Bush Approved Phone Spying on Americans After 911

[DudeAsInCool]

Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 ­- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics...deNnSEf13iGuoJw

[slum_goddess]

and how successful has this been?

[method77]

they found out about some wife cheater in Utah

[Wolfie]

they found out about some wife cheater in Utah

I feel a hell of lot safer now. <_>

[Ken]

It's most likely far worse than this article lets on.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Think about; the U.S. government and other organizations accross the world have the money and man power to monitor (or worse) almost anyone at any time.

They operate largely without constraint.

[slum_goddess]

AFAIC, the NYT is totally discredited now--what other shit about the preznit have they been sitting on since before the last fucked election?

[DudeAsInCool]

AFAIC, the NYT is totally discredited now--what other shit about the preznit have they been sitting on since before the last fucked election?

I meant to mention that... :reallymad:

[Kooperman]

Both the Washington Post, with Bob Woodward covering for the Bush administration, and now the NY Times, with both Judith Miller and Phonetapgate, are in the sack with the neocons....and they'll still howl about the "liberal newsmedia." Wake up and impeach these crooks.....

[DudeAsInCool]

Kansas City Star: “The Struggle With Foreign Enemies Does Not Simply Give Him A Blank Check”…

Denver Post: Adm. Has Lost “Balance Between Essential Anti-Terrorism Tools And Encroachment On Liberties”…

LA Times: “Stunning,” “One Of The More Egregious Cases Of Governmental Overreach”…

Wash. Post: “The Tools Of Foreign Intelligence Are Not Consistent With A Democratic Society”…

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Unacceptable Actions Of A Police State”…

St. Petersburg Times: “So Dangerously Ill-Conceived And Contrary To This Nation's Guiding Principles”…

NY Times: Bush “Secretly And Recklessly Expanded The Govt.'s Powers In Dangerous And Unnecessary Ways”…

[DudeAsInCool]

Both the Washington Post, with Bob Woodward covering for the Bush administration, and now the NY Times, with both Judith Miller and Phonetapgate, are in the sack with the neocons....and they'll still howl about the "liberal newsmedia."

Speaking of media bias, here's a UCLA report on the topic:

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664

[Kooperman]

A worthless and asinine study...to call the Wall Street Journal articles leaning to the left is absurd. Lefties ain't the big investors, UCLA....Drudge must have funded that study, and had the football players do the research 15 minutes after USC handed them their asses in a trash bag.

[DudeAsInCool]

A worthless and asinine study...to call the Wall Street Journal articles leaning to the left is absurd. Lefties ain't the big investors, UCLA....Drudge must have funded that study, and had the football players do the research 15 minutes after USC handed them their asses in a trash bag.

The university has gone down hill after I left

[Wolfie]

The university has gone down hill after I left

Unfortunately most of the country has gone the same way. <_>

[Wolfie]

Bob turned out to be quite the sellout in his old age. <_>

[DudeAsInCool]

Bush Says U.S. Spy Program Is Legal and Essential

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - President Bush offered a vigorous and detailed defense of his previously secret electronic-surveillance program today, calling it a legal and essential tool in the battle against terrorism and saying that whoever disclosed it had committed a "shameful act."

Bush said the surveillance would continue...

http://nytimes.com/2005/12/19/politics/19c...vsnkiVwYLMoCu4w

[DudeAsInCool]

Congress pushes back, hard, against Bush

Blindsided by news of domestic spying, it is holding up a key bill.

By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – From a standoff over the Patriot Act to pushback from Capitol Hill on the treatment of detainees, secret prisons abroad, and government eavesdropping at home, tensions between the Bush White House and the Republican-controlled Congress have never been more exposed.

Much of the rift is over the exercise of executive power. Some lawmakers oppose the president on the values involved in harsh interrogation of terror suspects. Others are riled that they were left out of the intelligence loop.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1219/p01s01-uspo.html

[MxRob]

the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda

So whats the problem?? Unless you are one of the hundreds or thousands of people they are tracking then you dont have anything to worry about. Its no worse than the feds who track certain sites or an individual's searches on the internet. I personally am not paranoid, its just big brother doing what they have always done......

[DudeAsInCool]

So whats the problem??

