Is the Government Crossing the Line with Unwarranted Surveillance?

[K.J.Healey]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/01/congress.surveillance/index.html

I've been following this quite closely, and have come to settle about halfway between both parties on this guy. While I believe he is intentionally being decietful in his statements concerning the lawyers' firings, I also feel that the Democratic party is going after him from too many angles trying to catch him on something/anything.

As for this current article about the clarification of the phone/wire-tapping program being considered the "whole project", and him saying it isn't (and the NSA saying they can't discuss any other aspects) leads me to believe that there ARE other aspects of unwarrented surveillance.
I figure there are only two things left :

GPS Tracking of Phones/Cars/Anything w/GPS - I have no problem with. I'm not hiding anything about where I go; and those that want to can turn that feature off.

Internet - The only other topic left is that within this program is unwarranted email monitoring or internet traffic monitoring. While I can see it possible to want to protect the citizens, at the same time its a question of where you draw the line.

If I'm some 18yr old kid downloading illegal movies and music, and I download something called "terrorist training video" just to see what it is, and it gets caught by the filter somehow, or I mention it in email, and they flag me, am I screwed? Would they then use that flag, be lead to illegal non-terrorist activities such as movie downloading, and then be arrested for it? I would feel that is nto only a violation of civil liberties but a corruption of what the program is intended for.

Does anyone have any comments or opinions about this trial/inquiry/questioning/hearing whatever you want to call it?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

To me it is clear that these guys think they are above the law, so the Dems should be digging for whatever they can get. The wall of secrecy that this admin enjoys is not how the government was designed to operate.

 

[edward]

Internet - The only other topic left is that within this program is unwarranted email monitoring or Internet traffic monitoring. While I can see it possible to want to protect the citizens, at the same time its a question of where you draw the line.

I tend to draw the line at an early point. And that point is, what do they really need to know to stop, terrorism. This program goes far far beyond wire taps and email.

Do they need to know what is in the average Americans medicine cabinet? Do they need to know a persons sexual orientation? Do they need to know what web sites a person frequents? Do they need to know that someone has a pay-pal account, and that they used it to buy a hubcap on eBay??

They are gathering this information on the entire population of the United States, not just a suspect few. It is an reserected version of the old "total information awareness" TIA. It is called ADVISE.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html

They are gathering so much trivial crap that they are going to end up falling in it face first. In the mean time the terrorists could be sending each other snail mail through a mailing service.

If you want to find a needle in a haystack, would you prefer to sort through a small haystack, or a haystack the size of the state of Texas?? The CIA ,FBI, NSA, and the military each have their own methods. Most of them employ civilian contractors to do the actual data mining.

Contractors for the federal government do not exactly have a good track record.

As far as I am concerned they still do not have a workable system and they have run the constitution through a paper shredder to develop it.

Remember these are the same brilliant minds who wanted to start a futures market to predict terrorist attacks.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/29/terror.market/index.html

 

[edward]

Now that I have hijacked the Gonzo thread:

How does the government know what is in your medicine cabinet or what web sites you have visited?? Choice Point, and it was not a wise choice.

While the NSA's practice of collecting billions of telephone records drew outrage in many quarters, another potential threat to individual privacy flew smoothly under the public radar -- the lucrative extension of a contract between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and notorious data broker ChoicePoint.

Give us a break, Choice Point was scammed by Nigerians and they still ended up with a multimillion dollar contract for a "top secret" government surveillance operation.

The deal was sharply criticized by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who called the Alpharetta, GA-based information seller "the poster child for lax security."

Leahy was referring to the infamous data breach of ChoicePoint's records by a ring of Nigerian identity thieves, leading to the theft of information on nearly 150,000 people.

emphasis mine.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2006/05/fbi_choicepoint.html

 

[BobG]

I don't normally like Lithwick's articles, but I have to agree with her take on Gonzales and the latest surveillance bill.

http://www.slate.com/id/2171839/nav/tap3/

Are Democrats taking molehills and turning them into mountains just for the show or is Gonzales really a person that shouldn't be trusted with matters affecting the nation?

Personally, I think it's the latter and Congress is just gutless. I think his performance before Congress pretty much speaks for itself and maybe a bit too well for Congress's taste. They don't seem to quite have it in them to actually do something about him.

 

[edward]

It is long past time for Gonzales to go.

I think that the democrats voted for the update of FISA because it contained both the words; foreign and terrorists. To oppose it would have labeled them "weak on terrorism" It is kind of ironic because the administration has ignored FISA anyway.

The same thing is probably true about the strictly domestic surveillance. One small incident of domestic terrorism, whether real or from Karl Roves imagination, would leave the democrats in a situation that could be exploited.

The democrats have put some heat on one of the newer domestic surveillance programs.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1006/100306cdpm1.htm