Surveillance program eavesdrops on thousands, and nets . . . almost no one

[shira]

Wash Post article

In a big front-page Washington Post article today, it is made abundantly clear that the President's program is a dragnet that collects information on thousands of completely innocent Americans via secret eavesdropping and nets almost nothing in the way of uncovering actual terrorist activity.

Wonder why the Administration ignored FISA? Think it's about "agility" in being able to respond quickly to terrorist threats? Think again:

Valuable information remains valuable even if it comes from one in a thousand intercepts. But government officials and lawyers said the ratio of success to failure matters greatly when eavesdropping subjects are Americans or U.S. visitors with constitutional protection. The minimum legal definition of probable cause, said a government official who has studied the program closely, is that evidence used to support eavesdropping ought to turn out to be "right for one out of every two guys at least." Those who devised the surveillance plan, the official said, "knew they could never meet that standard -- that's why they didn't go through" the court that supervises the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

Do you think that the Administration even cares if what it's doing is legal? Do you think opposing viewpoints within the intelligence community are considered seriously, and that honest, open debate is encouraged? Yeah, right:

Intelligence lawyers said FISA plainly requires a warrant if the government wants real-time access to that information for any one person at a time. But the FISA court, as some lawyers saw it, had no explicit jurisdiction over wholesale collection of records that do not include the content of communications. One high-ranking intelligence official who argued for a more cautious approach said he found himself pushed aside. Awkward silences began to intrude on meetings that discussed the evolving rules.

"I became aware at some point of things I was not being told about," the intelligence official said.

The "threshold" used by the NSA to determine if a communication between someone in the U.S. and an overseas contact is adequate to justify eavesdropping is "pattern analysis" of behavior:

Pattern analysis . . . does not depend on ties to a known suspect. It begins with places terrorists go, such as the Pakistani province of Waziristan, and things they do, such as using disposable cell phones and changing them frequently, which U.S. officials have publicly cited as a challenge for counterterrorism.

"These people don't want to be on the phone too long," said Russell Tice, a former NSA analyst, offering another example.

Analysts build a model of hypothetical terrorist behavior, and computers look for people who fit the model. Among the drawbacks of this method is that nearly all its selection criteria are innocent on their own. There is little precedent, lawyers said, for using such a model as probable cause to get a court-issued warrant for electronic surveillance.

Jeff Jonas, now chief scientist at IBM Entity Analytics, invented a data-mining technology used widely in the private sector and by the government. He sympathizes, he said, with an analyst facing an unknown threat who gathers enormous volumes of data "and says, 'There must be a secret in there.' "

But pattern matching, he argued, will not find it. Techniques that "look at people's behavior to predict terrorist intent," he said, "are so far from reaching the level of accuracy that's necessary that I see them as nothing but civil liberty infringement engines."

Apparently, this is a program that yields almost nothing in the way of actual results:

Bush has said his program covers only overseas calls to or from the United States and stated categorically that "we will not listen inside this country" without a warrant. [Air Force Gen. Michael V.] Hayden [the nation's second-ranking intelligence officer] said the government goes to the intelligence court when an eavesdropping subject becomes important enough to "drill down," as he put it, "to the degree that we need all communications."

Yet a special channel set up for just that purpose four years ago has gone largely unused, according to an authoritative account. Since early 2002, when the presiding judge of the federal intelligence court first learned of Bush's program, he agreed to a system in which prosecutors may apply for a domestic warrant after warrantless eavesdropping on the same person's overseas communications. The annual number of such applications, a source said, has been in the single digits.

And anyone care to guess how many of those "single digits" of suspicious communications that get "drilled down" from the warrantless program and get presented to the FISA court actually lead to real terrorists? Think just maybe we might have heard about even ONE such terrorist, considering how much negative press the surveillance program has received? I'm guessing the actual number of terrorists ensnared is exactly ZERO.

And do you think that once a surveillance has proven to be of no value, the captured email or phone call is flushed from the system? You don't REALLY think the Bush Administration cares about protecting the private information of innocents, do you:

Many features of the surveillance program remain unknown, including what becomes of the non-threatening U.S. e-mails and conversations that the NSA intercepts. Participants, according to a national security lawyer who represents one of them privately, are growing "uncomfortable with the mountain of data they have now begun to accumulate." Spokesmen for the Bush administration declined to say whether any are discarded.

There's a LOT more to this large article. Read and be disgusted.

 

[Malak]

What is wrong with what they are doing? How does their actions have any affect on us as individuals? I can see zero harm being done.

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: Malak
What is wrong with what they are doing? How does their actions have any affect on us as individuals? I can see zero harm being done.

If you are too stupid to see the potentials for abuse here, then there is no point in having a constructive conversation with you.