There are laws on the books. For cases involving National Security, there is a process on the books where requests are handled by a special panel of judges for quick review. The probem here is that although there is a mechanism in place, Bush and the White House took their own initiative to bypass it without amending the law through congress. This is why Congress is upset. The PROBLEM is that what Bush did was against the law, and in the process, no doubt, left innocent Americans spied upon. In America, the land of the free, this is not supposed to happen.

[DudeAsInCool]

One wonders why the paper of record, the ny times, sat on this story for a year, given these benchmarks by the White House:

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?nam...order=0&thold=0

[Wolfie]

So whats the problem?? Unless you are one of the hundreds or thousands of people they are tracking then you dont have anything to worry about. Its no worse than the feds who track certain sites or an individual's searches on the internet. I personally am not paranoid, its just big brother doing what they have always done......

That's why:

Amendment Article 4

Right of Search and Seizure Regulated.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Warrantless ''National Security'' Electronic Surveillance .--In Katz v. United States, 151 Justice White sought to preserve for a future case the possibility that in ''national security cases'' electronic surveillance upon the authorization of the President or the Attorney General could be permissible without prior judicial approval. The Executive Branch then asserted the power to wiretap and to ''bug'' in two types of national security situations, against domestic subversion and against foreign intelligence operations, first basing its authority on a theory of ''inherent'' presidential power and then in the Supreme Court withdrawing to the argument that such surveillance was a ''reasonable'' search and seizure and therefore valid under the Fourth Amendment. Unanimously, the Court held that at least in cases of domestic subversive investigations, compliance with the warrant provisions of the Fourth Amendment was required. 152 Whether or not a search was reasonable, wrote Justice Powell for the Court, was a question which derived much of its answer from the warrant clause; except in a few narrowly circumscribed classes of situations, only those searches conducted pursuant to warrants were reasonable. The Government's duty to preserve the national security did not override the gurarantee that before government could invade the privacy of its citizens it must present to a neutral magistrate evidence sufficient to support issuance of a warrant authorizing that invasion of privacy. 153 This protection was even more needed in ''national security cases'' than in cases of ''ordinary'' crime, the Justice continued, inasmuch as the tendency of government so often is to regard opponents of its policies as a threat and hence to tread in areas protected by the First Amendment as well as by the Fourth. 154 Rejected also was the argument that courts could not appreciate the intricacies of investigations in the area of national security nor preserve the secrecy which is required. 155

The question of the scope of the President's constitutional powers, if any, remains judicially unsettled. 156 Congress has acted, however, providing for a special court to hear requests for warrants for electronic surveillance in foreign intelligence situations, and permitting the President to authorize warrantless surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information provided that the communications to be monitored are exclusively between or among foreign powers and there is no substantial likelihood any ''United States person'' will be overheard. 157

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constit...ent04/05.html#1

[MrBag]

[MxRob]

That's  why:

Amendment Article 4

So if Bush is provided with intelligence that an attack is imminent and he needs to act quickly some of you feel that he should wait for a warrant to be issued while jeopardizing our security...It takes 72 hours to get a court order to authorize a wiretap. In that long period of time a simple 1-2 minute conversation between an operative here in the states and another member of Al Queda overseas would have tragic results if an order is given to attack us that quickly.

It’s funny how the democrats can take a matter of national security and turn it into a smear campaign of the Bush administration. Bush said that his actions were military driven, period. If this information was not leaked in the first place there wouldn’t be anything to whine about. Again we are only talking about 500-1000 people or so being digitally monitored which have direct ties to Al Queda. They are not monitoring every United States citizen, as the left wants us all to believe. If the number of people monitored turns out to be larger then so be it. This is NOT an invasion of anyone’s privacy except the terrorists that unfortunately live among us.

I still do not understand why this is a problem if it is a matter of taking the necessary steps to protect our nation’s security regardless of the cost…

The way I see it is that the democrats are more interested in protecting the rights of the terrorists (American citizens or not) rather than fighting the war on terror. I have even heard talks of possible impeachment of the president from the liberals since yesterday. It is very disturbing to say the least…What about the fact that the Left is trying to do everything possible to keep the Patriot Act from being renewed? I would love to hear an answer from the liberals on their plan on fighting terrorism if we are going about it the wrong way.

