Posted on 05/14/2006 6:25:15 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Here's an example of what good they are:
Bin Laden called UK 260 times
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/652327/posts
And there was a thread here a couple of days ago about 300 attacks here in the U.S. that were stopped because of it.
That's more than enough evidence for me to realize it's not only a good thing ....it's needed to keep us safe from another 9/11.
You can't just walk out of the store and start using them. They have to be activated by giving personal information to the telephone company first. My husband is always losing his so a TracFone is the only kind he gets now.
IN DEFENSE OF THE NSA>br> By Michelle Malkin · May 12, 2006 06:49 PM
***scroll for updates...Verizon hit with $5 billion lawsuit...more on the lawyers suing Verizon...Heather Mac Donald: Information please***
Thanks.
Mark STeyn wrote a great article too:
To connect the dots, you have to see the dots (Steyn)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1631960/posts
that's before they knew about the level of intercepts being done.
"Purchase a TracFone Wireless Phone available at over 60,000 retailers nationwide. TracFone comes with everything you need to get started. The TracFone box includes a wireless phone, battery and charger. It also includes 60 days of active wireless service and 10 minutes of starter airtime. Your TracFone can be activated online or by calling 1-800-867-7183."
show me anywhere in the process where you have to provide solid ID to start using the phone. you activate by entering the ESN and airtime code into their website.
Q: How is this different from what we knew before?
A series of disclosures, starting with The New York Times' report in December, outlined how the NSA conducted surreptitious electronic surveillance of phone calls and e-mail traffic when one party was outside the United States.
The president and other members of his administration have stuck to that claim--saying that domestic phone calls were not part of the dragnet. In January, for instance, Bush assured Americans that "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."
The latest revelation is different. It says the scope of the NSA's efforts is far broader than listening in on a few hundred conversations. Instead, the vast majority of Americans have probably had information on their phone calls turned over. (Another difference is that the contents of the conversations was not divulged, at least as far as we know.)
+++++++
CNET should have read the USA Today article. This is a five months old story, as even USA Today admitted in the 39th paragraph of their article:
"In December, The New York Times revealed that Bush had authorized the NSA to wiretap, without warrants, international phone calls and e-mails that travel to or from the USA. The following month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T. The lawsuit accuses the company of helping the NSA spy on U.S. phone customers."
This is nothing but an attempt to recycle an old (non) story in order to smear Hayden and the NSA.
It was ever thus.
"As for the data mining, Jim Harper of the free-market Cato Institute says it violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches. Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department prosecutor who takes a more permissive view of police power, says his tentative conclusion is that it does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment but the phone companies likely violated the Stored Communications Act."
BS on both counts.
Not even close.
CNET is purposefully posting disinformation.
TIA (aka Topsail) unveiled: the real scope of the NSA's domestic spying program (Alarmist piece )
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I've always had to provide personal information to activate my Tracfone. It's true that you only need to provide the SN and code to add minutes, but that's after you have already registered the phone to your name, address, landline, and credit card #.
I suppose you could lie about all of that, but you could lie on any cell phone purchase.
via their website - how secure is that? fake name, temporary email address.
no credit check.
there is also no age limit. how can you tell me you need a credit card # to use it, when a 10 year old can get a tracfone. know any 10 year olds with a credit card?
No we never activate via their website. We use our house phone and we give our real names and our real address as we're not in the habit of lying.
Do you know a 10 year old who has bought a TracFone on their own? I know more than several parents who bought TracFones for their teens. It's a way to control the amount they spend on the phones.
It's possible that the first 20 mins. or so could be used without a credit card #. I didn't try that. But after that, a credit card is needed. And I don't know many 10 yr olds who don't have a parent who has one.
you can buy the refill cards for cash also, at many retailers.
A friend of mine has a prepaid cell phone. I know it's not associated with a credit card, because he doesn't have a credit card (he messed up his credit a while back). Nor does he have a land line in his name. I'll have to ask him the details
And he chooses to have the name that appears on caller ID not be his real name
Yes, but you still have to call and activate the card for the previously registered phone.
Yes, do ask him what he had to use to get the phone activated. I probably gave more than the minimum info, but they do ask for id.
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