Sen. Bernie Sanders asked the National Security Agency (NSA) a question that one would have thought would be easy to answer: has the NSA spied on Congress with its massive surveillance programs? The answer that came back was chilling in what it did not say. The NSA would only assure Sanders that it has “the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons.” That must be a bit unnerving for Congress since it has allowed the NSA to strip citizens of the most basic privacy protections.
Sanders did not leave much room for wiggling by defining “spying” as “gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or e-mails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business.”
The agency responded to Sanders with the assurance of “NSA’s authorities to collect signals intelligence data include procedures that protect the privacy of U.S. persons. Such protections are built into and cut across the entire process. Members of Congress have the same privacy protections as all U.S. persons.”
Attorney General Eric Holder also deflected answering the same question at a congressional hearing last summer.
We could ask again how we came to this moment. There was a time when the failure to answer this question in the negative would have led to furious hearings and bipartisan investigations. However, once again, liberals and Democrats are largely silent — choosing personality over principle. It is yet another example of how Obama has divided the civil liberties movement in the United States.
In the meantime, the highly controversial secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (that is widely viewed as a rubber stamp for the intelligence community) renewed its approval of the National Security Agency’s telephone-records program on Friday — giving the government a new three-month window to collect data on all Americans’ phone calls. That is the 36th time the program has been approved by the FISA, which allows for no opposing counsel or public access to the court. Under the FISA law, the standard guarantees surveillance orders with virtually no articulated suspicion in comparison to the standards under the Fourth Amendment.
Source: CNN
Why does Ron Wyden protect the liars he courts?
Probably because big dog Difi tells him too… IMO.
There is no other reasoning I can come up with.
If there was ever a time when the French Revolution looked good…
The Clapper “Lie,” and the Senate Intelligence Committee
http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2014/01/clapper-ssci/
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has been widely criticized for making a false statement at a March 2013 hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee. What has gone unremarked, however, is the fact that the Committee permitted that statement to stand uncorrected.
I wish Congress would legalize their arrests…
What is an”oversight committee” that does nothing when lead down the wrong path by lies BUT a panel of “Yes men”?
Good thing Clapper wasn’t an overpaid MLB star lying under Oath…
… Because we all know that kind of lying is illegal.
Secret Courts deciding secret laws used against the people…
… THATS NOT A DEMOCRACY!
Kraaken, In the 70’s a lot of history teachers started teaching to hate America, so they were ahead of the curve, as it were.
Kraaken, In the 70’s a lot of history teachers started teaching to hate America, so they were ahead of the curve.
When I was in grade school and high school, we were taught to hate the Soviet Union and that we were the greatest and most free country on Earth. Looks to me like we’ve become what we were taught to hate and fear.
Well NSA… You know where your power starts…. And you’ll soon know where it ends….
I still swear that you could have easily been George Washington or Benjamin Franklin in another life.
How did we get here?
After 9-11, We allowed Bush and Cheney to get away with torture. That makes We complicit.
The rest is history.
This administration has done more to destroy civil liberties than all others put together.
And who lost in the secret court? Who was a party, a participant, besides NSA? So, no one knows what went down and no other party was a party and hence no chance of appeal to the Supreme Court. This is what we prosecuted the Krauts for at The Judges Trial at Nuremberg. Google The Judges Trial folks. We are in the same boat as the Nazi Party. No skipper. Storm coming. Manned by Storm Troopers, the SS. Heil Hitler.
No means yes.
This prez set up a Transparency Committee after winning election in 2008. They just had their first public hearing last week. Nixon/Orwell hybrid.
Yeah but the lawyer (chief counsel) for the military NSA said it is ok.
And a court said it is ok.
And the mainframe media said it was ok.
Don’t worry, be happy.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9vr1n7c3rAI/UslPVmEWLuI/AAAAAAAAFI0/Qh0WoC89CA8/s640/attention-surveillance.png
…So much for feeling proud to be an American citizen.
It it is held in secret, it is not a court. It may be a tribunal of some sort but it sure isn’t an American court. As long a lying to congress is ok if you are Mr. clapper or similar, Congress will continue to allow our rights to be stripped away. Congress is the only entity that can stop this slide into a surveillance state where humans have no rights.
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