Snowdon is a dummy

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Useful in blackmailing a senator or two for having affairs straight or gay or such however to made sure they vote the way your wish them to vote.

No, Bill...they should not be doing that. They should only check on people they know mean us harm!

Frank Apisa wrote:

hawkeye10 wrote:

this is not the old Church where the priests are the only ones who decide what the bible says, we all have a say in what the Constitution says and means, it is not left to SCOTUS to decide for us. SCOTUS decides what the governments final word on that document is, but if we the people decide otherwise then our decision is the one that should stand.

SCOTUS...makes the final decisions.

for the apparatus of the state, yes, but not for me. I never authorized scotus to speak for me.

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But the SCOTUS decides...not you...not Snowden

Pretty must Snowdon did decide by casting the lights on the sewer that our so call intelligence agencies had become.

Not too many NSA employees that can hold their heads high with their families and friends this holiday season now that it had been reveal they are employed in taking away the privacy of the american people including their neighbors and family.

scotus approved NSA operations, the world and Americans mostly do not....again we see SCOTUS not upholding its duties, the court is but a shadow of what it once was, and the diminished respect shown it is deserved.

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There is nothing immoral in the fact that our spy agencies try to find groups like al-Qa'ida before they can harm us.

There is something very immoral indeed in using al-Qa'ida as an excused to do massive spying on your own people.

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IF someone wants to propose some sort of reasonable change that would help protect against hypothetical abuses, that would be one thing.

Sure cut the SOBs budgets by 80 percents or so forcing them back to focusing on real threats not on creating data bases on all of us.

Right! Get those SOB's focused only on the people who mean us harm...and let the rest of the world alone.

The president's NSA review panel has recommended an end to bulk data collection, as reported by The Washington Post. The panel's statement speaks out against the NSA's pattern of bulk collection, stating as a general rule that "the government should not be permitted to collect and store all mass, undigested, non-public personal information about individuals to enable future queries."

More specifically, the panel recommends the agency no longer be allowed to maintain its database of phone records, which was revealed this summer to include data on nearly all American phones. "In our view, the current storage by the government of bulk meta-data creates potential risk to public trust, personal privacy and civil liberty," one passage reads. Previous reports suggested the panel would recommend a higher burden of proof for bulk metadata collection, which was ruled to be likely unconstitutional by a federal court earlier this week. The panel recommends keeping the database with phone companies or a trusted third party, requiring requests when data is needed. In the past, the NSA has said that investigations could be delayed by the extra step of asking phone companies for records.


THE PANEL WOULD ALSO BAN THE NSA FROM STOCKPILING ZERO-DAY EXPLOITS

The panel also suggested new restrictions on the use of National Security Letters and FISC warrants to compel data from third parties, applying the same evidence standard required for a subpoena. That would mean any requests would have to be "reasonable in focus, scope, and breadth." In the same spirit, the recommendations would bar the NSA from asking companies to build backdoors, addressing allegations that the agency had deliberately weakened cryptographical standards in the interest of easier data collection. In a nod to recent requests by Google, Facebook, and others, the recommendations would permit companies to report "general information" about the number of government requests they have received and the number of users affected.

oralloy wrote:

If someone wants to propose some sort of reasonable change that would help protect against hypothetical abuses, that would be one thing.

Sure cut the SOBs budgets by 80 percents or so forcing them back to focusing on real threats not on creating data bases on all of us.

Sorry I see no reason at all to give up our constitutional rights to privacy to deal with a threat that is both very very very minor to the threats we had face during the cold war and using means that have not even been shown to be worthwhile.

The panel recommends keeping the database with phone companies or a trusted third party, requiring requests when data is needed.

THE PANEL WOULD ALSO BAN THE NSA FROM STOCKPILING ZERO-DAY EXPLOITS

In the same spirit, the recommendations would bar the NSA from asking companies to build backdoors,

people who have the decency to thank them

TUE OCT 15, 2013 AT 06:11 AM PDT
NSA Director Admits He Lied About Surveillance Thwarting 54 Terror Plots
byDavid Harris GershonFollow
Email 131 Comments / 131 New
This week, we learned that millions of Americans have had their email address books and contact lists gobbled up by NSA bulk digital surveillance. This comes on the heels of NSA director Keith Alexander admitting that he lied to Congress about the principal justification for the NSA's ability to engage in bulk surveillance: stopping terror plots.

In June, Alexander sat before a congressional committee and claimed, without evidence, that 54 terror plots had been thwarted by bulk phone surveillance, that such surveillance had been critical in "unravel[ing] the threat stream." This bold statement, which many members treated with incredulity, came at a time in which Snowden's revelations were putting intense pressure on the Obama administration.

Now, Alexander has admitted that he boldly lied in June about the efficacy of bulk surveillance, and that a mere one or two plots were affected by the monitoring of Americans' communications.

Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not take Alexander's admittance lightly:

“We’re told we have to [conduct mass phone surveillance] to protect us, and the statistics are rolled out that they’re not accurate...It doesn’t have the credibility here in the Congress, it doesn’t have the credibility with this chairman and it doesn’t have the credibility with the country.”
While Leahy didn't call Alexander dishonest explicitly, he plainly couched the accusation in his railing about the inaccuracy of "statistics."
The question is now this: why does Alexander still have a job? Or, more importantly, this: why is the NSA still engaging in intensive bulk surveillance if its efficacy is so poor?

I fear the answer.

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In the same spirit, the recommendations would bar the NSA from asking companies to build backdoors,

I highly doubt that the NSA has asked this of anyone.

The notion that al-Qa'ida is a minor threat is silly.

As I remember it 9/11 cost close to 3000 lives. In 1 or 2 incidents you may be talking 3000 to 6000 lives. Looking at in in those terms not so small a number.

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Right! Get those SOB's focused only on the people who mean us harm...and let the rest of the world alone.

Sorry I see no reason at all to give up our constitutional rights to privacy to deal with a threat that is both very very very minor to the threats we had face during the cold war and using means that have not even been shown to be worthwhile.

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people who have the decency to thank them

The only person in that regards that I feel like thanking in fact shaking his hand and buying him a drink is Snowdon not the people who was and are trying to turn this nation into a total surveillance state/police state and are tearing up the constitution in order to do so.

Not all the terrorists in all the world born or to be born for the next thousand years are as must a danger to our freedoms then an out of control federal government that does not respect the constitution and are more then willing to lied to congress to bypass what little oversight they work under.

So you are suggesting our intelligence agencies only spy on people they know to be intending harm to us...and leave everyone else alone.

…despite the fact that you disparage them as frequently as you do with your close-minded, unrealistic comments about what they do.