Posted on 05/16/2015 5:00:54 PM PDT by Paid_Russian_Troll
A US appeals court has ruled that the NSA's dragnet of millions of Americans' phone calls is illegal, and Edward Snowden served as the catalyst for the decision.
"Americans first learned about the telephone metadata program that appellants now challenge on June 5, 2013, when the British newspaper The Guardian published a FISC order leaked by former government contractor Edward Snowden," the court noted.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
The federal government and our nation are two entirely different entities. Snowden did nothing to hurt our nation.
Who are the overseas men and women helping when they are overthrowing governments so alqeada types can take over?
Amen, Norm! If America survives Edward Snowden will go down in history as a hero! And he should!
How many were prosecuted and went to federal prison for this blatant betrayal of criminal activity?
Way to go Norm. I don’t care if it’s the State Dept., the IRS or the NSA: once they start lying to us they should be held responsible, and they are not being held responsible.
Snowden held their feet to the fire. Singlehandedly he’s done a lot more than the Democrats’(disturbingly) more-than-loyal opposition.
The GOP establishment and it’s resident FR sycophants can go to he//.
Of course. Trampling Constitutional protections, such as the outdated Fourth Amendment, is the ONLY way to save us from the terrorists.
We can't ever hope to effectively fight terrorism until we eliminate all these troublesome unalienable rights.
Totalitarianism, while not particularly desirable, is the only practical solution to the terrorism problem. I think it was Ben Franklin who said that. </sarc>
You don’t understand the court system either
Snowden revealed the name of our assets overseas.
If you don’t think that hurt our nation, you really can’t grasp these issue.
I liken it to when Jimmy Carter and the Democrats decided to clean up the CIA in the 70s. Just before the Iran hostage crisis he and the Democrats on Capital Hill eviscerated the CIA, and in particular the ones in Iran.
Then when we had the hostage crisis, ole’ Jimmy had not assets on the ground in Iran.
Just because we have a problem with the NSA or the CIA, we can’t just give Congress, President, or some nut-job citizen the power to damage our necessary assets.
You think we only have assets in Libay, Syria, and perhaps Iraq? Really?
I absolutely agree.....
I won’t give Snowden any credit....none.
It’s not like this wasn’t known...it was...he just happened to get the Guardian Journalist to get the brownie points for covering/revealing HIS discovery.
Without the press Snowden wouldn’t have gotten to first base.
If NSA is disbanded, as some on this forum seem to want to see happen, who would keep an ear on the various bad guys in southwest Asia and the Middle East, or Russian armored divisions, the Russian Air and Naval Fleets? And what about China? North Korea? Drug traffickers? Some on this forum seem to think that the Agency has dropped its coverage of real targets and are now covering Big Pharm or Big Insurance.
I find myself having a hard time giving him credit.
Verifying our suspicions was reasoned. Beyond that, he really screwed up.
Some of the things that took place were harmful to the U. S.
Thanks CAWW.
Good job!
I don't advocate it be disbanded. I advocate it be cleaned up.<
1. We have tens of thousand of employees in the NSA. Estimates on WikiPedia are between 30 and 40,000 employees, although it is classified. employee estimate / right column
Out of all these employees working full time to collect data, they couldn't uncover a thing about the 09/11 plot. Then can find out all they want about you and I.
2. They don't seem to understand who to bug. It seems to me foreign nationals from known terrorist nations would be fair game. They're not U. S. Citizens. They are clearly the biggest threat. So why not focus on them? That would make it a lot easier to catch them. Imagine not being able to tell that a number of them were taking flight school. There was no reason for them to do that here on education visas. Those visas cover people in college. A flight school would be an oddity. Wouldn't you think it was worth checking out? 3. The leadership thought nothing of recording our phone calls. The NSA's mandate is generally thought to be overseas. I believe a case could be made to keep tabs on foreign nationals here, but our citizens? Like you said, we need to listen to communications around the world. I'm not against the NSA. Some heads should certainly roll though. This was such an obvious breach of it's mandate, that I can't believe what was done didn't break some criminal codes.
Just remember. The two biggest GOP sycophants on this thread screamed bloody murder how we HAD to vote GOP “No matter what” over Mitt, Jonbon and Mitch.
It’s a pattern folks.
Oops, correction. I got my GOP sycophants mixed up. One of them was on another thread I was posting on along side this one. Still making excuses for Romney and projecting as usual.
But we had their leader, if only for a brief moment, right on this thread ;)
He found a place that made it easier for him to stay alive and harder for his own government to kill him and "keep it clean".
So Norm, it is leftist to point out that:
This man gave US data collection Methods and Means, as well as names of people assigned to various project teams to the Russians, to the Chinese, and to who knows who else?
That because of his actions, the US became effectively blind to threats as data collection Methods and Means built up since WWII were compromised?
That 90 plus percent of what he stole was unrelated to collection of telephone records et al?
The whole affair was carefully orchestrated to raise a storm about personal privacy to be propagated by the complicit media that would obscure the truth of what he actually stole under the direction of his handlers ... and the “FR right” fell for it. It seems that that to some so-called personal privacy of called phone numbers outweighs national security.
This man should be shot on sight, not crucified.
If the NSA or CIA don’t operate under the supervision of Congress and the President, they need to be disbanded.
It’s not quite so black and white as you seem to want it to be.
Exposing what was being done inside our borders to US citizens? Good work, Ed.
Exposing what was going on outside of our borders with intelligence gathering? Is that not aiding and abetting our enemies?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.