Bush said he authorized eavesdropping by NIS

unfair!

It's unfair to spy on visiting students from the middle east.
How can a person learn to fly a plane, or learn about biochemistry with those darned old government agents listening in on their study groups?
 
Rich Lucibella said:
It would seem to me that tapping US Citizens' phones on a fishing expedition is far more eggregious than doing so when you have some reasonable expectation of garnering evidence of a crime.
Click to expand...
That's the thing... since it makes sense they'd already have "some reasonable expectation of garnering evidence of a crime"... wouldn't a warrant be a snap to get (I've even heard they have 72hrs in which to obtain the warrant after the fact)?

It doesn't make sense so there's gotta be something missing. Ok ok... there doesn't have to be something missing... I may not be capable of understanding - it's happened before. But, I'm tryin' people! :cool:

What do you think of this:
What if it was legal for government agencies to go on a fishing expedition with no warrant or approval authority needed. The only catch (punn intended), is they cannot prosecute for crimes discovered via this fishing expedition. They may only use this information to protect U.S. lands and it's citizens from attack.

Is this how it's already set up?

If not, would you feel better knowing their listening when they can't do anything about it?
 
Trip20, that's why I gave the URL to the article.

Wild, I believe you are wrong:

According to the statutes, wire taps (by intelligence communities of any sort) require a warrant, but only if the tap is conducted within the boundaries of the US. This is according to 50 USC 1801, and it's exceptions ( sec. 1802). Meaning that if the taps intercepted the calls, and such taps were conducted outside of the US, they are then lawful... And this is what we don't know. Where and how the information was collected.

Remember, we are talking about the interception of calls made by US citizens and or other lawful aliens, but not including foreign nationals that are here, in the US, as diplomatic entities. We are also talking about the intelligence community and not general law enforcement operatives.

This is why I beleive Wild is wrong. The intelligence communities operate on wholly different statutes than do standard law enforcement. The NSA itself, is prohibited from collecting data upon US citizens who reside fully within the US and its territories.

To me, this begs the question of why the Administration did not go to the FISA court to obtain the warrant. Such applications are extremely easy to obtain, and may even be brought to the court within 72 hours of the actual tap being put in place (retro authorization).

The logical answer that I keep coming back to? That even under the (very) loose standards of the FISA court, the Administration could not make its case.

Trip, is is quite possible and even probable, that the Administration was doing what it did and was perfectly lawful, yet the law under which it was operating was unconstitutional. That we won't know until/unless it goes to Court.

And yes, there are a whole lot of questions here.
 
Same here. It would seem to me that tapping US Citizens' phones on a fishing expedition is far more eggregious than doing so when you have some reasonable expectation of garnering evidence of a crime.
Click to expand...

I think the actual situation is a bit more complex.

As I understand it electronic surveillance of US residents (not always citizens) INTERNATIONAL phone calls is triggered by the appearance of the surveilled number or the surveilled individual in some type of record obtained from known terrorists or known terroist operating area. In other words, there is at least a NEXUS between the surveillee and terrorism. The key here is intelligence gathering. It is not fishing.

WildandthenextstepisAlaska
 
Wild, you are possibly forgetting one thing. The NSA, which is the organization that performed the taps, is specifically proihibited from operating upon US citizens within the US itself.

You are aware of the legal loophole whereby the Echelon system operates? The Brits intercept the (US) calls and hand over the info to us. Just as we intercept the British calls and turn over the info to them.

It is entirely possible that this same mechanism might be at operation here.
 
Nobody really knows what is really going on . We can all only assume . Me personaly think Mr. Bush should hire Monica back to the white house.So everyone buy more guns just incase he does mess up our country.
Stand tall side by side and defend her together cause WE make this country what it is.......
 
Damnit!!!

"Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security." - and will have NEITHER, I may add...

NEVER, EVER FORGET THIS!!! :mad:
 
US News
U.S. spy agency tapped into main arteries of U.S. telecom networkBy DPA
Dec 24, 2005, 19:00 GMT

Washington - As part of its domestic surveillance programme, the U.S. government's spy agency harvested more information than the White House has acknowledged and did so by tapping directly into some of the U.S. telecommunication network's main arteries, The New York Times reported Saturday.

As part of the programme, which allows domestic spying without warrants, the National Security Agency (NSA) gained the cooperation of U.S. telecommunications companies to get privileged backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, The Times reported, citing unnamed former and current U.S. government officials.

Some of the officials interviewed by the newspaper described the programme as a 'large data-mining operation,' The Times said.

Besides eavesdropping on specific conversations, the NSA also combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that could point to terrorism suspects, The Times reported.

An unnamed former technology manager at a major U.S. telecommunications company told The Times that since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the industry's leading companies have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government.

The so-called 'pattern analysis' of calls made within the United States would, in may cases, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who called whom, the newspaper reported.

Calls to and from Afghanistan were of particular interest to the NSA, officials told The Times. Obviously.

© 2005 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur


Surprise, surprise.... :barf:
 
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