In this, Obama has now made the U. S. and its allies infinitely less safe—assisted in his mission by Rand & Co. Yes, we can all sleep easier now. Like hell we can.
The door to complete, ultra privacy slammed shut on 9/11. It will never open the same again despite the misguided and mangled attempts such as the present one.
The real rejoicing over this lethal action comes from Islamoterrorists who see once again that America is incapable of coming together, overcoming divisive individualism and posturing, to defend itself. They will attribute it all to Allah.
The collection of metadata to find connections between terrorists phones is hardly the reading of emails as the shouting claims. Will someone please explain just how terrorists can be identified by perpetually going to a court to seek permission to use the revamped program to somehow—somehow—identify yet unidentified millions of potential terrorists. How do you find a needle hidden in a haystack when you must first have permission to look for it by informing a judge or judges exactly where it is located?
In this day and age how would one call blatant acts against the law and the Constitution? And to call protest of that absurd?
Despite being a government agency with a host of patriotic and law abiding personnel, they are still commanded by people of the Administration’s choosing. Commanded by people chosen by the same President that put IRS’ Koskinen in charge and allow operatives like Lois Lerner to fester. Look at DoJ - Fast and Furious, Eric “My People Holder”. Look at the FBI, DHS under Napolitano, look at DHS that has told the courts they will obey Obama’s orders instead of law when it comes to handling illegals.
There have been multiple scandals regarding NSA - they are highly incensed that Snowden brought even some of that to light.
I remember one of the NSA functionaries before Congress talking about “the program” and describing it as collecting just data (harmless, really - just ‘meta’ data) where they could just capture all that and IF they needed to, later on and go back and sift for more ‘detail’. What detail? The bits in between the metadata they already have? The actual call? You then see stories about new NSA and other IC works and efforts for even more advanced automated keywording and voice recognition - keywording metadata headers? Yeah. They didn’t build that megamemory Death Star out in Utah for just ‘metadata’.
They already have the capability to capture direct vendor feeds with all the metadata, in some cases they’ve coerced the vendors to supply their own streams and data so the NSA doesn’t have to go that added step to actually capture it somewhere else.
NSA has long been capable of capturing RF emissions from all over the world - they do it here, but that’s ‘just for foreigners, huh?’....in fact there is no way for them to know unless they’ve captured it all in the first place.
With regard to expectations of [ultra] privacy. No one said ‘ultra’. The Constitution just talks about certain basic rights that citizens should be protected from government infringement. To expect that your phone conversation and your comings and goings as a citizen under it not be stored and examined isn’t ‘ultra’. Further, to wrap today’s administration and underlings in the flag of 9/11 is an excuse. Some of that stuff it spawned is just plain wrong. Just like FDR’s internment program for Nisei was wrong. Just like the DHS (as it operates today) and its underling TSA is wrong. Just like coercing local gun vendors to sell weapons to obviously shady characters to spirit them across the border in F&F is wrong.
I don’t rejoice in it. I am saddened that the one true purpose for it was so badly abused and that it may prevent legitimate efforts to proactively prevent more terror.
I have this comment. All of this has worked well hasn’t it? We’ve caught so many acts before they were committed. Shoebomber was one - Underwearbomber was one? Boston was one, right? There are others, too - and they always said “we were aware of them, but.....”
We heard how those two nuts in Texas were under surveillance at some point....we even heard where the FBI or somebody called authorities several hours before with an alert. Before an event that was sponsoring contest drawings of Mohammed.....how difficult is that to figure out something might happen. Show me the time-relevant intel about the plans those two had and I’ll believe it.
My expectations for [ultra] privacy aren’t wild stretches of tortured legalese, interpretations, secrecy and legislation enacted in haste after a heinous act. They are spawned from the founding documents of this country. Documents, bruised, tortured, misinterpreted, and mistreated as they are whose words provide us with some pretty simple and basic affirmations of our rights. To expect those rights whose instantiation and continuance was bought at such dear price is not absurd.