I think wiretaps are good.

Wiretapping can be a good tool to fight terrorism. But, honestly, how hard would it be for them to get a FISA warrant? From what I have read, FISA doesn't turn many requests down. If there is good reason to wiretap, why would they turn down the warrant?

This is what concerns me. No checks and balances. We just have to take Bush's word for it. He bypassed congress in getting them to vote to give him the authority to go to war. He has bypassed the courts in this. If the case for war was good, why did he need to be the one to make the decision, and if the case to wiretap is good, why does he have to be the one to decide? If the cases were good, he WOULDN'T have to be the one to decide.

Where the fuck are our congress and courts? They just hand their power over, and don't hold * accountable at all. We have three brances for a reason.

Argh!

:mad: :mad: :rant:

yet they can't get a warrant?

please... :eyes?

I have no problem with legally conducted wiretapping. This wholesale wiretapping is just a waste of resources. Peaceniks and tree huggers weren't the ones that ran into the towers. Meanwhile, Bin Laden is still roaming around.

After all, warrants are good, too.

Surely, some warrants would be granted that are not "warranted", but at least that is a check of power. It is someone to look at * and say, "Wait a minute, why do you want to do this?"

:hi:

:evilgrin:

With great power comes great responsibility. In shirking off responsibility for Katrina, intelligence, the CIA leak, etc, he is symbolically relinquishing the power of his office.

:rofl:

If Bush is the Decider, why the heck can't he be the Responsibler??

:evilgrin:

Everybody says "wouldn't you torture somebody to get information to stop a terrorist attack that would kill thousands?"

It's a non-issue because the whole point of intel is that you don't *really* know enough to say that this guy has the info you need. If you did, you wouldn't need him in the first place. Same thing with wiretaps: you don't *know* if the guy is communicating with terrorists; if you did you'd just cut those terrorists off. You know certain communication patterns match terrorist activity, often. That's all you know.

Intel is complex. It's real shades-of-grey stuff. That's why you're supposed to get more than one input for a decision.

It is all so subjective. Surely, soon we will hear of a case of a suspected terrorist that was caught through these wiretaps. They will say if it were not for this system, we would not have caught the terrorist. But they will make no mention that it would have been a breeze to get a FISA warrant.

and he LIED about it when testifying..

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=mi...

snip

October 17, 2002: NSA Denies Having Indications of 9/11 Planning NSA Director Michael Hayden.
NSA Director Michael Hayden testifies before the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry

NSA Director Michael Hayden testifies before the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry that the “NSA had no that al-Qaeda was specifically targeting New York and Washington ... or even that it was planning an attack on US soil.” Before 9/11, the “NSA had no knowledge ... that any of the attackers were in the United States.” Supposedly, a post-9/11 NSA review found no intercepts of calls involving any of the 19 hijackers.

Yet, in the summer of 2001 (see Summer 2001), the NSA intercepted communications between Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and hijacker Mohamed Atta, when he was in charge of operations in the US. What was said between the two has not been revealed. The NSA also intercepted multiple phone calls from Abu Zubaida, bin Laden’s chief of operations, to the US in the days before 9/11 (see Early September 2001). But who was called or what was said has not been revealed.

There is too much crap going on in this administration to keep track of any more.

That is a good bit of info.

What we have is a blanket dragnet that's not targeted, and that's different. If someone is a suspect here or overseas anyone calling them or that they can could be tracked, no big deal. But what cause do they have to track calls between us and our congresspeople, or between them and the press, or whatever else? Might it be useful for them to know who we're talking to for reasons that have nothing at all to do with terrorism or national security? How useful might it be to see who a reporter talks to, or a potential political rival, even if they don't know what was said?

I have no problem with things done according to law, with a warrant, and based on probable cause. I don't accept the idea of placing a nation under surveillance just because someone somewhere must be doing something. That's too much.

Such an interesting concept probable cause is.

Very interesting!

Too many people with that kind of attitude instead of gettng pissed off like they should!

With the difference that the majority of Americans have now come around, but a bit late.

stated in the constitution.

Whether wiretaps are "good" or "bad" is not the issue. If I burn myself on a hot stove I don't say that all stoves are bad. I say that the asshole that left it on for no reason did a bad thing.

The law is easy enough for them to follow, and the fact that they don't raises the hackles, for sure.

:hi:

I mean, why don't they just get the call records from the numbers we know are terrorist connected. Why do they have to have everyone's data? They don't. Two phone numbers connecting to each other and how many and how long their calls are, don't tell anyone if those numbers are terrorists. It is so pointless and overbearing.

Liberty is the protection from the arbitrary use of power, and these programs, both the call database one and the warrantless wiretapping one, are so open to the arbitrary use of power they are tyrannical. Most people don't have anything criminal to hide, but they might have something personal to hide.

:(

...all he or she needs is a good enough lawyer, and s/he's free, and it's Bush's fault

I bet bin Laden could get a lawyer like that

It isn't that difficult to get a warrant from FISA if needed. So, they get a real bad guy without the warrant, and it ends up being a bad arrest.

Really, I don't think some of these guys will end up going to trial. They will just go to GITMO.

and vote a Constitutional Democracy back in, we'll be forced to let these guys go

The long term was surely not something that was a concern in this administration.

.