NSA documents released by Edward Snowden have revealed years of false statements by the government, the capture of calls and emails from every citizen, the monitoring of tens of millions of people globally, the surveillance of world leaders including close allies, and the perjury by National Intelligence Director James Clapper. It has caused the Obama Administration — after denials of violations — to admit violations of U.S. laws and abuse of surveillance powers. Now General Keith Alexander, NSA director, says enough. We simply cannot stand any more disclosures of wrongdoing so Alexander wants to see actions taken against the media to prevent further disclosures.
The NSA surveillance has triggered the greatest diplomatic crisis in decades. The Obama Administration is promising reforms and investigations as if these were acts committed by some alien power. Alexander however has returned to the root of the problem in his view — and that of many politicians. It is the media. They are the ones who are continuing to disclose abuses. Stop the media, stop the disclosures. Stop the disclosures, stop the questions. It is so simple and Alexander cannot understand why we cannot come up with a way to shut the media up. He raised the question in an interview with one of the few remaining media sites viewed as friendly, the Defense Department’s own “Armed With Science” blog:
“I think it’s wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000 – whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these – you know it just doesn’t make sense . . .We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don’t know how to do that. That’s more of the courts and the policy-makers but, from my perspective, it’s wrong to allow this to go on.”
Alexander’s hostility to the free press is so distortive that he actually views the press as “selling” secrets by informing the public of surveillance abuses by his agency. This would of course mean that the Pentagon Papers were “sold” by the press and should have also been stopped.
Just to be clear, the “wrong” can cannot be allowed to go on is the exercise of a free press. Just as other civil liberties have been discarded by the Obama Administration in the name of fighting terrorism, it is now time to curtail the free press — just another demonstration of loyalty demanded from citizens by their government.
Yikes!
paraphrasing Rogers: “If you don’t have orders saying don’t do it, then do it!” Seems like the NSA motto.
You said it, not me.
@Gene H. – No I’m BUTTHEAD not Beavis 😆
@Rafflaw – No I did not say that. I was just saying that there is an ongoing debate on whether or not Hitler used those 3 Communists to do it. I’m not saying Hitler didn’t. I personally think he did orchestrate a false flag op as in the long run it did helped Hitler. I don’t believe in coincidences too much.
Gene H. and Rafflaw – sometimes the price of freedom has a heavy cost. Yes, whatever part of the Constitution you feel the NSA has violated may have to be sacrificed (temporarily) to protect our old freedoms. I know that is bad and not in the spirit of the founding father’s intent. But I feel that they would reconsider this “violation” as you two are saying in light of the threats we are facing today. I know you guys are thinking that al-Qaida is a low threat to USA as they don’t have enough resources to seriously threaten CONNUS (Continental USA).
But if you listen to Keith Alexander and his replacement VADM Rogers we are facing a previously UNKNOWN threat that is far more devastating then some desert-terrorists. Cyber-warfare is far more threatening to US because we depend on computers too much.
However, the cyber-warriors are NOT from al-Qaida. They are from other COUNTRIES (OLD ENEMIES) and NEW enemies we the people have not been briefed on yet. But don’t be shocked when you find out they are WHOLLY domestic and not foreign. I call the domestics the “rowdy friends” because they are being funded by very rich Americans with allegiances for OTHER things other than USA.
And no this is not Conspiracy Theory. Talk to your friends in low & high places for confirmation of this. I support adhering to the Constitution when it is plausible to do so. During this “new” threat I think it may have to be side-lined temporarily only at times. The Patriot Act kinda’ does that doesn’t it?
“The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.” – Benjamin Franklin.
This is the new guy Mr. Obama is thinking of replacing Keith Alexander as DIRNSA with VADM Mike Rogers (no not the Congressman of the same name also involved in this NSA debacle):
sonofthunder,
Are you really trying to claim that the Nazi’s didn’t start the Reichstag fire? And somehow Alexander’s trampling of the Constitution is ok because he was just trying to help??? Wow.
Well, Beavis, you’ve assured us that the NSA isn’t and wouldn’t misuse information, so I reckon’ that ought to be good enough.
🙄
Does apologizing for the NSA trampling the Constitution ever leave a bad taste in your mouth or is it just one of those things you get used to?
Don’t know what happened but trying again:
@Blouise – Here’s some of my best pick-up lines. I’m smooth huh? 😆
@Blouise – Here’s some of my best pick-up lines. I’m smooth huh? 😆
@anonymously posted – That FBI guy was right. Your privacy hasn’t been VIOLATED unless you suffer some physical or financial damage from it. Ostensibly you can only ALLEGE that your personal privacy has been violated by the NSA as you have no idea if your metadata or multimedia content is sitting in those YOTTA-bytes over in Bluffdale Utah at the Bumblehive (aka NSA data center). I assure you that most of those Yotta-bytes are used up on people like Ayman al-Zawahiri and Angela Merkel.
