Posted on 06/06/2013 1:04:21 PM PDT by Zeta Beam
Responding to the disclosure on Wednesday night of a highly classified court order to a subsidiary of Verizon Communications seeking all of its customers’ communications logs, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Democrat and Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said the order appeared to be a routine reauthorization as part of a broader program that lawmakers have long known about....
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told reporters on Thursday that he did not have a problem with the surveillance program because it was imperative in the war on terror.
“If we don’t do it,” Mr. Graham said, “we’re crazy.”
Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a news conference Thursday that the National Security Agency program helped stop a significant domestic terrorist attack in the United States in the last few years. He did not give more information on the possible nature of the attack.
But some Democrats and Republicans greeted the news of the program with alarm....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Any Republican who provides political cover for Obama like this needs to be slapped around and (for starters) informed that not one penny of appropriations will go to his state or district until he straightens out and flies right.
Rogers, in particular, ought to be ashamed of himself for resorting to that pathetic "I have sooper seekrit evidence that proves I'm right but I can't show it to you" excuse.
So now we know the purpose of that complex the NSA/CIA were building in Utah at the airport.
NYT to low information voters:
Shhhh, it’s all good. See, Obama didn’t do anything wrong. No worries!!
Congressscum claiming surprise at this are liars.
Covered by USA Today in 2006 and 2008 in the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/nsa-spying-verizon-analysis/65963/
Smart policy or not, early indications are that the public is highly P.O.-ed.
And the fact Chambliss just said they all knew about it, just in time for the midterms, is gonna make things real interesting.
These are the people who are alledgedly looking out for our rights.
These are the people who say we don’t need guns to protect us from Government tyranny.
The Government would never do anything wrong.
How many other things are they doing and keeping from us?
Doesn’t anyone recall the data mining programs started under the Clinton administration?
IIRC carnivore, raptor or preditor.
Wrong then, wrong now.
Graham is a moron..this is the same Administration who had the Russians BEGGING them to check out Tsarnaev and they just let him walk..now they claim this is all about National Security, fine, but why tap into 100 million phone lines..what, are ALL of them terrorists too..is my brother a terrorist, he has Verizon..national security my ass this is about turning America into a police state
“...was imperative in the war on terror.”
Hello! Hussein ended the WOT, remember?
I don't keep up with who's on what committee generally, but I found out today that BOTH my senators are on the Senate Committee with No Intelligence.
Collins the alleged Republican (RINO) and King the alleged Independent (listed as democrat).
They both got a screenful from me today, and a lot more often in the future.
I wonder if the IRS and EPA knew anything about this stuff?
Since the lying bastards are not admitting anything, you can assume they are collecting ALL phone records and all text messages.
I’d like to know what probable cause they have for violating my constitutional right to privacy and illegal search and seizure.
they didn’t just steal this, they were engaged in shaking these phone companies down.
More government threats, these companies dare not stand-up or their business is threatened.
I wish they would though.
Well, I guess this one no longer counts as stuff they're "keeping from us" (now that it's leaked and all), but it'll give you an idea of how deep the rot goes:
U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.(emphasis added)The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy....
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