News NY Times discloses secret Executive Order: NSA is spying domestically

  • Thread starter Thread starter rachmaninoff
  • Start date Start date
Click For Summary
The discussion centers around a New York Times report revealing that President Bush authorized the NSA to conduct domestic eavesdropping without court-approved warrants in the wake of the September 11 attacks. This marked a significant shift in U.S. intelligence practices, raising concerns about potential violations of constitutional rights. Many participants express skepticism about the legality and oversight of such surveillance, with some arguing that it has been known for years that the government has extensive surveillance capabilities. Others debate the implications for privacy rights, suggesting that if individuals are not engaged in criminal activity, they should not be concerned about government monitoring. The conversation also touches on historical abuses of surveillance powers and the potential for misuse in political contexts. Participants highlight the need for checks and balances to prevent the erosion of civil liberties, emphasizing that judicial oversight is crucial to maintaining accountability in surveillance practices. The discussion reflects a broader concern about the balance between national security and individual rights in the context of government surveillance.
  • #31
We have the: NSA, CIA,FBI, ICE, ATF, DEA and the military all doing domestic spying. Did I miss any? Oh yes ,the Treasury Department and the Department of Commerce are also involved.

I hope they don't have a failure to communicate with each other as they did before 9/11.
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #32
. . . this has been known for quite awhile . . .
I think it was known that the NSA could spy and did so on non-citizens, however

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051217/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_nsa;_ylt=AqwDz8ZqlwgM8Qq9aiFbeT2s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

WASHINGTON - Dismayed lawmakers demanded on Friday that Congress look into whether the highly secretive National Security Agency was granted new powers to eavesdrop without warrants on people inside the United States.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," declared Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He promised hearings early next year.

President Bush refused to discuss whether he had authorized such domestic spying, saying to comment would tie his hands in fighting terrorists.

Nor would other officials confirm or deny whether the nation's largest spy agency was permitted to gather communications from Americans under a presidential directive signed in 2002.

Or maybe they are just acting surprised?

So we are back to 'secret' presidential directives. What other secrets is Bush hiding from Congress?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #33
moose said:
NSA workers aren't stupid. They would know if you are joking around/not being fully serious. That and I doubt they would even pay any attention to it, unless complete plans were made, and then maybe, just maybe, something would happen.
They're also not omnipotent. Do you guys really believe they can monitor 100% the communications in a nation with over 250 million people?

Russ's and your first response were the most sensible. Unless you've done something to draw attention to yourself, who's going bother monitoring your communications.

That doesn't mean that domestic surveillance can't be abused or hasn't been abused. Until exposed, the FBI ran a COINTELPRO program that went far beyond it's intended purposes. Senator Frank Church, chairman of the Senate committee investigating the program:

"Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propogation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence."

In fact, if Nixon had had his way, Hoover would have gone even further: http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/hoover/12.html

I sort of wonder what Tenet would have done in Hoover's situation. Of course, Tenet probably never assembled quite as many http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/hoover/2.html on those in power as Hoover did. Hoover was pretty good at protecting himself.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #34
  • #35
The problem is not certain agencies spying on suspected terrorists, the problem and the imminent threat to the Constitution is that they did it without a court order.

Edit: Actually, it's too late to call it an imminent threat. We are way past the mere threat level.
 
Last edited:
  • #36
Oh yes, and according to Bob Barr, of all people, on CNN today, the "useful" information obtained was about an idiotic plot, planned by idiots, to cut down the Brooklyn Bridge with blow torches - the word idiot being his word of choice.
 
  • #37
Evo said:
Actually, this has been pretty much known for quite awhile, lots of articles about it in the last couple of years. The government's ability to demand access to ISP's records, etc... phone taps, this isn't new.
I attended a seminar (for about 30 of us) my company (a major telecom) held for us a couple of years ago with a person who was the former technology advisor to Chief Justice Warren Burger, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, The Executive Office of the President of the United States, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This stuff isn't secret. He was a cool guy, great to talk to. Quite an eye opener.
Yeah, Its been done for I don't know how long. Several US government organizations have their own systems, the NSA's domestic one is called Predator I think. ECHELON is the largest in the world. Originally set up by the UK and US in World War II mainly against the Soviets, it still is up and running, monitoring almost the entire world and now New Zealand and Australia have joined in. The NSA/CSS and CIA use it, UK organizations, as well as the Canadian DOND, for themselves. Each country has their responsibility to monitor a particular section of the Earth. It is built and maintained by Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Zeta Associates, Zeta Associates keeps a low profile. They aren't on Google. Now THAT is low.
 
