Big Brother is Watching You

[O Really]

Do I see the shiny wearing off the liberal's golden boy?

Not really. He was never all that golden, less so when he was trying to appease the right. But if you find any Dems that are the most adamant about what a rotten thing this phone number project is, and ask them if - NSA or not - they'd vote for Obama again if their other choices were anyone the GOP had last year, who do you think they'd take? Would anybody in their right mind really want Obama removed and thus live with "President Biden?" No, it's just politics as usual.

[Stinger]

Maizy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey. A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

Actually, the lyrics go:

Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.
A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?

The title is "Mairzy Doats" (1943 by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston) with "Mares Eat Oats" in smaller letters underneath. The refrain "Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey. A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe?" is sung twice before the lyrics "Mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy" is sung, followed by another go-round of "Mairzy doats."

[Stinger]

Do I see the shiny wearing off the liberal's golden boy?

He's not the liberal's golden boy. He's more like Bush Lite.

It's just that he's nowhere near as bad as suggested by all the lies and distortions deranged idiots keep coming up with.

Defending Obama against the greatest onslaught of lies and hate in American history is not the same as considering him a golden boy. It's just being honest.

[Stinger]

But to say that looking at the phone calling record of everyone in order to find bad guys turns "innocent people into suspects" and is excessively "Big Brother" invasive seems a bit of a stretch.

Kind of like claiming that the cop out there with the radar gun, recording everyone's speed, is acquiring data to abuse the populace.

[O Really]

But to say that looking at the phone calling record of everyone in order to find bad guys turns "innocent people into suspects" and is excessively "Big Brother" invasive seems a bit of a stretch.

Kind of like claiming that the cop out there with the radar gun, recording everyone's speed, is acquiring data to abuse the populace.

Yeah, and that's why I used that as one example, above. There are cops who'll stop someone not really speeding, or who will claim a speed not actually recorded, or set a speed trap to catch "violators" going 2 miles over the limit (you know who you are, Waldo), but nobody is saying the overall practice itself, of surveilling the speed of everybody going by - violators and "innocents" alike - is an example of government intrusiveness out of control.

[O Really]

...How, except in scope, does looking at phone call connections differ from any of those examples?

How, except in scope, does a spouse killer differ from Timothy McVeigh?

It doesn't, but you and I may be the only ones knowing that.
But as a principle, both the radar check, etc. and the call activity project are all legal, which distinguishes them from both the spouse killer as well as McVeigh.

[O Really]

"Legal" doesn't have the same aura of acceptability to me as it does to you, especially when it's Patriot Act "legal". Plus, you're still stating as fact that the snooping has been limited to "legal" actions when we know that they've lied about the snooping's very existence for 8 years or more.

Your example of a cop with a radar gun is far different from a traffic camera with permanent data storage if that data is ever used for things other than catching speeders.

You guys are starting to sound an awful lot like the ovine con refrain of, "If you aren't doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about." Not everyone's life is so mundane.

Not at all. And I've blamed PATRIOT for all of the "excess". Because the data is harmless unless you can do something with it. If they have to go through regular judicial procedure to do anything to someone, most everybody is pretty safe. If they're really after you personally, it's not going to be through random phone call analysis. If they call you a "terrorist" you're in deep shit, regardless of what you actually did.

[Stinger]

I wonder if the NSA has checked out the list of gay porn sites that Homophile visited in order to convince . . . someone . . . that he really, really hates gays.

Probably an extensive list.

[neoplacebo]

Opps! I could be on the list myself since back in January when I called Bank of America to tell them that the eye surgery I just had would preclude me from working for a while, and therefore preclude me from making my mortgage payment on time. I strongly suspect the person who answered the phone was somewhere out of the country, as I could barely understand what he was saying. I fear I am being surveilled for sure, as I was not kind to the guy at the end. I may call him back and identify myself as "Achmed" and confide in him that I am prepared and anxious to visit vast harm on Bank of America unless they change their name to Bank of Fat City.

[Dryer Vent]

Opps! I could be on the list myself since back in January when I called Bank of America to tell them that the eye surgery I just had would preclude me from working for a while, and therefore preclude me from making my mortgage payment on time. I strongly suspect the person who answered the phone was somewhere out of the country, as I could barely understand what he was saying. I fear I am being surveilled for sure, as I was not kind to the guy at the end. I may call him back and identify myself as "Achmed" and confide in him that I am prepared and anxious to visit vast harm on Bank of America unless they change their name to Bank of Fat City.

Not just banks. Any of us who have called Tech Support will have foreign numbers on our record. Jeez Louise, I can't understand a thing some of them are telling me.

[bannination]

Ed Snowden:
"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.

Later in the interview, he explains why the people who say "I don't care, because I've got nothing to hide" are complete and total idiots:

"Because even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded. And the storage capability of these systems increases every year consistently by orders of magnitude to where it's getting to the point where you don't have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call. And then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made. Every friend you've ever discussed something with. And attack you on that basis, to derive suspicion from an innocent life, and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer."