Why Angela? Hello McFly! Are you listening? Because she’s talking to all the WRONG people!!! Wrong people? Who’s that? Oh I don’t know maybe somebody like Zawahiri, Putin, Putin’s enemies, our enemies, or even George HW Bush (one of our UNKNOWN true internal-enemies?). Or maybe she used the word “bomb” or “terrorists” once too many times. Who knows. I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation why.
Go fill out an application to the NSA and get promoted through the ranks so you can get your TS Clearance to see why. Or get elected a US Senator and bribe your way onto the Intelligence Oversight Committee and maybe the Johnny Tightlips at NSA or CIA will let you into their cloak & dagger world. But in the meantime your meme is getting very tired because you just don’t have a real need to know ANYTHING right now. Unless your actually working for the “rowdy friends” hoping to get a bone tossed your way by another big-mouthed Snowden character.
Ed better start shutting up before Putin kicks him back to the wolves. If “they” get totally fed up then they’ll just have one of their NSA-CSS goon contractors go into Moscow and see if they have a possible solution to his terminal logorrhoea. Case in point: The CIA did it and not that long ago (2-1/2 years ago) – Google “Raymond Allen Davis incident”.
@ANONYMOUSLY POSTED – If Julius Caesar had a NSA and a PRISM system maybe he wouldn’t have been stabbed to death by his own Senators who called themselves “Liberators”. Hmmmm… sound familiar?
@Barking Dog – The Riechstag Fire was started by 3 Commies part of “Comintern”. It was debatable if it was actually a NAZI “false flag operation” by Adolf Hitler. In the end it did help him but he was already Chancellor (like Angela Merkel) for about a month. And some of the Nuremberg defendants were traitors to Hitler as some of them tried to assassinate him, that is the ones Hitler didn’t find and execute.
Kieth Alexander is no traitor. He was only trying to protect our country in a drastic way. He has resigned now. And now we will have Admiral Rogers. What did the Joker in Batman say: “Wait’ll they get a load of me!”
Who shaved their head? Not Kieth… I like totally-bald versus comb-overs like Donald Trump and other middle-aged men in denial. Here’s Kieth at the Black Hat Convention 2013. He handles hecklers very well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKOPPQD9VrM
Just remember the Senator who busted up the CIA (Frank Church) warned us about this back in the 1970’s when he learned about what the NSA was doing even back then. The NSA was established to deal with a particular threat. That threat has evolved into Frankenstein’s monster. But WE THE PEOPLE are not kept in the loop for a very good reason… because SOME of us ARE the problem! Like the “rowdy friends” I mentioned before? They are US citizens too. But they are the REAL problem not people with rags tied around their heads hiding in caves. Our TRUE enemies are among US…
Good book by Martha Stout – “The Sociopath Next Door” – check out the link. Notice the bullet list at the bottom. See if you can correlate them to the “rowdy friends” or the devils you do know on TV.
Poor guy can’t get a break even after he tendered his resignation 2 weeks ago. You seem to have a “thing” about Keith. Did he piss you off in a past life? 😎
The reason why I could not attend a “chicken-dinner” with you is because besides all of my plethora of other social/personality faults, I tend to be a knock-off of Bill Clinton when it comes to fraternizing with the opposite gender. I have the looks of Daniel Craig but the moral turpitude of POTUS-42. We have too much in common…
(Ain’t I such a flirt! – Daffy Duck) 😎
I love the Buckeye State too… that’s where all my peeps are too.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-schiff-nsa-surveillance-phone-metadata–20131031,0,4107687.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Fopinion%2Fcommentary+%28L.A.+Times+-+Commentary%29&utm_content=Netvibes#axzz2jIGiVkM3
An NSA fix
The NSA metadata program as it’s now structured must end — but it could be reconfigured.
By Adam B. Schiff
October 31, 2013
Excerpt:
As for the effectiveness of the program, the evidence that it has made us safer is limited. The Obama administration cites about a dozen cases in which the database was consulted in an investigation. Although many of the details of these cases remain classified, evidence that the metadata program was an integral part of the success of each of these investigations — or even most of them — is far from clear. Instead, it appears that the utility of the metadata program has been conflated with the success of other collection efforts.
Finally, on the third test of whether the program has been structured to minimize unnecessary intrusion on our privacy, the NSA program plainly fails. Rather than a narrowly tailored effort that reduces the potential for abuse or violations of privacy, the bulk collection regime is vast, touching billions of phone calls made in the United States over the last five years.
