The outrageous behavior continues...

It's amazing, what you can find if you fact-check his statements... that could be a whole cottage industry if only there were money in it.
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There are folks at Media Matters that seem to make a living doing it .... there is money coming from somewhere ......
 
Good point. And they do it pretty well. But "the all Rush Limbaugh, all the time" fact-check site would still have its hands full... :p
 
Phone conversation

Can they listen in or record all conversation one makes with Verizon? I been a customer for 4 years now. Are all my contacts and conversations being listened to?
 
Liberty means that you take some risks to preserve freedoms.
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Absolutely true. I've been saying this for quite a while. But this does not seem to be the popular view. So many people just don't want to be "inconvenienced." So much easier to be "safe."
 
There are two different projects being run by NSA. There is this particular project, which is to accumulate metadata on EVERY call (and presumably text communications as well) in or out of the US, and apparently including not just Verizon but also the other backbone carriers as well.

Then there is a project called PRISM, which predates the above effort. Little is known for certain about it other than it (apparently) generates keyword searches against the actual content of communications (apparently both text and voice communications). I believe this is done in real time, and am not certain whether it is also done against archived content. PRISM has, apparently, been around since 2006 (possibly prior to that), and it's unclear to me the breadth and depth of the monitoring which has been done and how much has been done independently of FISA authorization.
 
There are two different projects being run by NSA. There is this particular project, which is to accumulate metadata on EVERY call (and presumably text communications as well) in or out of the US, and apparently including not just Verizon but also the other backbone carriers as well.
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As I understand it, it's not just every international call that's included. The NSA is empowered to collect metadata on all communications by anyone who has ever made an international call.
 
As I understand it, it's not just every international call that's included. The NSA is empowered to collect metadata on all communications by anyone who has ever made an international call.
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I apologize if I was unclear. The collection has been, apparently, on every call on Verizon's system(s), whether international or not. Basically every message or call which has flowed through their communications network is subject to this order, whether international or not, and regardless of the citizenship of either party.
 
You're right -- that does now seem to be what they're doing. It's all the more outrageous given that by law, the NSA is -- at least in theory -- restricted to monitoring foreign communications. They have justified retaining data collected within the US on the grounds that it may be necessary "as background" to understand the context or patterns of the foreign communications data they collect. That appears to be the rationale in this case: they need to analyze everything in order to find patterns that deviate from the norm.
 
they need to analyze everything in order to find patterns that deviate from the norm.
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And what may I ask... is the norm?

What is normal for me to make versus another American? What if I suddenly have a new business venture of meet someone from out of country?


I wont let anyone tell me what is NORMAL for me.
 
Dumping Google - but where to go?

I'm going to close my Gmail accounts and do all that I can to disassociate myself from Google. To that end,- where would be a good place to take my accounts and business?
 
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A search engine that doesn't record info is startpage.com.
I don't know about e-mail other than the reagan.com that Rush advertises for.

It's either ironic or cynical that Google's motto is don't be evil....
 
Bing or Dogpile, a meta engine you can disregard the Google response.
Ask is good for actual questions. Yahoo if you want to buy something.
 
The problem is that the American people just aren't very outraged by this. A Pew Research poll came out today asking the following:

What do you think is more important right now - for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy; or for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats?
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62% responded they'd rather investigate threats, even if it invaded privacy.

it has been reported that the National Security Agency has been getting secret court orders to track telephone call records of MILLIONS of Americans in an effort to investigate terrorism. Would you consider this access to telephone call records an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism?
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56% found this acceptable.

We've been happily surrendering our privacy in the name of security ever since 9/11, whether we know it or not. As a country, we acquiesced to the PATRIOT Act without more than scattered murmurs of dissent, and we didn't notice when it was expanded and certain elements were made permanent in 2005.

FISA? Most of us don't know what it even is, and most don't care.

These are not the measures the government of a just and free society should be taking, but if the public doesn't dissent, what's to stop it?
 
Tom Servo said:
We've been happily surrendering our privacy in the name of security ever since 9/11, whether we know it or not. As a country, we acquiesced to the PATRIOT Act without more than scattered murmurs of dissent, and we didn't notice when it was expanded and certain elements were made permanent in 2005.

FISA? Most of us don't know what it even is, and most don't care.

These are not the measures the government of a just and free society should be taking, but if the public doesn't dissent, what's to stop it?
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All true, and a big part of the problem is that the mainstream media don't cover this sort of thing with anything like the sort of fervor they devote to anything that looks the least bit like terrorism, or to mass shootings, or to royal pregnancies.

It's the Guardian, an English newspaper, that's been responsible for breaking these stories; although their lead in this is Glenn Greenwald, a fiercely patriotic (IMO) American constitutional lawyer who had to go work for them in order to get any real outlet for his voice. He has been writing about these issues for years, but no major American news organization would touch him.

The only relevant story on the front page of the New York Times at the moment is one about the DOJ's preparations to charge Eric Snowden with releasing classified information. I'm so glad they're hard at work protecting us from this man, and that the Times is explaining why he's so dangerous... :cool:
 
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Now maybe, Lindsay Graham's sex life or that of John McCain is nothing that they want to hide but .
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No! That's OK. I'll support a bill to keep that classified. :(

That said, my problem is with the wide and indiscriminate net we've given them to cast. They're not getting a subpoena for records of Larry's string of calls to Moe during a specific period for a specific reason. They're getting all the traffic from that provider.

Curly and Shemp have done nothing wrong. Nor are they suspected of wrongdoing. Yet their records are being collected as well. Oh sure, they've got nothing to hide, so why worry? Besides, it's just the metadata, not the actual content, right?

Honestly, if you can get the metadata, the content is just as easy. We have to take them on their word that they're stopping there, and I'm not fond of taking the word of Star Chambers and secret courts.
 
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