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Time to Dial Up Some Healthy Skepticism
Townhall.com ^ | June 7, 2013 | Jonah Goldberg

Posted on 06/07/2013 4:54:40 AM PDT by Kaslin

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1 posted on 06/07/2013 4:54:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

They have LEFT the border open,
and They have WEAPONIZED the enemy from FAST&FURIOUS
to MANPADS to lawyers for their LAWFARE.
And they INVITE the enemy to come in by the millions.

The ENEMY of DHS and FBI and DO”J” under the corrupt
Obama-Holder-DNC-al Qaeda Administration is the
American people.


2 posted on 06/07/2013 4:59:10 AM PDT by Diogenesis
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To: Kaslin

While these morons were listening to me order from Little Caesars 2 muslim terrorists in Boston, whom they were warned about, killed people. Makes me wonder why listening in on me is so important to them.


3 posted on 06/07/2013 5:03:15 AM PDT by ryan71 (The Second American Revolution)
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To: ryan71

Because the bombers were their compatriots. YOU are their enemy.


4 posted on 06/07/2013 5:04:27 AM PDT by Black Agnes
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To: Kaslin
My recollection is that this wire tapping program initiated during the Bush years was specifically only for calls in which one side was foreign the other domestic. True?? If so, when did it change?
5 posted on 06/07/2013 5:09:53 AM PDT by elpadre (AfganistaMr Obama said the goal was to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-hereQaeda" and its allies.)
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To: Kaslin

“It’s important to emphasize that the NSA isn’t listening to the content of these calls. Indeed, it couldn’t if it wanted to, given the sheer volume of conversations. It’d be like ...”

It’d be like the government installing a micro camera in every room in your house, Jonah. You wouldn’t know when it’s on or exactly where it is.

It’d be like the government sending someone over to your house at any time of their choosing, and you have to let them in to record whatever they want, with no warrant, for no good reason.

It’d be like you have to give the government a house key so they can come in when you’re not home.

It’d be like tearing the Fourth Amendment out of the Constitution.

You ok with that, Mr. Safety-In-Numbers?


6 posted on 06/07/2013 5:13:34 AM PDT by HomeAtLast
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To: Kaslin
"The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before”. - Rep. Maxine Waters Feb 2013


7 posted on 06/07/2013 5:14:02 AM PDT by darkwing104 (Let's get dangerous)
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To: Kaslin

Hey Jonah, you can bet with this administration this is only the tip of the iceberg regarding this surveillance.

For now, you can shut your pie hole.


8 posted on 06/07/2013 5:18:59 AM PDT by headstamp 2 (What would Scooby do?)
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To: Kaslin

Collecting and storing call “metadata” is almost trivial today. A record containing date-time, the originating number, the terminating number, location information on originating cell phone (where available) would not take more than 100 bytes. This implies 100 Gigabytes of storage for one day’s worth of call records. A 3 Terabyte drive, enough to store this data for a month costs less than $200.

The NSA could spend millions attempting to analyze this data, but that is another story. The fact is that collecting and storing this data is trivial in today’s IT environments.

The only way to stop government from abusing our right of privacy is to prevent it from collecting data in the first place. It is just childish to allow government to have the data with the assurance that it won’t look at it unless a judge approves. As we saw with case of the DOJ’s attack on Fox reporter Rosen, they shopped for a judge until they found one who would say yes.

(BTW: A lesson I learned long ago in bidnis: If someone will lie to you they will steal from you too. In the case of politicians sometimes the theft is not in terms of money, but in terms of power. These folks have stolen the power the citizen has over the privacy of their own personal lives. And they are happy to lie to us about the theft.)


9 posted on 06/07/2013 5:21:26 AM PDT by theBuckwheat
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To: Kaslin
"It's important to emphasize that the NSA isn't listening to the content of these calls."

Sure they're not. And they aren't monitoring your emails or private instant messages, either.

Paranoia, The Destroyer

10 posted on 06/07/2013 5:22:33 AM PDT by EricT. (Another Muslim terrorist. Who saw that coming?)
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To: elpadre

There are multiple issues being discussed right now. What this Goldberg article is discussing isn’t even wiretapping iit s just keeping track of calls being made - when; what number they went to; how long they occurred for. It is analogous to someone simply watching who arrives at a location; how long they stay…without actually being able to tell what is being said, or who is speaking. Annoying, but not wiretapping.

There are also stories out today about the direct back door links into things like Google, Facebook, etc. These represent a pretty solid invasion of privacy.


11 posted on 06/07/2013 5:27:31 AM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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To: HomeAtLast

This is where the FBI’s request to have software built into every phone and device comes in. They’ll record every call’s metadata (date, time, to whom) and want the ability to listen in at will to every conversation real time, but don’t yet have that ability.


12 posted on 06/07/2013 5:27:41 AM PDT by tbw2
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To: Kaslin
It's important to emphasize that the NSA isn't listening to the content of these calls. Indeed, it couldn't if it wanted to, given the sheer volume of conversations.