[Kooperman]

That's  why:

Amendment Article 4

So if Bush is provided with intelligence that an attack is imminent and he needs to act quickly some of you feel that he should wait for a warrant to be issued while jeopardizing our security...It takes 72 hours to get a court order to authorize a wiretap. In that long period of time a simple 1-2 minute conversation between an operative here in the states and another member of Al Queda overseas would have tragic results if an order is given to attack us that quickly.

It’s funny how the democrats can take a matter of national security and turn it into a smear campaign of the Bush administration. Bush said that his actions were military driven, period. If this information was not leaked in the first place there wouldn’t be anything to whine about. Again we are only talking about 500-1000 people or so being digitally monitored which have direct ties to Al Queda. They are not monitoring every United States citizen, as the left wants us all to believe. If the number of people monitored turns out to be larger then so be it. This is NOT an invasion of anyone’s privacy except the terrorists that unfortunately live among us.

I still do not understand why this is a problem if it is a matter of taking the necessary steps to protect our nation’s security regardless of the cost…

The way I see it is that the democrats are more interested in protecting the rights of the terrorists (American citizens or not) rather than fighting the war on terror. I have even heard talks of possible impeachment of the president from the liberals since yesterday. It is very disturbing to say the least…What about the fact that the Left is trying to do everything possible to keep the Patriot Act from being renewed? I would love to hear an answer from the liberals on their plan on fighting terrorism if we are going about it the wrong way.

What you're speaking about is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, but you don't quite have your facts straight...which happens quite often when the facts are provided by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly or the thousands of other right wing radio and TV talking heads in the supposedly liberal news media.

Wiretaps can start the second it's deemed necessary by the decision-makers in the government...no delay for getting permission. The government has a FULL 72 hours AFTER THE WIRETAP HAS BEGUN to then file the necessary paperwork.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007276.php

This is almost a rubber stamp process....from 1978-2004 thousands of applications for wiretaps were filed, and only 4 were rejected.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007280.php

That makes the question arise, then...if the FISA allows virtually every application for a wiretap, and the wiretap can start 3 days before an application has to be received, then why would the President avoid such a win/win procedure and risk the firestorm that illegal wiretaps would surely engender? Think about it....and the only possible answers would be that the wiretaps are being done on people or groups that the President KNOWS are not fair game. Such as peace activist groups, political parties, websites...you get the picture. And perhaps the technological means to acquire the information might be different than any ever used before, and may be intrusive to the Nth degree..see ECHELON.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html

As far as the other liberal boogieman drivel in your post, I'll chalk that up also to you only listening to right-wing pitchmen. It really won't kill you to open you eyes and your mind to reality sometimes. Power corrupts. The Democrats controlled Congress for many years and became corrupt...they were thrown out in 1994. Since then the Republican movement, which really started building from the ground up in 1968 under Nixon, has taken over and now they've become corrupt. What goes around, comes around.

I'd love to hear your reaction, MX, and also that of others.

[Kooperman]

I would love to hear an answer from the liberals on their plan on fighting terrorism if we are going about it the wrong way.

I forgot to respond to your last point, because I do have a plan. Why don't we go after the terrorists who have proven that they'll come to our soil and kill Americans? Remember Osama Bin Laden? George W. Bush doesn't. He's still out there using his knowledge and advice to help any terrorist group who wants it...and there are plenty of new ones that have sprung up in Iraq AFTER we pulled most of our forces off the Osama trail and invaded Iraq. It seems like it would send a big message to the world if we concentrated on Bin Laden first...but he was just a means to an end for George W.Bush.

[DudeAsInCool]

You're preaching to the converted here Yep, all these idiots needed to do was get approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. There is a section called Internal Security to deal with terrorism threats. I'm told by my DC contacts that the Cheney is the force of darkness behind all this.

It's interesting to see George Bush backtrack these days on Iraq. He actually praised the anti-war folks in the process for having integrity What he won't admit is that they had a plan to invade Iraq before the first election and he used sleight of hand after 911 and Afghanistan to incorporate the plan. I hope he's impeached...