Tea Party Lawyer wins suit against NSA in Federal Court. Left attacks.

the interesting thing is that groups and individuals from the left are also attacking the surveillance via the nsa.

Its being reviewed. And as I referenced above the patriot act and current levels of surveillance ARE being addressed by people from both sides of the political perspective.

I'm responding. Gworld. Not everyone feels like you do and believes these revelations are the end of all freedoms. I think its the natural ebb and flow between setting up the Patriot Act in the first place and the natural restrictions that came with that.

 

Its pure chaos right now, in both political camps. On the right you have the die hard establishment, firmly behind the NSA domestic spying programs and the patriot act. Guys like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Peter King. You also have all the new Tea Party guys who came in specifically campaigning against the growth of government and these NSA type programs who are causing McCain and company a lot of heart ache.

On the left, same story. You have Feinstein, Schummer and Reid who are fully behind domestic spying, while the harder left guys like Bernie Sanders and Tom Udall speak out against it.

Honestly, at the congressional level, I don't think too many of those people have changed their position. Feinstein, Schummer, McCain, and King have ALWAYS been supportive these types of programs, and guys like Sanders, Paul, and Udall have always been against it. Perhaps it has something to do with who funds their campaigns.

The real hypocrisy/Flip flopping has been with Mr. Obama himself. Only 6 years ago, Obama spoke out from the floor of the Senate against the programs he now fully backs. He also voted to shut down the government over settling on a budget with such a large deficit. And when Obama flips on an issue, so do his millions of fan boys, which explains why over 65% of Democrats now think the Patriot Act is a great idea, just like Earlpearl. Bush's popularity on this issue and the economy dropped to 25% before he left office, which indicates most of the base had already decided it was a bad idea before Obama was even elected.

 

exactly what I've been saying. people on both sides of the political spectrum are attacking patriot act/NSA. Likewise it has its defenders coming from the left and right.

I have no idea why they choose to be for it, against it, for part of it or what not. I suppose a cynic who is all for endless funds going into campaigns...would bring up that point 0-nation.

I don't recall having strong opinions voiced on this program back in 2001 and all the years through. I'll keep repeating it. Back in 2001 a program of this sort made sense. Exactly how it was developed and administered and followed is something left up to the professionals and also the courts (or other checks). Now much has come out about potential abuses.

Its being reviewed. We'll see what happens.

This is actually how a democracy is supposed to work. Nothing is perfect...though the extremists will tell you that they always are.

 

Aren´t this what Germans saying about the concentration camps and what happened during the war? We didn´t know anything, it was the government and the courts who were deciding what to do and how to do it. It was the responsibility of the officials and not the people.
I believe that democracy and freedom are too important to be left to the "professionals".

Clapper, the director of national intelligence lies

A professional lies to congress, the justice department doesn´t want to prosecute the official who lied to congress which is not surprising since Obama didn´t want to prosecute people who participated in torture even when torture is against the law in the USA.
Is this the type of professionals that you place your trust in?

 

In the wake of 9-11, most people were willing to give the government a lot of latitude to do what it needed to do. I think that went so far as dropping a few nukes on the guilty. After 6 years of war without results and a massive boondoggle in Iraq, people were sick of it. All of it. Its why congress changed hands in 2006. Throw on the bank bailout in 2008, and you had outright betrayal. This is why the Tea Party exists today.

Lots of people looked at the Patriot Act as something they would temporarily put up with if it was what was required to deal with a problem(People with a love of dying for their god). It was NEVER meant to be permanent, but today, with Snowden's disclosures, it is bigger than ever. Apparently the wholesale spying on private US citizens started in 2007, and we only found out about it in 2012.