But do they have voice to data software? .... software that can search for phrases like "tea party" or "constitution"?

13 posted on 06/07/2013 5:32:13 AM PDT by Alex in chains
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To: Kaslin

Oddly, the public will buy such skepticism if portrayed on television in The X-Files. But not real-life examples before their very eyes.


14 posted on 06/07/2013 6:06:34 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: tbw2

2,000 years ago we were warned about the moment when 3 things come together: technology, participation in the system of commerce, and a test of loyalty to the State. This vision, written when commerce was still barter, and technology was the donkey, is the single most profound stroke of genius in literature.

St. John’s percipience has been drowned beneath stupid speculations about what this symbol of his or that one “stands for”. Christians have spent millenia labeling each other “the whore of Babylon” and fretting that each new technology is the “the mark of the beast”, to the point that they exhausted themselves and prompted deserved ridicule from the world. And everybody forgot the simple, breathtaking assertion buried under the symbols : when technology, commerce, and politics develop to the point when they can connect with each other, then the world WILL (not might, but will) begin to demand loyalty to a single leader in order to buy and sell, will have the technology to enforce it, and will kill everyone who demures. The document seems to believe that this end of the race is embedded in the genetic code and is not avoidable. For John’s viewpoint is not that believers should do something to stop the course of the spirit of antichrist; his point is that the forces inherent in the race will come to this end. He is a prophet, not giver of advice.

I maintain there has been nothing but empirical verification of the Apocalypse ever since it was written, and it matters not whether you believe, like Jefferson did, that the book of Revelation is the “ravings of a lunatic” - what other ancient writing has seen so far in advance and so accurately?

Goldberg is actually right. There are good, even unavoidable reasons that technology will be used to collect all data. The reasons to do it will overwhelm the reasons not to do it, and the resisters will be overcome by moral arguments about how the race must save itself from the evil within us, (I’m not giving advice, just prophecy.) And because the technology, once invented, cannot be not used, the next step will be to require that no commerce can take place off the grid.

Then, the technology which allows commerce will not be available without an act of loyalty to the State. I don’t know what it will be (no man can interpret the symbols actually; they aren’t meant to be interpreted), but I know that it will be somehow offensive to those who believe that Jesus is the king of the universe. These people will not be able to perform the act (interestingly, other religionists of all stripes will be able) - and then comes the end.

Think this is crazy talk? I’m not asking you to believe in plagues of frogs or angels with swords - just to track the trends of history and project the lines of technology, economics, and politics, and notice who, of all writers in the world, first trended the same lines and described their intersection. I defy you to deny that three forces are coming together and that this was described in ominous tones by a writer who claimed to have leaned on Jesus breast right before he was killed.

Go ahead, call us crazy. As you write the words, they are recorded in a government database, for your own safety.

Watch what comes next.


15 posted on 06/07/2013 6:13:44 AM PDT by Taliesan
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To: Kaslin

I find it darkly humorous that a liberal arts major, (Goldberg) is trying to tell people that it’s “not possible” to listen to the content of every call.

I, as a EE who used to work in the computer industry, and moreover who worked on network scanning systems that would do “deep packet inspection” for attacks on systems, know for a fact that with enough money (and the NSA gets enough money, thank you Congress) it is entirely possible to listen in to the content of every phone call in the US.

Goldberg and his cohort should STFU about that which they know nothing. And in this matter, he knows nothing.

As for his fellow NRO people who justify this crap: They’re part of the problem we’re in this mess.

It’s time for a split between “conservatives” like Goldberg, and “conservatives who think that the Constitution still matters,” who, for lack of a better term are probably best represented by the term ‘libertarian’ (small ‘l’) today. Goldberg and his ilk have helped bring us to this point.


16 posted on 06/07/2013 7:40:10 AM PDT by NVDave
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To: Kaslin
It's important to emphasize that the NSA isn't listening to the content of these calls.

It is equally important to emphasize that they CAN. The NSA Utah Data Center will record EVERY call. The problem is finding them in all that data. The records database helps them do that.

17 posted on 06/07/2013 7:56:03 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (An economy is not a zero-sum game, but politics usually is.)
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To: NVDave

Once the Utah Data Center is up, they’ll be able to listen to any phone call made since that date. The phone records are the look-up table.


18 posted on 06/07/2013 7:58:16 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (An economy is not a zero-sum game, but politics usually is.)
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To: Kaslin

Is TRACKPHONE a publicly traded company?


19 posted on 06/07/2013 8:00:30 AM PDT by The Toll
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To: Kaslin

People are forgetting that this government has identified Tea Partiers, gun control advocates and other conservatives as “terrorists”. When we read that the phone spying efforts were aimed at rooting out terrorists and their networks, I do not think that the government thinks that “terrorist” means what we think it means. I think that they wanted to monitor US calling patterns to identify conservatives and their allies.


20 posted on 06/07/2013 8:06:39 AM PDT by Piranha (We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.)
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