 

[feralkid]

Originally posted by: Malak
What is wrong with what they are doing? How does their actions have any affect on us as individuals? I can see zero harm being done.

If you had even a remote clue how are republic was set up, you would be deeply concerned.

Keep on fiddling as the flames grow higher.

:disgust:

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: Malak
What is wrong with what they are doing? How does their actions have any affect on us as individuals? I can see zero harm being done.

Let me ask you a question that will perhaps answer yours. How much do you trust the government NOT to abuse its power? The objection to "what they are doing" here isn't that they are spying on people they think are linked to terrorists, it's that they are doing it outside the bounds of legal oversight.

To people like you, this may be no distinction at all. After all, if the NSA is listening to an Osama supporter in Baltimore talk to his terrorist buddies in Pakistan, does it really make a difference whether or not they have judicial approval to do it? Perhaps not in that particular situation, but without any kind of oversight, how do we KNOW what they are doing? Perhaps they are listening to Osama talk to his buddy in the US, but perhaps they are listening to John Kerry talk strategy with Howard Dean. Or maybe they are spying on the ACLU, or the EFF, or anti-war groups.

Silly? Maybe, but all those things HAVE been a problem in the past, abuse of this exact kind of power is not some imaginary thing dreamed up by paranoid nuts with tin-foil hats, it's EXACTLY what happened in the US not too long ago. In fact, that sort of abuse is one of the things that led to the very law Bush is accused of breaking. Sure, maybe all that's going on is listening to terrorists, but as this article suggests, that might not be the case. But even if it is, what worries a lot of us, and should worry you, is that without judicial oversight, we have no idea "what they are doing". You say you don't see anything wrong with it, but since there is no oversight, how exactly can you be sure WHAT'S going on?

 

[Polish3d]

Gotta have checks and balances, no one is above that...

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: Frackal
Gotta have checks and balances, no one is above that...

Agreed, and again, I'm not saying all Bush supporters think this way. But some of the defenses offered in this whole wiretapping incident suggest that the President should be allowed to do whatever he wants as long as he claims it will defend us from terrorists. The point has been made, several times, that attempts to check Bush's power or limit his actions is not so much about checks and balances as it is about people trying to destroy our national security.

 

[zephyrprime]

It comes as no surprise to me that Bush didn't have probable cause to do these illegal wiretaps. If he did, he would have used FISA. Bush puts up a straw man by sawing that "we should be able to tap the phones of people talking to terrorists". Of course we should be able to do that. No body would be against that. Fisa would grant a warrant for that sort of thing in 2 seconds. If the truth were known, I bet what Bush actually did was tap the phone and read the email of anyone communicating with anybody in the middle east. Either that or he was spying on random people of middle eastern descent.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: Astaroth33
If you are too stupid to see the potentials for abuse here, then there is no point in having a constructive conversation with you.

Everyone cries paranoia, but offers no real problems. If they were listening to your conversation with your grandma, would it really matter? Again, I see zero problems here. It offers the possibility, no matter how remote, to help people, and zero ability to hurt.

There are far worse things to be concerned about in any country, things that kill millions every year, yet some of you fight for those people's right to die, and fight against the things the government tries to do to help others.

 

[techs]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: Astaroth33
If you are too stupid to see the potentials for abuse here, then there is no point in having a constructive conversation with you.

Everyone cries paranoia, but offers no real problems. If they were listening to your conversation with your grandma, would it really matter? Again, I see zero problems here. It offers the possibility, no matter how remote, to help people, and zero ability to hurt.

There are far worse things to be concerned about in any country, things that kill millions every year, yet some of you fight for those people's right to die, and fight against the things the government tries to do to help others.

If you can't see how spying on Americans for no reason is a terrible travesty and violation of the Constitution then you really don't have a clue and you deserve the fascist state you dream about.

 

[Rommels]

Originally posted by: Frackal
Gotta have checks and balances, no one is above that...

My safeguard's are in my fellow Americans, there is always somebody who will bring attention to the masses if they think something is wrong.

 

[feralkid]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: Astaroth33
If you are too stupid to see the potentials for abuse here, then there is no point in having a constructive conversation with you.

Everyone cries paranoia, but offers no real problems. If they were listening to your conversation with your grandma, would it really matter? Again, I see zero problems here. It offers the possibility, no matter how remote, to help people, and zero ability to hurt.

There are far worse things to be concerned about in any country, things that kill millions every year, yet some of you fight for those people's right to die, and fight against the things the government tries to do to help others.

So, you didn't even read Rainsford's eloquent response?

You just defaulted back to "I don't see a problem".

Well, then we can only assume you never will, either.

Thanks for giving it zero effort.

:roll:

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: feralkid
So, you didn't even read Rainsford's eloquent response?

You just defaulted back to "I don't see a problem".