Failure to prosecute James Clapper for his lies under oath fully pulls back the curtain from the sham being perpetrated on the citizens of the US, if you ask me. This guy is a fixture of the system whose power grow as much under Bush as it did under Obama. For every one of him there are hundreds more in other Federal organizations, like the IRS, the ATF, ICE, Department of Labor, Homeland Security, the GSA, and so on. They are all above the law. The only thing that can get one actually prosecuted is betrayal of the others. Notice how Lois Lerner, while having lost her job from public scrutiny, has never been charged with a crime because the rest of the criminals, including those in the oval office, have kept their silence.

The institution is far bigger than any president or politician. Betrayal is suicide. Its people will do whatever they want, whenever they want because they are well aware of how untouchable they are.

 

The funny thing is that while Obama is very big on law and order and insists that Snowden should be prosecuted for breaking the law, he has no regard for the law when people lie under oath or engage in torture. Since he has already decided that the constitution is just a piece of paper, it is not surprising that equality in front of the law also goes out of the window and who gets prosecuted or not will depend on the King´s whim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

Poor Hoover´s agents had to listen to the phones manually and didn´t have the technology to track the whole population but imagine what they are doing with all these new technologies.
Earl, do you still want to leave everything to the professionals?
The more important question is if the democracy can survive an environment that everyone can be the subject of blackmail and political opposition be either discredited or pressured to accept what is going on.

 

Its exactly because of extremist statements like this that make your comments absurd.

If you think there are restrictions on freedom why not speak out on Russia, China, virtually the entire middle east and countless other nations that treat human beings as little more than work extensions of the national government.

 

I think that is a terrific question. Russia and China have always been horrid when it comes to individual liberty, though there are certainly places like N. Korea that are far worse.

Russia and China are useful examples because they are both countries with long histories of abuse of their own citizens that appear to be embracing capitalism and, at the same time, dramatically increasing civil liberties. Contrast that with America, which used to be held up as a shining example of both capitalism and individual liberty. We are not moving forward on those scales, we are moving backward and at a reasonably fast rate.

Whether we are measuring corruption, civil liberty, or social mobility, cost of health care, longevity, infant mortality, or any other number of measures, the US now ranks worse than several, and in some cases most other first world nations. Are we better than China or Russia? Sure. We are also better than Somalia, at least for now. Yay!!!!!

 

A couple of years ago when I was posting that arresting people or killing them without any legal framework is a slippery slope and should not be done, some of the members were defending those actions in the name of security of Americans and saying that these people are not Americans and the constitution, laws or human sense of justice doesn´t apply to them and this will never happen to Americans. What is happening today? What was being done to non American is being done to Americans. The problem is that you can only see today while I look at tomorrow.
I see that you did not comment on my quote about COINTELPRO. That program even targeted people like Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein and Dr. Martin Luther King so what make you think that with these extended capabilities the average citizens and politicians that oppose any government policy will be safe.
It is funny that you mention Russia. Can you see the RT TV in USA? Their programs are much more balanced and much more content rich discussions than CNN or any other American TV channel. It is interesting that while their media is moving forward, the American media are becoming more and more mouth piece of a government that is not even worth watching. Look at where CNN was 20 years ago and where is now. Does China, Russia, Middle East, UK,.... have problems? Certainly but the goal is to improve those countries and increase the equality and freedom there and not bring down the USA to the same standard as Somalia or N. Korea.

 

It is so patently stupid to present Russia in a shining light as to freedoms and openness. but don't look to me. Look to the Russians themselves or the folks from the Ukraine who are desperately protesting a connection to Russia even as their economy teeters, and Russia uses economic leverage and raw materials leverage to drive them back to some level of dependence on Russia.

Are there widespread killings and jailings inside the US because of findings by the NSA??? report them. match them against the human abuses that exist in Russia or China. Its a joke. Frankly the large scale leaks by Snowden have brought the entire Patriot Act out into the open. I would far prefer to see an Obama and an Obama administration review this than a Bush administration with a Cheney in power. The administration report has already brought up problems. Now lets see how it gets moved forward.

There is a lot we'll never know. Surveillance uncovered where bin laden was hiding. I'm sure you and o-nation could have uncovered bin laden on your own. But would you too have told the obama administration? probably not.

