRANT for crying out loud but then I have one of these new fangled time pieces you wear on your wrist.

[BOSSHOG]

1. New technology trumps Old Constitution?

It could be a rovian talking point but way too many syllables for the masses.

[H2O Man]

2. The Constitution

did not change when the telegraph or telephone changed the nature of communications.

[Avalux]

3. What they've been doing would be impossible to cover by warrants.

Of course, they won't tell us exactly what they've been doing, but data sweeps of huge amounts of data, scanning millions of phone numbers and calls - how on earth does one get a warrant for that? A single warrant for each one? That's why FISA was disregarded - we're not talking about listening in on a few phone calls; we're talking about personal information on millions of people.

[underpants]

7. Broad and specific

as has been discussed here and elsewhere-I think another reason they don't want to file warrants is that they are using these warrants to dig on politic enemies. Put nothing past them. I can't think of another reason to not file other than the one you stated but you could probably still get FISA to approve that.

None of this makes sense.

[acmejack]

8. Everything on everyone.

literally. Totally information awareness. Gather everything you can, they look for associations, specifics which they define, who knows whatelse. How can you get a warrant?

[Bandit]

11. Also listening in on Democrats

They would not be able to get warrants for that so they just do it anyway....

[Avalux]

13. Warrants require justification.

They want to be able to spy on whomever they want whenever they want - do we really think this is about catching those bad terrorists? :rofl:

[bryant69]

4. THat last bit is what's interesting

I've heard a few arguments about the difficulty of getting a FISA warrent - very few. For the most part they seem to prefer pretending like Liberals and people concerned with this program don't want them to wiretap at all (which is, admittedly a much easier argument). The few arguments about the difficulty of getting a warrant are kind of pathetic. Largely "It's really hard." or "You can't stop and get a warrant" (as you point out they can get a warrant 72 hours after, so, not really a concern) or "It's more difficult than you would think"

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[annabanana]

5. The fact that NONE of the corponews outlets has even

brought that 72 hours up even once should convince any laggards that our "input" is heavily controlled.

There hasn't been a peep (I haven't even hear Olberman mention the 72 hour 'grace period'_

[havocmom]

6. That 72 hours AFTER THE TAP clause blows their whole argument

When, oh when, will we hear talking heads on TV beating the junta apologists over the head with that pertinent fact?

DUer kentucky called it: The Rosanna Rosanna Danna Media...

[underpants]

10. My email to CNN and O'Brien

As much as I appreciated and was surprised by Miles O'Brien's interview this morning of Tom Ridge he failed to include one very important piece of information about FISA warrants.

Wiretaps can be initiated and THEN a warrant is filed with the FISA court within 72 hours.

The arguments put forth by Mr.Ridge about technological advances and not wanting to wait for the warrant are completely misplaced in this discussion.

Please make sure that this point is made in the future and I have to ask-why hasn't it been in the past?

[havocmom]

12. Great message! Would make for great LTTE all over America too

:evilgrin: Get on it, evilDUers! Remind the people of the facts. The media won't.

[annabanana]

9. k&r. . . . . n/t