This is all the more troubling because there are other less intrusive ways to structure the program. I have urged the administration — privately at first, then publicly — to reconfigure the NSA effort so that the call records remain with the telephone companies that already hold them for business purposes. Under this model, the government could meet its national security needs by asking the companies to run a number once it had been connected to a suspected terrorist plot. The government would neither collect nor retain the phone records.
At the Tuesday hearing, NSA Director Keith Alexander acknowledged that such a restructuring is technically feasible provided the phone companies maintain the data long enough and in an accessible format. Such a system might be less efficient for the NSA, but it could nonetheless provide quick and timely results. And Americans have the right to expect that intelligence-gathering programs are judged on more than efficiency alone. After all, if efficiency were the only priority, there would be no need for a 4th Amendment.
The bulk collection of America’s telephone records must stop. The administration and the NSA would be wise to restructure it in a way that protects our privacy. If they fail to act, it’s likely that Congress — where legislation already has been introduced — or the courts will do it for them.
Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) is a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Video of Rogers / Vladeck exchange:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131029/18020225059/mike-rogers-you-cant-have-your-privacy-violated-if-you-dont-know-about-it.shtml
On the Rogers/Vladeck exchange:
At first I was astounded about this, but after listening to the video of the exchange, I think they were just focused on different contexts. Rogers was focused on complaints and litigation, so when he says you can’t have your privacy violated, I think he meant you can’t have a complaint about such violation unless you know it has been violated. Maybe I am giving him too much benefit of the doubt here, but that’s how it seemed to me.
It would be worrisome that the chair of the intelligence committee would think privacy rights are not important if successfully done in secret. Would like to hear a response from Rogers about this exchange. If he truly does not respect privacy issues, he should not chair the intelligence committee.
“The United States obsession with Al Qaeda is doing more damage to the nation than the terrorist group itself.” -David Rohde, Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/opinion/kristof-the-spies-who-loved-to-damage-our-reputation.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0 (The Spies Who Loved to Damage Our Reputation by Nicholas D. Kristof)
rafflaw, And here’s another twist:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/top-house-republican-says
GOPer: Trust us on that spying thing
10/31/13 08:30 AM
By Adam Serwer
When you don’t know the government does it, it’s not illegal.
That’s the argument Republican House intelligence committee chair Mike Rogers of Michigan tried to make in an exchange with American University law professor Steve Vladeck during Tuesday’s hearing on the National Security Agency. In an exchange first flagged by Techdirt, Rogers, a former FBI agent, told Vladeck, “You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.” As long as NSA surveillance is secret then, no one’s privacy is being infringed upon. Here’s the exchange:
Rogers: I would argue the fact that we haven’t had any complaints come forward with any specificity arguing that their privacy has been violated, clearly indicates, in 10 years, clearly indicates that something must be doing right. Somebody must be doing something exactly right.
Vladeck: But who would be complaining?
Rogers: Somebody who’s privacy was violated. You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.
Vladeck: I disagree with that. If a tree falls in the forest, it makes a noise whether you’re there to see it or not.
Rogers (astounded): Well that’s a new interesting standard in the law. We’re going to have this conversation… but we’re going to have wine, because that’s going to get a lot more interesting…
The Fourth Amendment protects the right of “the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” There’s no secrecy clause that states the people’s rights are void if the government can violate them without getting caught.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that warrantlessly wiretapping Charles Katz, who was using a public phone booth to facilitate his illegal gambling business, violated his Fourth Amendment right to privacy. The high court noted that the Fourth Amendment protects “people,” not people’s perception of whether or not their privacy has been violated. It’s certainly true that one has to know their privacy has been violated in order to argue that in court, but that’s not the same thing. Rogers may not be up on the latest news from February, when the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to the FISA Amendments Act filed in 2008 on the basis that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove they’d been spied because the law is secret.
Rogers’ view is closer to that of infamous FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who felt he could blatantly violate the Constitution as long as he kept the bureau’s surreptitious activities a secret. Worried yet? As chair of the intelligence committee, Rogers is the top House official responsible for making sure the intellience community doesn’t cross the line.
Maybe Alexander is not a traitor but something else. If one looks at the War Crime Trials at Nuremburg conducted by the allies after WWII and examine the charges against the defendants one will see that none of them were charged with being traitors against their nation state of Germany. They were worse. The committed crimes against humanity. These crimes were across border crimes as well. I am not accusing this Alexander guy or Clapper of creating a Holocaust but I am wondering if they know who set the Reichstag Fire back in 1933 or who knocked down the Twin Towers in 2001.
Inquiring minds want to know. Oh, and never trust some schmuck who shaves his head when he is going bald.
Alexander is a traitor. So is Clapper. Obama and Bush etc etc.
It is time for a Revolution
ap,
The legislation made stealing legal.