America... Spying on Americans

It's amazing how you spin things.

You have stated that you would rather believe 2 unknown sources than the AG who believes "that Torture is OK and legal" and lies about SECRET programs to the world audience.

You have no idea how foolish that makes you appear.

McGentrix wrote:

It's amazing how you spin things.

It's not only my idea, I must admit.

McGentrix wrote:

You have stated that you would rather believe 2 unknown sources than the AG who believes "that Torture is OK and legal" and lies about SECRET programs to the world audience.

Where?

McGentrix wrote:

You have no idea how foolish that makes you appear.

Well, don't ask me in public what I think about some others.

B. He should have instead said that he could not comment on any known or unknown secret programs.

Wiretaps fail to make dent in terror war; al Qaeda used messengers

The Bush administration's surveillance policy has failed to make a dent in the war against al Qaeda.

U.S. law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al Qaeda operative in the United States. They said al Qaeda insurgents have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay messages. Instead, they employ couriers.

"They have been way ahead of us in communications security," a law enforcement source said. "At most, we have caught some riff-raff. But the heavies remain free and we believe some of them are in the United States."

Several members of Congress have been briefed on the effectiveness of the government surveillance program that does not require a court order.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, who was briefed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the matter, said he plans to hold hearings on the program by February 2006.

"There may be legislation which will come out of it [hearings] to restrict the president's power," Mr. Specter said.

The law enforcement sources said the intelligence community has identified several al Qaeda agents believed to be in the United States. But the sources said the agents have not been found because of insufficient intelligence and even poor analysis.

The assertions by the law enforcement sources dispute President Bush's claim that the government surveillance program has significantly helped in the fight against terrorism. The president said the program, which goes beyond the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, limits eavesdropping to international phone calls.

The sources provided guidelines to how the administration has employed the surveillance program. They said the National Security Agency in cooperation with the FBI was allowed to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of any American believed to be in contact with a person abroad suspected of being linked to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

At that point, the sources said, all of the communications of that American would be monitored, including calls made to others in the United States. The regulations under the administration's surveillance program do not require any court order.

"The new regulations don't require this because it is considered an ongoing investigation," a source familiar with the program said.

The sources said the Patriot Act was based on the assessment that al Qaeda had established cells in Muslim communities in the United States.

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union confirm that the FBI has monitored and infiltrated a range of Muslim and Arab groups, including the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

But despite the huge amount of raw material gathered under the legislation, the FBI has not captured one major al Qaeda operative in the United States. Instead, federal authorities have been allowed to use non-terrorist material obtained through the surveillance program for investigation and prosecution.

In more than one case, the sources said, a surveillance target was prosecuted on non-terrorist charges from information obtained through wiretaps conducted without a court order. They said the FBI supported this policy in an attempt to pressure surveillance targets to cooperate.

"The problem is not the legislation but lack of intelligence and analysis," another source said. "We have a huge pile of intercepts that never get translated, analyzed and thus remain of no use to us. If it [surveillance] was effective, that's one thing. But it hasn't been effective."

At that point, the sources said, all of the communications of that American would be monitored, including calls made to others in the United States. The regulations under the administration's surveillance program do not require any court order.

Republican Who Oversees N.S.A. Calls for Wiretap Inquiry
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2006

. . . A growing number of Republicans have called in recent days for Congress to consider amending federal wiretap law to address the constitutional issues raised by the N.S.A. operation.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for one, said he considered some of the administration's legal justifications for the program "dangerous" in their implications, and he told Mr. Gonzales that he wanted to work on new legislation that would help those tracking terrorism "know what they can and can't do."

But the administration has said repeatedly since the program was disclosed in December that it considers further legislation unnecessary, believing that the president already has the legal authority to authorize the operation.

Vice President Dick Cheney reasserted that position Tuesday in an interview on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."

Members of Congress "have the right and the responsibility to suggest whatever they want to suggest" about changing wiretap law, Mr. Cheney said. But "we have all the legal authority we need" already, he said, and a public debate over changes in the law could alert Al Qaeda to tactics used by American intelligence officials. . . .

Secret Court's Judges Were Warned about NSA Spy Data
By Carol D. Leonnig
The Washington Post
Thursday 09 February 2006

Program may have led improperly to warrants. . . .

. . . Shortly after the warrantless eavesdropping program began, then-NSA Director Michael V. Hayden and Ashcroft made clear in private meetings that the president wanted to detect possible terrorist activity before another attack. They also made clear that, in such a broad hunt for suspicious patterns and activities, the government could never meet the FISA court's probable-cause requirement, government officials said.

So it confused the FISA court judges when, in their recent public defense of the program, Hayden and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales insisted that NSA analysts do not listen to calls unless they have a reasonable belief that someone with a known link to terrorism is on one end of the call. At a hearing Monday, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the "reasonable belief" standard is merely the "probable cause" standard by another name.

The only possible conclusion is that NSA agents are conducting broadly-based fishing expeditions of all our communications---no individualized suspicion is involved at all.

No he hasn't. You are exagerrating for effect.

Quote:

The only possible conclusion is that NSA agents are conducting broadly-based fishing expeditions of all our communications---no individualized suspicion is involved at all.

That's the only possible conclusion?

The president has claimed and usurped unlimited power to do whatever he wants and to do so without any checks or balances--the laws be damned. And then he has the audacity to assert that questioning him on this power grab will harm our country.

This catastrophic power grab threatens to destroy the very foundation of our nation consisting of the rule of law and separation of powers. With Bush in office, the Constitution and the laws made by Congress are no longer the supreme law of the land, but mere suggestions that the president unilaterally determines whether he will follow or ignore.

The only possible conclusion is that NSA agents are conducting broadly-based fishing expeditions of all our communications---no individualized suspicion is involved at all.

The most feasible explanation for the Bush Administration is that they are trying to re-establish the presidential authority that was lost because of Richard M Nixon.

page 39
"Even if an interrogation method might arguably cross the line drawn in Section 2340, and application of the statute was held to not be an unconstitutional infringement on the Commander in Chief, we believe that under the current circumstances certain justification defenses might be available that would potentially eliminate criminal liability."