Well, then we can only assume you never will, either.

Thanks for giving it zero effort.

:roll:

I did read it, and still didn't see the issue. I referred to it as paranoia, which is exactly what it is. People want to find a problem with it, without finding a good reason to have it. There is no real problem. Like I said, it isn't hurting anyone.

 

[Meuge]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: feralkid
So, you didn't even read Rainsford's eloquent response?

You just defaulted back to "I don't see a problem".

Well, then we can only assume you never will, either.

Thanks for giving it zero effort.
:roll:

There is no real problem. Like I said, it isn't hurting anyone.

Then you won't see a problem in me installing a camera with a mic in every room in your house and having you followed 24/7, and making the information available to 2-3 hundred thousand people. You have nothing to hide after all.

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: feralkid
So, you didn't even read Rainsford's eloquent response?

You just defaulted back to "I don't see a problem".

Well, then we can only assume you never will, either.

Thanks for giving it zero effort.

:roll:

I did read it, and still didn't see the issue. I referred to it as paranoia, which is exactly what it is. People want to find a problem with it, without finding a good reason to have it. There is no real problem. Like I said, it isn't hurting anyone.

You don't even know what they're doing! So, how could you know they aren't hurting anyone?

 

[OrByte]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: feralkid
So, you didn't even read Rainsford's eloquent response?

You just defaulted back to "I don't see a problem".

Well, then we can only assume you never will, either.

Thanks for giving it zero effort.

:roll:

I did read it, and still didn't see the issue. I referred to it as paranoia, which is exactly what it is. People want to find a problem with it, without finding a good reason to have it. There is no real problem. Like I said, it isn't hurting anyone.

can you answer truthfully how old you are?

just curious. thanks!

 

[shira]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: feralkid
So, you didn't even read Rainsford's eloquent response?

You just defaulted back to "I don't see a problem".

Well, then we can only assume you never will, either.

Thanks for giving it zero effort.

:roll:

I did read it, and still didn't see the issue. I referred to it as paranoia, which is exactly what it is. People want to find a problem with it, without finding a good reason to have it. There is no real problem. Like I said, it isn't hurting anyone.

Let me paint a few scenarios.

Mountains of data on completely innocent are being collected and not being discarded. That data might include information on your health, about your recreational use of marijuana, about infidelity in your marriage, about your sexual fantasies, about how you didn't declare on your income tax the $2000 you got when you sold that Civil War sword, . . .

But now that information is in a big storehouse, freely shared among various government agencies. Maybe you get turned down for a government job you applied for. Maybe you get audited by the IRS. Maybe you get stopped by cops and busted for marijuana possession. Maybe someone tells your wife about that affair you had five years ago. And these problems might come about completely by chance, or they might be the result of someone reading your file and starting a chain of actions.

And that information should be PRIVATE. No one has a right to it that you don't choose to tell. As people living in a free country, we have a right to sometimes live our lives as other than boy and girl scouts.

Maybe someone knows someone who knows someone who has seen your "file" and your private information is all of a sudden known by a lot more people than you wanted. Do you think everyone who has access to your private information is completely honorable, and would never DREAM of passing it on to the wrong person? Is your faith in human nature THAT great?

It's impossible to predict all the ways that your private information might get into the wrong hands, or having gotten into the wrong hands, all the ways that the information might cause problems for you. AND THE GOVERNMENT HAS ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT TO HAVE THAT INFORMATION IN THE FIRST PLACE. So the solution is that the government should NOT BE COLLECTING this information without STRONGLY justifying why YOUR SPECIFIC information is essential.

 

[feralkid]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


Good points, shira, but I'm thinking the lights are off at the Malak residence.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: shira

Let me paint a few scenarios.

Mountains of data on completely innocent are being collected and not being discarded. That data might include information on your health, about your recreational use of marijuana, about infidelity in your marriage, about your sexual fantasies, about how you didn't declare on your income tax the $2000 you got when you sold that Civil War sword, . . .

How does that hurt you? Do you think they are going to call your doctor? Your wife? The IRS? Nope. Besides, you do wrong and it will catch up to you, no matter what. You can't hide your life.

But now that information is in a big storehouse, freely shared among various government agencies. Maybe you get turned down for a government job you applied for. Maybe you get audited by the IRS. Maybe you get stopped by cops and busted for marijuana possession. Maybe someone tells your wife about that affair you had five years ago. And these problems might come about completely by chance, or they might be the result of someone reading your file and starting a chain of actions.

Maybe you deserved all that. Why shoudl the government hire you if they know you aren't a law-abiding citizen? Why shouldn't the IRS do their job? Or the cops? If you are breaking the law, why shouldn't you get caught? These points are plain ridiculous. You are asking for the right to break the law and get away with it.