Last edited:
  • #38
Mk said:
and Zeta Associates, Zeta Associates keeps a low profile. They aren't on Google. Now THAT is low.
www.zai.com said:
Welcome to Zeta Associates!
1st hit on google. You must be confused, Mk. :confused:
 
  • #39
That's not the same Zeta Associate's website. Neither is the one like two hits under it, or zetatech.com or alphadeltazeta.com. I mean, if you look at the site, ask yourself if Raytheon or Lockheed Martin would have that kind of site.
http://raytheon.com/
http://lockheemartin.com/
http://www.zai.com/overview.html

And zai.com's copyright is five (almost six) years expired.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #40
Then how do you expect to convince me a different, more secretive "Zeta associates" exists? Even if you succeed in convincing me, your post will end up on google in a day or two, defeating your own statement.
 
  • #41
I can't believe that people are being so nonchalant about our right to privacy and our right to no warrant-less searches. Seriously, "If you aren't planning on causing some terror (!), then the government will take no interest in you anyway?" Am I actually reading this? I thought that no one seriously used that line an argument. It's about our right to privacy, which is one of our most fundamental rights, much more so than our "right" to bear arms.
 
  • #42
Mk said:
Yeah, Its been done for I don't know how long. Several US government organizations have their own systems, the NSA's domestic one is called Predator I think. ECHELON is the largest in the world. Originally set up by the UK and US in World War II mainly against the Soviets, it still is up and running, monitoring almost the entire world and now New Zealand and Australia have joined in. The NSA/CSS and CIA use it, UK organizations, as well as the Canadian DOND, for themselves. Each country has their responsibility to monitor a particular section of the Earth. It is built and maintained by Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Zeta Associates, Zeta Associates keeps a low profile. They aren't on Google. Now THAT is low.
Meredith Hill in the UK, where the US and UK monitor transatlantic communication - basically spying on anyone and everyone.
 
  • #43
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday he personally has authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and he lashed out at those involved in publicly revealing the program. "This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security,"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051217/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_2;_ylt=AkOjIRraxSL3fmishUkEHUbB4FkB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl"

I wonder, what if Senate had a vote on this? They rejected the current "Patriot", and that's even less questionable than this. Can Congress override such Executive orders with a simple majority?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #44
Manchot said:
I can't believe that people are being so nonchalant about our right to privacy and our right to no warrant-less searches.
Have you figured out yet that the police are allowed to make warrant-less searches?
 
  • #45
Hurkyl said:
Have you figured out yet that the police are allowed to make warrant-less searches?

And if they abuse that power, they can get sued. There's oversight and culpability there. With what the NSA is now allowed to do, there's no judicial oversight and no one is culpable.
 
  • #46
rachmaninoff said:
And if they abuse that power, they can get sued. There's oversight and culpability there. With what the NSA is now allowed to do, there's no judicial oversight and no one is culpable.
You miss my point; Manchot is complaining about the fact that the power to do warrant-less searches even exists.
 
  • #47
rachmaninoff said:
And if they abuse that power, they can get sued. There's oversight and culpability there. With what the NSA is now allowed to do, there's no judicial oversight and no one is culpable.

It isn't just NSA doing the domestic surveillance. It is wide spread within a number of government agencies. The latest targets are cell phones, internet chat rooms, and forums like this one. If a chat room or forum has members who are form a foreign country and a format that enables private messaging they are being heavily monitored.

This is necessary for national security because the PM bypasses the normal ISP of e-mails. My greatest concern is that with all of this information floating around numerous agencies, they may fail to see the forrest for the trees. The failure of agencies to communicate was involved in the entire 9/11 intelligence failure.

There are so many agencies and sub agencies gathering intel in the link below, I couldn't even count them all. + There are lots of clickable sub links.

http://www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel.html

http://www.intelligence.gov/
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #48
Defiant Bush Confirms Eavesdropping Program

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5060012

NPR.org, December 17, 2005 ·
President Bush confirms he authorized secret domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency. But he lashed out at those who object, saying the spying is aimed only at people believed to have a clear link to terrorist organizations.

See related stories.
 
  • #49
Have you figured out yet that the police are allowed to make warrant-less searches?

Does that make it any better?
 
  • #50
Manchot said:
Does that make it any better?
I have this naive hope that you aren't going to go off the deep-end and say that policemen shouldn't be allowed to conduct reasonable searches and seizures based upon having probable cause. It should be clear that we do not have a "right" to no warrant-less searches, and it would be unreasonable to think that we should.
 
