Closing the Gap: US National Intelligence Surveillance Law

[Moridin]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/05/bush.surveillance/index.html

This law gives our intelligence professionals this greater flexibility while closing a dangerous gap in our intelligence-gathering activities that threatened to weaken our defenses," Bush said in a written statement issued by the White House.

The new law gives the attorney general or the director of national intelligence the authority to approve surveillance of suspected terrorists overseas.

The bill went through Congress over the weekend after heavy pressure from the Bush administration, which demanded that lawmakers remain in session until it passed.

This law will give the US national intelligence to monitor all emails that goes over US servers without a court order.

 

[edward]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/05/bush.surveillance/index.html


This law will give the US national intelligence to monitor all emails that goes over US servers without a court order.

They have been doing that since 2002, plus a lot more:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=179094

 

[drankin]

This doesn't bother me a bit. I don't see it as a threat to myself or my civil rights. Could you elaborate on what your concern is? Then we might have an interesting discussion.

 

[Moridin]

This also means that, say, Swedish telephone conversations to the US or any other country, provided that they go over a US server or network, can be monitored from the US without court permission.

 

[Manchot]

This doesn't bother me a bit. I don't see it as a threat to myself or my civil rights. Could you elaborate on what your concern is? Then we might have an interesting discussion.

For starters, it is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.

 

[edward]

This doesn't bother me a bit. I don't see it as a threat to myself or my civil rights. Could you elaborate on what your concern is? Then we might have an interesting discussion.

Being that it is all in violation of the constitution aside:

If there was a guarantee that vast amounts of data mining would work, I might be more likely to accept it. There is no guarantee. We have 12 different agencies gathering information from every possible source on every American. I would imagine that just dealing with the duplicate data would be staggering.

Much of the work is being outsourced to companies such as Choice Point, and Double Click, who have had their own security problems. When we rely on a high tech company that was duped by a bunch of Nigerians, we have a problem.

Be aware that the global telephone and Internet tracking is only a small part of this operation , and the only part that is open to the public. The rest is a massive domestic black operation. From what links I have come up with, if you would bother to read them, you might also be a bit wary of the governments ability to accomplish what they claim.

There is no reason to believe that we still won't end up one step behind the terrorists just as we were on 911. We had all of the, feet on the ground, information needed to stop 911 and it was ignored by those in charge. Now the Administration seems to think that taking a totally unproven radical approach will work.

Don't take this as some kind of a conspiracy accusation, but in my opinion this massive domestic data gathering project would work better as a tool for someone planning to take total political control of a country than for protecting that country from terrorists.

 

[drankin]

For starters, it is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.

You will have to show me the actual text. I think the words "direct violation" is obviously incorrect.

 

[edward]

We have a lot more going on than just surveillance of all Americans by the federal government.

Local law enforcement agencies are doing the same thing, but in a less sophisticated manner. They buy ineffective software from vendors and start there own databases. They are also buying raw data from various questionable vendors.

As a prime example of how inaccurate a police department data base can be, let's take a look at the Denver Orion project.

After the police decided to share the fruits of their surveillance with another local department, someone leaked a printout to an activist for social justice, who made the documents public. The mayor started an investigation. People lined up to obtain their files. Among those the police spied on were nuns, advocates for American Indians and church organizations.

To make matters worse, the software called many of the groups "criminal extremists."

"I wasn't threatened in any way by them watching," said Dr. Byron Plumley, who teaches religion and social values at Regis University in Denver, and discovered that the police had been keeping information about his activities against war. "But there's something different about having a file. If the police say, `Aha, he belongs to a criminal extremist organization,' who's going to know that it's the American Friends Service Committee, and we won the Nobel Peace Prize?"

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1221-04.htm