[O Really]

I'd be more impressed if Mr Snowden, who has demonstrated his willingness to give up his life as he knew it for what he considers "whistleblowing" had said, "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email...and I have personal knowledge of people who used their authority to harass their former wives, fabricate charges to implicate former employers. I have personally seen FBI agents request and receive data for their use in illegally supporting a case where there was no legal evidence...yada.

But again, I don't think it's a matter of "innocent so nothing to hide or fear." Of course "innocent" people get falsely charged frequently, and depending on color or circumstance, sometimes find themselves on death row unjustly. I still say if they're after you personally, there are more likely and more hazardous ways they can get you.

[rstrong]

Ed Snowden:
"Because even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded. And the storage capability of these systems increases every year consistently by orders of magnitude to where it's getting to the point where you don't have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call. And then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made. Every friend you've ever discussed something with. And attack you on that basis, to derive suspicion from an innocent life, and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer."

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
- Cardinal Richelieu

There have been plenty of cases over the years of the IRS being used against political enemies. Every year record are released detailing how decades earlier, the FBI spied on folks like Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Einstein and John Lennon. A woman can find the entire Republican Party / Faux News organization smearing her as a slut and a parasite just for publicly disagreeing with Republican contraception policy; you can well imagine what may have happened if she were hurting the Republicans politically. People have been put under the government microscope for far less.

What a spy program like this does is enable someone to create an instant dossier on anyone. Where they've been (via cellphone GPS metadata), who they've communicated with, the contents of their emails and Facebook posts, etc. As anyone in Washington knows, no law will stop select bits from being leaked to the press when politically convenient.

Cardinal Richelieu is getting a lot more than six lines.

[O Really]

As I said, there are far more immediate and personal "intrusive" and "abusive" things to worry about than a phone call database...
http://now.msn.com/jesse-thornton-arres ... el-of-zero

Stone sober guy arrested in AZ for DWI and DWB.

[Dryer Vent]

Extremely small black population in Surprise. I believe it was the offence of driving while black in Surprise.

[O Really]

Extremely small black population in Surprise. I believe it was the offence of driving while black in Surprise.

Yup, "DWB"

[neoplacebo]

I wonder if that's in Leo's neighborhood.....

[Stinger]

The Majority of Americans Still Don't Care About the NSA Spying on Them

A bit of good news for the 265 sitting members of Congress who voted to extend the legislation that the NSA claims as its mandate to collect phone data: the majority of Americans don't care. Pew Research today released a poll suggesting that 56 percent of the country thinks doing just that is just fine...

Views on the practice differ significantly based on political party. Democrats support such wiretapping by 30 percentage points; Republicans, by only five.

Which is a big change from 2006. At that point, Republicans supported it by a 52 percent margin; Democrats opposed by 24 points...

Interesting, a partisan 47% swing for Republicans and a partisan 54% swing for Democrats. We are consistent. Did someone say that it's just the cons that are being hypocritical?

I hate to repeat myself, but did that 2006 poll ask about FISC-sanctioned data mining or Bush's warrantless wiretapping with no judicial oversight whatsoever? I know that would affect my answer.

That said, conservatives do not have a lock on hypocrisy, but they have turned it into a requisite for life, right along with food, water, and oxygen.

[Stinger]

According to the article:

...The firm, which has clearly been paying closer attention to the history of the NSA than many Americans, asked similar questions about the balance between privacy and terror investigations in 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2010. That history provides some insight into how attitudes toward the subject have changed. Or: haven't.

Asked if it was acceptable for the NSA to intrude on privacy in service to terror investigations, people in 2006, 2010, and today all expressed about two-to-one support for doing so.

On the specific question of warrantless wiretapping...

And I don't consider the FISA court, which I believe has denied only one warrant ever, to be real judicial oversight. It's rubber stamp window dressing.

Then it's kind of hard to support they hypocrisy charge based on percentage swings when the questions are about two different actions. (I realize there is hypocrisy. I've been guilty of it myself.)

I think the FISA court is window dressing, having only booted a few and required modifications on 200 warrants out of tens of thousands, but they do have some requirements and basically follow the requirements of the law. Circumventing that court to engage in listening in on phone conversations without any warrant is "shredding the Constitution," as the dimwits from the right like to accuse Obama of doing.

How do they claim any validity by asking a question in the middle of warrantless wiretapping and comparing it to a question when there's been no warrantless wiretapping (that we know of) for six years?

[O Really]

So Snowden, who apparently didn't read the original 2006 article referenced by Dryer, basically repeats what has been long known and formerly reported. He doesn't offer evidence of actual mis-use, only describes potential, based on authority of access. Others, who also apparently ignored the original 2006 article, paint it as something new - just allowed by the most recent FISA Court order, or expanded, or whatever, all fired by The Guardian, who - also apparently not having read the 2006 article - says "Washington was struggling to contain one of the most explosive national security leaks in US history on Monday, as public criticism grew of the sweeping surveillance state revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden." "Most explosive national security leaks"? Seriously? I like Matt Miller's view in the Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html