nsa whistleblower e snowden

[Danzig]

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news...s-records?lite

The FBI has dramatically increased its use of a controversial provision of the Patriot Act to secretly obtain a vast store of business records of U.S. citizens under President Barack Obama, according to recent Justice Department reports to Congress. The bureau filed 212 requests for such data to a national security court last year – a 1,000-percent increase from the number of such requests four years earlier, the reports show.

“Most people who followed this closely were not aware they were doing this. We’ve gone from producing records for a particular investigation to the production of all records for a massive pre-collection database. It’s incredibly sweeping.”

In contrast to standard grand jury subpoenas, material obtained under both Section 215 orders and national security letters must be turned over under so-called “gag orders” that forbid the business or institution that receives the order from notifying its customers or publicly referring to the matter.

From the earliest days of the Patriot Act, Section 215 was among the most hotly disputed of its provisions. Critics charged the language – “tangible things” -- was so broad that it would even permit the FBI to obtain library and bookstore records to inspect what citizens were reading.



“There should be no room for secret law,” said Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director, adding that disclosure of the FISC rulings is essential if the debate Obama called for is to take place. “The public has a right to know what limits apply to the government’s surveillance authority, and what safeguards are in place to protect individual privacy.”



i agree.


and obama says he 'welcomes the debate'. yeah, me too. only thing is, when will he be available to debate this??


now, not to make light of 9/11 by any means....but more people die in a month from car wrecks in this country than have died in the last 12 years, including 9/11, from terrorist attacks. do we really want to have secret courts, secret orders, no public info on subpoenas, changes to amendments in the constitution, sweeping new govt powers, all of which is supposedly to 'make us safer'?! safer from whom???
those who say 'well, if you have nothing to hide...'. define nothing. who decides what's nefarious? how far will this go? drones killing u.s. citizens??? oh, wait, that's already happened-to hell with due process, right?

[Danzig]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/...sugc_container

Is Edward Snowden a hero or traitor?

The Post's Dana Milbank thinks the U.S. government has no one to blame but itself:

It is precisely their effort to hide such a vast and consequential program from the American public that caused this pressure valve to burst. Instead of allowing a democratic debate about the programs in broad terms that would not have compromised national security, their attempts to keep the public in the dark have created a backlash in which the risks to national security can’t be controlled.

Snowden, Milbank adds, "did the honorable thing in revealing his identity; it would be more honorable if he would turn himself in and face the consequences for his law-breaking. But there is little honor in the way administration officials and lawmakers have avoided responsibility."
..

[Danzig]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te...veillance.html


If You're OK With Surveillance Because You Have "Nothing to Hide," Think AgainBy Danah Boyd
|
Posted Tuesday, June 11, 2013, at 11:14 AM

read this, if you are one of those saying 'i have nothing to hide, why worry'.

[Rudeboyelvis]

[Danzig]

^^^

[Rudeboyelvis]

Here's a shocker - the Govt not exactly being truthful about how NSA saved us from a terrorist plot:


>>> WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration declassified a handful of details Tuesday that credited its PRISM Internet spying program with intercepting a key email that unraveled a 2009 terrorist plot in New York.

The details, declassified by the director of national intelligence, were circulated on Capitol Hill as part of government efforts to tamp down criticism of two recently revealed National Security Agency surveillance programs.

Najibullah Zazi's foiled plot to bomb the New York subways has become the centerpiece of that effort. It remains the most serious al-Qaida plot inside the United States since the 9/11 terror attacks.

In the rush to defend the surveillance programs, however, government officials have changed their stories and misstated key facts of the Zazi plot. And they've left out one important detail: The email that disrupted the plan could easily have been intercepted without PRISM.<<<


http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/1...tle-little.htm

[Danzig]

as colbert explained, with less freedom, terrorists won't want to attack us any more. a win win situation when you look at it that way!!

i think the world has turned upside down. people are actually cheering the aclu because of the suit they filed yesterday, and that doesn't happen often. lefties screaming for obama's head, righties cheering his admins encroachments on our liberties.

drones killing us citizens with no due process.
irs using their power politically
phones, emails, etc being gathered en masse, with no individualized suspicion-that'll come later.

feinstein and boehner on the same side! crazy stuff.

[bigrun]

Originally Posted by Rudeboyelvis

#5..did the 'do not call' list expire?...haven't rec'd many spam calls past few years but had two this morn...one calling to tell me my computer had malware and a virus and was gonna crash...caller sounded like she was from
Nairobi, could barely understand her...told her i didn't have a computer and hung up...2nd call even worse, could barely hear her and hung up...

[Danzig]

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