Posted on 12/21/2013 2:41:25 PM PST by Theoria
The Obama administration moved late Friday to prevent a judge in California from ruling on the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance programs authorized during the Bush administration, telling a court that recent disclosures about National Security Agency spying were not enough to undermine its claim that litigating the case would jeopardize state secrets.
In a set of filings in the two long-running cases in the Northern District of California, the government acknowledged facts that it had long held out to be secrets that would put the country at risk if they were to come out in court, including that the N.S.A. started systematically collecting data about Americans’ emails and phone calls in 2001, alongside its program of wiretapping certain calls without warrants.
But the government said that despite recent leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, that made public a fuller scope of the surveillance and data collection programs put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks, sensitive secrets remained at risk in any courtroom discussion of their details — like whether the plaintiffs were targets of intelligence collection or whether particular telecommunications providers like AT&T and Verizon had helped the agency.
“Disclosure of this still-classified information regarding the scope and operational details of N.S.A. intelligence activities implicated by plaintiffs’ allegations could be expected to cause extremely grave damage to the national security of the United States,” wrote the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.
As a result, he said, he was continuing to assert the State Secrets Privilege, which allows the government to block information from being used in court even if that means the case must be dismissed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Now it’s BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH’s fault!
At least, you "weren't intentionally doing it!"
Now you admit you are but that to answer questions about whether the people you are listening to are under "investigation" or not!!!
Liar, under oath lie - to Congress!!!!
Flack, target, ‘nuff said.
Yes, I noticed in scanning through it all the references and pointing to Bush’s administration.
Then I looked up to see the source, and ....
Voila! The NEW YORK TIMES of course!
And they never disclose how they could know all of the warrantless spying started under Bush. I know for a fact that the Bush people analyzed emails and phone records taken to Canada via RIM’s Blackberry smartphones because Canada allows for warrantless monitoring. But this was limited mostly to US government employees and contractors.
But since the end of Bush’s second term the domestic espionage program has been expanded beyond anything like what was started under Bush’s terms, and the rubber stamp warrants that exist are a fig leaf, a joke.
As for the other countries the NSA is doing this to, war is an option.
An executive branch with a searchable database by key word is freakin scary stuff.
Please stop wasting our time with such trivial issues. Nobody cares.
/sarc
” Not Wittingly” - James Clapper, in congressional testimony.
They are not fooling anybody.
OMG. I just scrolled down:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3104158/posts
Clay Aiken’s comments on The Duck Dynasty thing. 54 comments so far. This thread might get a dozen.
We’re doomed. And it’s just what we deserve.
Everybody, all together now, whose fault is it?
Put Clapper under oath in this judges courtroom.
Prevent a judge from ruling? This is standard practice?
Ntwit.
The kittens are wearing red shoes. They are landing at LAX. I repeat..........The kittens are wearing red shoes.
The government has asserted that it can’t participate in the suit due to “state secret.” The judge will rule on that assertion.
Does that mean that the NSA did capture all of our phone calls/email against their will while trying to trap terrorists?
If that's so, what happened with the Boston bomber brothers, why did "we" not learn that they were planning mass murder at the Boston Marathon??????
It’s been five years under Obama. If they wanted to dismantle and stop it, they could and would.
If they could say Bush enacted this Big Brother monitoring to secure their place as the better people, they would have done so years ago. Or they knew it was in place and ramped it up because they want a big (data) file on everyone.
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