  • #51
Astronuc said:
Meredith Hill in the UK, where the US and UK monitor transatlantic communication - basically spying on anyone and everyone.
A few years back there was a diplomatic incident between Britain and Ireland when it was found that GCHQ (the British spy centre) was listening in on all calls to and from Ireland. This had started with good intentions to find out what the IRA were planning but as always seems to happen in such situations the temptation to misuse the information gleaned won out over principles and the British began to use the information they were collecting to win commercial contracts where Ireland and England were competing for foreign investment.

It is a very dangerous path when you have a president deciding who should be tapped to protect national security. The Bush admin believe anything but a republican gov't is a threat to national security and so it is a short step for them to abuse these powers they have seized for political ends.

Nobody suggests that suspected terrorists should not be put under surveilence but what is wrong with the court order system? One can only presume that Bush and co. must think a judge would not grant some of their requests and so one should wonder if the admin's case is as compelling as Bush claims as if it was the judicial oversight system would suffice.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #52
Art said:
Nobody suggests that suspected terrorists should not be put under surveilence but what is wrong with the court order system? One can only presume that Bush and co. must think a judge would not grant some of their requests and so one should wonder if the admin's case is as compelling as Bush claims as if it was the judicial oversight system would suffice.

There simply aren't enough judges to handle all of the requests for court orders that would have to be made. Domestic intel operations are far to massive.
 
  • #53
edward said:
There simply aren't enough judges to handle all of the requests for court orders that would have to be made. Domestic intel operations are far to massive.
:confused: there's lots of judges and only one president yet he found the time to sign off on them.
Unrepentant Bush reveals he ordered secret wiretaps in US
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 18/12/2005)
President George W Bush revealed yesterday that he had personally authorised 30 secret wiretaps in the United States since the September 11 terror attacks as he strongly defended his administration's clandestine eavesdropping programme.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...18.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/18/ixnewstop.html
I'm sure he could have found judges to sign off on 30 wiretaps! That is unless of course his motives were suspect or he had zero probable cause. It would be very interesting to know who these suspected terrorists were. His personal involvement suggests a certain sensitivity about the people being scrutenised. Senior politicians in the US perhaps??
Many people are claiming what he is doing is illegal if so than it sounds like something he should be impeached for.
Mr Specter questioned the legality of Mr Bush's executive orders, saying: "The law prohibits this type of electronic surveillance."

Some lawmakers called for an immediate end to the programme.

Reacting yesterday to Mr Bush's defence, Russell Feingold, a Democratic senator, said the president's remarks were "breathtaking in how extreme they were".

He described as "absurd" Mr Bush's explanation that he relied on his inherent power as president to authorise extra-judicial wiretaps. "If that's true, he doesn't need the Patriot Act because he can just make it up as he goes along.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • #54
Astronuc said:
Because a phone conversation in the privacy of one's home is not in a public forum, unless one now considers the telecom systems to be public forums.
Yes, the situations are different, but not as different as most people think: Empty the restaurant. What has changed? Nothing. People tend to forget that the staff of the restaurant is still part of the public and will inevitably still overhear things. It is precisely the same with your phone company: they own the phone lines and they work on the phone lines. You never know when someone might be listening in due to the necessity of working on your lines (that need is decreasing with technology, but it's still there).

Really, I think privacy is maintained in phone lines mostly because of tradition. There is no logical reason why your phone company doesn't own your phone conversations, just like AOL owns your emails.

Caveat: I'm talking here about hypothetical logic and practicality. Laws are not necessarily always logically consistent, even though they are supposed to be. And I'm really not clear on what the law says on this isue. But I think that if the laws prevent this kind of thing, they may soon change because of the logic behind email's working getting itself into the forefront of people's consciousness. I can see no logical reason why the police (or FBI or NSA) shouldn't be able to simply request a wiretap from the phone company instead of getting a court order to both allow and require one. They already get the calling records (time, number, duration) by request alone - I see no logical reason why the content of the phone conversation shouldn't be similarly available.
 
  • #55
Manchot said:
It's about our right to privacy, which is one of our most fundamental rights, much more so than our "right" to bear arms.
Is it? Where do you get that idea? If privacy is such a fundamental right, why does the word "privacy" not appear in the Bill of Rights? Why is the closest thing to a "right to privacy" the 4th Amendment, which isn't a blanket right to privacy, but merely prohibits unreasonable search and siezure?

There are certain, specific instances where your privacy is protected under the law, but by and large, the right to privacy is a myth. And in my opinion, rightly so. There is too much secrecy in the world. Too many people are afraid to speak their minds or be themselves because of the fear of people thinking differently of them. But that is changing, with the internet and blogs. Kids today share their innermost thoughts with the entire world, and do you know what they are finding out about those deep-dark secrets that everyone has? Everyone has them and they are all the same! How ironic is that?