I say give them as much power as they need. The USA needs it more than anyone. The Taliban ran a safer country than the US.

 

[musicc]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: shira

Let me paint a few scenarios.

Mountains of data on completely innocent are being collected and not being discarded. That data might include information on your health, about your recreational use of marijuana, about infidelity in your marriage, about your sexual fantasies, about how you didn't declare on your income tax the $2000 you got when you sold that Civil War sword, . . .

How does that hurt you? Do you think they are going to call your doctor? Your wife? The IRS? Nope. Besides, you do wrong and it will catch up to you, no matter what. You can't hide your life.

But now that information is in a big storehouse, freely shared among various government agencies. Maybe you get turned down for a government job you applied for. Maybe you get audited by the IRS. Maybe you get stopped by cops and busted for marijuana possession. Maybe someone tells your wife about that affair you had five years ago. And these problems might come about completely by chance, or they might be the result of someone reading your file and starting a chain of actions.

Maybe you deserved all that. Why shoudl the government hire you if they know you aren't a law-abiding citizen? Why shouldn't the IRS do their job? Or the cops? If you are breaking the law, why shouldn't you get caught? These points are plain ridiculous. You are asking for the right to break the law and get away with it.

I say give them as much power as they need. The USA needs it more than anyone. The Taliban ran a safer country than the US.

wow, just wow. You must hate America. This is not how America operate.

 

[catnap1972]

Originally posted by: feralkid
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


Good points, shira, but I'm thinking the lights are off at the Malak residence.

Another example of why you shouldn't leave Kool-Aid out for sheep to drink.

Rots your brain and turns you into a babbling mental case

 

[MonkeyK]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: shira

Let me paint a few scenarios.

Mountains of data on completely innocent are being collected and not being discarded. That data might include information on your health, about your recreational use of marijuana, about infidelity in your marriage, about your sexual fantasies, about how you didn't declare on your income tax the $2000 you got when you sold that Civil War sword, . . .

How does that hurt you? Do you think they are going to call your doctor? Your wife? The IRS? Nope. Besides, you do wrong and it will catch up to you, no matter what. You can't hide your life.

But now that information is in a big storehouse, freely shared among various government agencies. Maybe you get turned down for a government job you applied for. Maybe you get audited by the IRS. Maybe you get stopped by cops and busted for marijuana possession. Maybe someone tells your wife about that affair you had five years ago. And these problems might come about completely by chance, or they might be the result of someone reading your file and starting a chain of actions.

Maybe you deserved all that. Why shoudl the government hire you if they know you aren't a law-abiding citizen? Why shouldn't the IRS do their job? Or the cops? If you are breaking the law, why shouldn't you get caught? These points are plain ridiculous. You are asking for the right to break the law and get away with it.

I say give them as much power as they need. The USA needs it more than anyone. The Taliban ran a safer country than the US.

Somehow, I think we live in different countries. I live in America, Land of the Free.
In my country it is nobody's business what I do in private (as long as I am not hurting anyone). Even if someone else knowing doesn't directly affect me, it's still not their business.

 

[techs]

I heard it put best this way.
"The secret wiretapping did save lives. Making the FBI investigate dozens of completely bogus leads took time out from real and important investigations.
So the secret wiretapping did save lives, AL-AQAEDA LIVES."

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: MonkeyK
Somehow, I think we live in different countries. I live in America, Land of the Free.
In my country it is nobody's business what I do in private (as long as I am not hurting anyone). Even if someone else knowing doesn't directly affect me, it's still not their business.

Why have a government if they can't do their job? The point to a government is that you aren't free to do anything you want. That's called anarchy. They are here to govern us, to show us what we can and can't do, and why. The why has been thrown out the window in the last hundred years, but that doesn't mean we just quit. If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have zero to worry about. I find it very sad and disturbing that so many people are afraid of what might happen if someone knew what they did in private.

It's really too bad too, since someone is already watching you.

 

[Darkhawk28]

Originally posted by: Malak

Originally posted by: MonkeyK
Somehow, I think we live in different countries. I live in America, Land of the Free.
In my country it is nobody's business what I do in private (as long as I am not hurting anyone). Even if someone else knowing doesn't directly affect me, it's still not their business.

Why have a government if they can't do their job? The point to a government is that you aren't free to do anything you want. That's called anarchy. They are here to govern us, to show us what we can and can't do, and why. The why has been thrown out the window in the last hundred years, but that doesn't mean we just quit. If you aren't doing anything wrong, you have zero to worry about. I find it very sad and disturbing that so many people are afraid of what might happen if someone knew what they did in private.

It's really too bad too, since someone is already watching you.

Frankly, you are more terrorizing than Al Qaeda or OBL could ever be. You try to instill fear into those that cherish liberty, freedom and the rule of law. Frankly, you're a coward.