Drocket
CAGiversary!
First up, a public admission of guilt in violating US law, thereby violating the oath he took when sworn into office...
Followed by a promise to continue breaking the law. So, can we impeach him yet?
First up, a public admission of guilt in violating US law, thereby violating the oath he took when sworn into office...
Followed by a promise to continue breaking the law. So, can we impeach him yet?
In 1978, Congress thought it had closed a loophole in the law when it passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The loophole concerned secret spying authorized by the president on grounds of national security.....
The New York Times reported that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to listen to the phone calls of thousands of people in this country without getting permission from a court. Bush's lawyers maintained that the president had the inherent authority as commander in chief to protect national security through secret spying. The account was confirmed by the Los Angeles Times.
"This sounds like an extraordinarily broad exemption to FISA," said Washington lawyer Kenneth Bass, who worked on the 1978 law as an aide to President Jimmy Carter. "This is well beyond the pale of what was anticipated back then."...
As a general matter, the Constitution forbids the government from spying on Americans, including by listening in on their phone calls without a court's permission. The 4th Amendment says police or federal agents must show a magistrate some evidence of wrongdoing before they can obtain a warrant that authorizes them to listen in on phone calls.
Through most of the 20th Century, however, presidents maintained they had the power to protect the nation's security by, for example, spying on foreign agents operating in the United States. No one questioned that U.S. intelligence agencies could tap the phones of Soviet agents.
In the mid-1970s, Congress learned that the White House had abused this power. Presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, had authorized the FBI to tap the phones of hundreds of political activists and celebrities, including Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Vietnam War protesters.
Those revelations led to the 1978 law. One provision says it is a crime for anyone to "intentionally engage in electronic surveillance" except as authorized by law or a court order. But if officials obtain a warrant from a special court that operates inside the Justice Department, "the president, through the attorney general, may authorize electronic surveillance ... to acquire foreign intelligence information."
FISA judges acquiescent
Known as the FISA court, these judges may issue warrants to authorize wiretaps when the government has evidence that a person is working for a "foreign power" or is involved in terrorism. This is not a high standard, legal experts say.
The judges issue warrants virtually whenever the government applies for one, the Justice Department has said in the past.
But the law requires some evidence that the target of the wiretap has links to a foreign government or a terrorist group. It would not permit, for example, the wiretaps of hundreds of Muslim men in the United States simply because they placed phone calls to the Middle East.
So just to be clear: Your argument is that the US president is permitted to order US soldiers using US equipment on US military bases to spy on US citizens making phone calls on US phone lines if that phone call is routed to a US satellite, since the phone call has to pass through non-US space between the US phone company and the US satellite?You don't know which end of the wire was tapped or technically where the call was tapped. Was it here? Was it in route through satellite signals? Was it done on the other end?
1) Does it actually matter? Its still illegal either wayDrocket, prove to us that the people that were being monitored were U.S. citizens and not foreign nationals in the United States.
Although the NSA has civilian workers, the project is legally a subdivision of the department of defense. Its the military.Oh and the NSA isn't military.
Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.
WHAT IS THE NSA UP TO?....So what's the nature of the secret NSA bugging program? Why did the Bush administration feel like they couldn't continue to seek warrants via the usual FISA procedures? Take a look at the following quotes and you can see a single thread that starts to emerge:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, telling reporters why Bush didn't simply ask Congress to pass a law making the program clearly legal: "We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be — that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program."
President Bush, answering questions at Monday's press conference: "We use FISA still....But FISA is for long-term monitoring....There is a difference between detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring. And it's important to know the distinction between the two....We used the [FISA] process to monitor. But also....we've got to be able to detect and prevent."
Senator Jay Rockefeller, in a letter to Dick Cheney after being briefed on the program in 2003: "As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveiliance."
New York Times editor Bill Keller, explaining why the Times finally published its story last week after holding it back for over a year: "In the course of subsequent reporting we satisfied ourselves that we could write about this program — withholding a number of technical details — in a way that would not expose any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record."
None of these quotes makes sense if the NSA program involved nothing more than an expansion of ordinary taps of specific individuals. After all, the FISA court would have approved taps of domestic-to-international calls as quickly and easily as they do with normal domestic wiretaps. What's more, Congress wouldn't have had any objection to supporting a routine program expansion; George Bush wouldn't have explained it with gobbledegok about the difference between monitoring and detecting; Jay Rockefeller wouldn't have been reminded of TIA; and the Times wouldn't have had any issues over divulging sensitive technology.
It seems clear that there's something involved here that goes far beyond ordinary wiretaps, regardless of the technology used. Perhaps some kind of massive data mining, which makes it impossible to get individual warrants? Stay tuned.