Heck, one thing I consider a fundamental part of being an adult is dropping the need for secrecy and starting to feel comfortable with who you are - and the corollary is that one of the biggest problems teenagers face is the perceived need to fit in. Why care if you are different? Why care if people are watching and will find out? What is there to be afraid of?
 
Last edited:
  • #56
Russ, the problem arise when you have a criminal state spying on it's inocent citizens.

In the 70' dictatorship here in argentina people were kidnaped and tortured based on others kidnapeds phonebooks... For example if they suspected of me they kidnapedme, take my phonebook and kidnaped all my contacts. Just imagine what a criminal state could do with all this power and technology. You are being to much optimistic about the real nature of the human being.
 
  • #57
Burnsys said:
Russ, the problem arise when you have a criminal state spying on it's inocent citizens.

In the 70' dictatorship here in argentina people were kidnaped and tortured based on others kidnapeds phonebooks... For example if they suspected of me they kidnapedme, take my phonebook and kidnaped all my contacts. Just imagine what a criminal state could do with all this power and technology. You are being to much optimistic about the real nature of the human being.
So... does that mean that you agree that in a stable, open democracy, there is no need for secrecy?

The US is not a dictatorship and does not kidnap and torture random civilians.

I recognize that one of the reasons people fear openness is a general distrust of others, specifically in the government, but in the western world, I don't consider that to be a rational, realistic fear. I'll use my common analogy: just because people are afraid of airplanes, that doesn't mean they aren't safe.
 
  • #58
mezarashi said:
What I think is the right to know that you are being monitored. When you call those support centers, they sometimes tell you that your call may be monitored. That is correct practice. In a crowded restaurant, sure I know that the guy sitting beside could potentially listen in. But on the phone, I wouldn't expect the same. There are times you don't want people knowing about parts of your life.

The whole issue about privacy isn't just about privacy. Atleast not in my opinion. It's about how it can be abused. If you know the guy who's doing these 'investigations', it's mighty easy to get someone marked a terrorist suspect isn't it. Although it may sound okay that this info is going to the 'government', but government is still people.
That's all true, but I think people make unrealistic assumptions about their privacy. On the internet, if a site doesn't have a privacy policy posted, people assume (or they should) that any information they submit to the site can/will be used for whatever purpose the company wants. People should apply the same default assumption to other communications media.

On that, does anyone know if phone companies have TOS policies that include a privacy policy?
 
  • #59
russ_watters said:
So... does that mean that you agree that in a stable, open democracy, there is no need for secrecy?
Never thougth about that. but i don't believe there is any stable open democracy. i think they are all dictatorships diguised as democracys. (USA, and my country included)

The US is not a dictatorship and does not kidnap and torture random civilians.
mm. maybe not inside, but it's it daily job in irak and afghanistan...
(Replace Random civilian with Suspected terrorists.)

I recognize that one of the reasons people fear openness is a general distrust of others, specifically in the government, but in the western world, I don't consider that to be a rational, realistic fear. I'll use my common analogy: just because people are afraid of airplanes, that doesn't mean they aren't safe.
Beliveme 30.000 were killed here in my country, and i can see everyday that those same people who organized and runned the dictatorship of the 70' are well alive and running my government in key positions...
 
  • #60
Burnsys said:
Beliveme 30.000 were killed here in my country, and i can see everyday that those same people who organized and runned the dictatorship of the 70' are well alive and running my government in key positions...
Burnsys, I just said 'planes are safe' and your response was 'cars are not safe'. So what? Your response has nothing to do with what I said.
 

Similar threads

News Revealed: US Military Eavesdropped on American Citizens
  • · Replies 13 ·
Replies
13
Views
3K
News Do NSA wiretaps really involve data mining of all our telecommunications?
  • · Replies 9 ·
Replies
9
Views
4K
Could a Disabled Spy Satellite Pose a Threat to Earth?
  • · Replies 80 ·
3
Replies
80
Views
12K
News Should the Times and the Washington post be presecuted
  • · Replies 25 ·
Replies
25
Views
4K
News REX 84: Examining the Secret Plan for U.S. Domestic Martial Law
  • · Replies 9 ·
Replies
9
Views
6K
News CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
  • · Replies 51 ·
2
Replies
51
Views
6K
News Many Americans are Simply Dumber Than Bush
  • · Replies 38 ·
2
Replies
38
Views
5K
News Patriot Act 2: Summarized by Alex Jones
  • · Replies 10 ·
Replies
10
Views
4K
News Should the US intervene in world problems?
  • · Replies 29 ·
Replies
29
Views
10K
News Is Criticizing Government Leaders Considered Sedition?
  • · Replies 19 ·
Replies
19
Views
10K