Posted on 05/11/2006 7:27:32 AM PDT by CrawDaddyCA
WASHINGTON The government is secretly collecting records of ordinary Americans' phone calls in an effort to build a database of every call made within the country, it was reported Thursday.
AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth telephone companies began turning over records of tens of millions of their customers' phone calls to the National Security Agency program shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said USA Today, citing anonymous sources it said had direct knowledge of the arrangement.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The cost of immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was a NET (after subtracting taxes immigrants pay) $70 BILLION a year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University].
The terrorists don't cost us that much domestically, they just kill us, but even so, we better not dare monitor phone logs that might finger some of the islamic nazis before they murder a bunch of people. I see crazy people, and they oppose this NSA program.
IOW the NSA is taking 50 year old technology and reconstructing phone trees.
duh. connecting the dots.
This is a hit piece.
The leaker AND THE REPORTER should be arrested.
Heh heh. :)
"BIG TIME SO WHAT???" I'm not calling anyone that I wouldn't admit to publicly, just like I'm not saying anything to anyone I call that I wouldn't admit to publicly. While I agree with your direction in a general manner, you are oversimplifying the issue by assuming that only criminals have a reason for phone privacy. I make many calls that require secrecy. Every hear of industrial espionage? I used to be part of executive management for a public company and I can assure you that phone calls to directors being recorded and leaked could and would have huge ramifications in the market. Now concerning this article, phone calls are not being recorded only the phone numbers and it is not "reasonable to believe" that a record of the numbers dialed is private. The courts have determined time after time that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy to your phone calls, hence, warrants are required to tap and record them, but not access to phone logs. This article is simply the left trying to demagogue the issue of the Terrorist Surveillance Program into something else. They already know the public is in favor of the TSP big time and are losing the argument in spades because it actually involves NON-DOMESTIC phone calls, so they are desperately trying to change the issue to domestic before the senate confirmation hearing on General Hayden. |
How convenient that his comes out right before Hayden goes in front of Congress for his confirmation hearings.
Someone did this to screw him over...guaranteed.
That would be the ONE case that I could see it being a problem, and yours is the only argument that holds any water. Confidential conversations of a corporate nature, i.e.; industrial espionage, like you mentioned, is probably the only valid instance where there would be a problem. But like pointed out, in daring to state the facts that the article tries to ignore, actual phone calls aren't recorded, it's just phone logs that are being recorded. Like you said, this is just a bunch of libs grasping at straws. It's all so stupid because the overwhelming majority of Americans do not oppose programs like this or the NSA wiretap program, which was General Hayden's brainchild, which frankly makes me like him even more as DCI. And from what I've heard from people who know him, if libs think they had it rough while Goss was DCI, they're going to slit their wrists when Hayden gets in there and starts looking for heads to whack off.
If someone leaked this to try and block Hayden's confirmation as DCI then it further illustrates how out of touch they are with real America, because 7 of 10 Americans don't mind this sort of thing, and if this is the democrats reason for opposing his nomination, there will be more people calling from democrat States telling their Senators "you better confirm this guy" then there will be people calling from Republican States telling their Senators "you better sink this guy". Most Americans have no problem with this kind of program, and the media knows it which is why largely they have laid off the NSA wiretapping thing because it's been made clear most Americans have no problem with it, as shown by the lib media's own polls, which couldn't gin up much opposition to the program.
Thanks :)), on second thought... just don't tell my wife!!...:) or....well... she can be... :)
ROFLMAO!!!
Looks like the MSM just got caught (again) trying to deceive the American Public. (And, yes, that includes FoxNews). YahooNews is the only place I saw where the word "records" was included after "phone call" in the story title.
How convenient that his comes out right before Hayden goes in front of Congress for his confirmation hearings. Someone did this to screw him over...guaranteed. That may be true, but in my opinion the Democrats know that someone, Feingold for sure and even Republicans will bring up the Terrorist Surveillance Program during the General Hayden hearings. They also know that they will be beaten severely over this issue as the American public is in favor of this program by 3:1 or maybe it's 4:1 (I don't remember). This gives them a diversion or more properly a segue into something that sounds icky at least and illegal at best. I'd bet most people think their phone logs are private when they simply are not. We need to keep in mind that the vast majority of the American public doesn't delve deeply into an issue like this. They simply remember in November that something that sounds like 1984 was going on back in May. I don't think it's designed to derail Hayden, it's designed to give them an issue concerning privacy. They have milked the abortion "privacy" issue to the point it doesn't work for them anymore and they lost their first attempt at replacing that issue with the NSA Spying bull-o-knee. This is their second attempt and if Tony Snow makes a big deal out of this in the W/H press briefing today, the administration can smack this one out of the ballpark quickly. |
.....first.....
.....it is as "non-invasive" as the feds sitting outside your house and registering everyone entering and leaving without having any probable cause to do so.....
.....that aint cost effective, if they were willing to pay the cost,they'd have probable cause.....
.....running a bunch of numbers through a computer is cost effective.....
.....people would start to talk if the feds were outside my home(lol).....
.....they got everybody's phone records.....
Incorrect. leeway is given, but short of martial law being declared, the law still applies.
.....what law?.....
.....you mean to tell me that somewhere out there.....
.....some congresscritter thought that one day.....
.....a big evil gov dept would want to collect phone records to look into patterns that might give clues about terrorist.....
.....and.....
.....that somebody with nothing else to do except worry about hypothetical losses of liberty might gripe.....
.....so.....
.....they wrote a law?.....
If Pres Bush worked this hard to monitor the activities of illegal aliens then we would all be in a lot better shape.
.....terrorist.....
.....they use the libertarian "don't violate my privacy" cry to infiltrate our country and plan bad things.....
.....illegal aliens.....
.....they use the leftist "this is America, we all have entitlements" cry to hang out and use up our resources.....
.....and here we are.....
People who quote the Founding Fathers need to read some biographies and more history. They might be surprised to find out how their heros REALLY felt and acted.
Oh, wait...how many of those soft-target attacks took place before 9/11 in the US?
None?
Well, it must have been because the muzzies were our best chums until the eeeeeevil chimp made them hate us with that whole useless Iraq invasion thing...right?
Uh-huh, got it. How about you go back to your X-Box and leave the thinking to the adults.
My gawd, where do you pinheads come from??
No thanks, Steve. Tigers are not a problem for most of us. Terrorism is. And thanks to President Bush, 9/11 has not been repeated--and the fight against them has not taken place in the United States.
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