 

LOL. USA is better than Russian, is this all you can say? No comment on the danger of such programs to freedom and democracy. No comment on COINTELPRO program. No comment how the constitution has become a worthless piece of paper. No comment about unequality in front of law and they just decide who to prosecute or not based on government´s whim. So desperate to defend the Obama administration that you needed to bring out the old scarecrow, bin Laden.
If you are not going to engage in serious discussion then in the spirit of Christmas and to make you happy, I freely state that the USA is better than N. Korea, Somalia. Uganda,...

 

Cointelpro: ha ha. It was officially terminated in 1971. it was revealed it was criticized and officially terminated. Lets see that was over 40 years ago.

LOL. I'll tell you what gworld. as long as you are delving into history why don't you bring up jack the ripper and ming the merciless.

 

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-porn-surveillance-cointelpro-minaret/

LOL. It may be "officially" terminated but in reality seems to be replaced with the more advanced 2.0 version.

 

When the patriot act came out in 2001 there was no doubt it was going to impinge on freedoms. It was a tradeoff. Who the hell knew what would be done. Mobiles weren't as well developed and as widely used. who knew that the smart sob's at the NSA were going to outsmart the smart guys at the telecoms and crack their encryption code.

Clearly nobody knew where or how issues of personal freedom abuses were going to be identified but it would have been naive to think otherwise. Public consciousness of the issue had died down. Snowden's revelations have brought the issue to the forefront. Now there is a process of review. We'll see what will occur.

its ironic you should reference something like cointelpro. That was an abuse which was uncovered and then officially terminated.

If you actually paid attention to what was really occurring and not some loud extremist expression of radicalism at its loudest you would have known that this program was terminated over 40 years ago.

The health in a free society is to let the rule of law and democratic processes work. It appears that is what occurred with cointelpro. Hopefully we'll see similar processes occur now. They seem to be occurring.

 

Did you really just try and connect the NSA's illegal domestic spying programs to the very targeted Pakistani telco surveillance that brought Bin-Laden down? Wow.

 

Desperate times need desperate measures. I am surprised that Earl is not claiming that through NSA spying they have found the cure for cancer and all other diseases and that is the reason that the Obama health care site doesn´t actually need to work because there will be no patients.

 

I'd ask, at what point do they steal my business plan, and how do I find out it's been compromised?

There must be limits. I think the water's already boiling Mr Frog.

 

@gworld: Since you were obsessed with an FBI program that was terminated over 40 years ago here is a little new revelation about one of the incidents that helped to address FBI inappropriate behavior. Folks that stole secret FBI records back in 1971 have finally allowed their story to be told: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-fbi-abandon-shadows.html?hp&_r=0

Ultimately the abuses by the FBI were uncovered. Those abuses ended. Today there are a series of reviews of what the NSA is doing. We'll see how things are affected or changed. I see the review process as one that is healthy and a reflection of a democracy. At this stage I believe it is healthier than if Bush/Cheney were in power. I think they would have made every effort to crush any dissent. Its a matter of degree.

If an honest effort is made to roll back elements of the Patriot Act and its current processes I'm fine with that.

 

Everything flows, nothing stands still.- Plato

Thank you for pointing that out but does this mean that we should be quiet and accept that? Nazi rule in Germany also ended, The Gulags in Soviet also ended but does it make it right and part of "democratic" process? Not every process has the same ending, the best and current example is the situation in North Korea which is continuing in the third generation of the rulers. Forty years go, there was totally different technological, economical and social situation. What makes you think that the people can again stop the government again and we will not end up in a total dictatorship where every type of opposition can be crushed before even surfacing?

 

Oh the comic state of denial you live in. Obama has used the Espionage act to prosecute whistle blowers within his organization more than any president prior, including Bush the lessor. In fact, Obama has prosecuted more whistle blowers than all presidents before him combined.

A few excerpts, and you might note, these quotes are not from Sean Hannity who has been complaining about this since 2010: