Posted on 06/13/2013 4:43:22 PM PDT by raptor22
Security: With the director of national intelligence defending a program he told Congress didn't exist, the Patriot Act's author says this isn't the targeted surveillance intended and warns of losing needles in a too-big haystack.
Edward Snowden is quite possibly a traitor, but we have been caught in a Prism of our own making, outsourcing our national security to 29-year-old unstable contractors, one of nearly 500,000 employees of private firms with access to the government's most sensitive secrets.
Perhaps if we were doing the targeted surveillance envisioned by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., when he wrote the Patriot Act, we wouldn't need so many potential security risks.
It boggles the mind that we didn't listen to the Russians when they warned about the Tsarnaev brothers in part because, well, they're the Russians. But we want to preserve the records of every housewife in Des Moines because data mining that arguably invades the privacy rights of innocent Americans might reveal something.
One person whose privacy was not invaded by U.S. intelligence was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, as he repeatedly visited the al-Qaida online magazine Inspire for its recipe "Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."
The NSA's blanket surveillance did not detect Tsarnaev's interest in building the pressure cooker bombs he would use to devastating effect at the Boston Marathon. The massive databases that we are building a massive facility in Utah to store also failed to uncover the online communications that Tsarnaev had with a known Muslim extremist in Dagestan.
Sensenbrenner, who wrote and introduced the Patriot Act to Congress in 2001, says the National Security Agency overstepped its bounds by issuing the order to collect phone log records from millions of Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Agreed. The government things conservatives are a greater threat than Muslims, who routinely kill others and even each other all around the world.
Why?
-Because they were too busy collecting info on AMERICAN citizens; you know, REAL terrorists...
.... Well,, to be honest, I was attempting, apparently rather poorly, to show the absurdity of spending a gagillion dollars on spying on our own citizens while redirecting the focus of our fight against terrorists AWAY from foreign threats and refocusing the efforts on .... Conservative groups within our own borders.
...As you may recall, only a few months ago the Prez with a fez and his administration named Christian extremists along with Conservative groups as the biggest threat to the nation .... even above Muslim extremist groups such as ..... Al-Qaeda! Where the heck did they come up with that WHOPPER!!!
In the mean time the Boston Bombers went practically undetected. Heck .... even though we received multiple leads from foreign intelligence entities they were practically ignored ... go figure! It has become quite clear that the Tsarnaev Brother incident could have been easily prevented ....That is, if this administration would have spent more time focusing on ACTUAL foreign OPFOR entities rather than on the likes of friendly patriotic Christians and Conservatives .... mining for intel to be strategically used for muck raking and asset destruction of those patriots and patriotic groups.
.... In short ... the intelligence assets, as well as all of our alphabet Departments, being used to stir up trouble for Christians and Conservatives would have been much better used and money incredibly better spent if they were actually focused on GENUINE enemies of America ..... instead of mere political enemies of this Administration which they have no business doing in the first place.
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I would add this comment....which people ought to ponder over. Yes, they missed the brothers....but presently, they have their telephone numbers, and are connecting the dots to approximately a hundred or two-hundred calls they made over the past year. Every single one of those folks are being checked out completely. I’ll bet that a dozen are under constant surveillance right now, and being targeted for a future arrest.
They don’t like to stop CIA double agents.
So why can't those idiots catch just one illegal telemarketer?
The fallacy in this argument is that what was known about the bomber is unknown........ secret.
I can believe that the man was well known to those following him but the DOJ was loath to go get him because they did not have adequate evidence for an airtight conviction. They are lawyers and see all through lawer prosecutor’s eyes.
I’ll not risk my ass to prosecute unless the outcome is beyond doubt, absolutely certain. The bomb was too bad but my prosacutorial ass is safe
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Just doing the jobs Americans wouldn't do...don'tcha know.
Think an ‘on-going and permanent’ type of Watergate. ‘Watergate’ without the hassle of having to hire operatives to break into political opponents offices.
The NSA also collects dirt on powerful people the world over so they can control them... for the benefit of liberal democrats.
As far as protecting American citizens? Yeah, that's a joke.
For our billions spent in "security" investment - the shredding of the Constitution and our total loss of privacy here's what they give us on radical Muslims: emotionally unstable young Muslims who can be tempted by undercover cops to SAY they might blow us up - get caught. Real terrorists - like the boys in Boston - are ignored. That's my take... it looks like we get almost nothing for our money.
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Too busy chasing the real terrorists, you know, white Christians and Tea Partiers.
Mosques are exempt - Christian Churches are NOT exempt...
Do you think the American people would have given one thin dime to these liberal blowhard 'security people' if they had told THAT TRUTH?
The legislation would NOT have passed after 9/11 if we had been told the main targets of investigation would be Christan American citizens and people who don't support gay marriage and abortion.
Because, the amount of information coming at them each day is overwhelming and they can only do so much with it.
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