Alphecca

Your excerpt is out of context, as is the entire story from AP. Do a little research on the net and you will get a much more interesting picture of the situation. You will also find out that the NYT sat on this for a year. You will also find out that this startling "revelation" coincides with the release of a book some chowderhead is trying to hype.

The timing of the revelation isn't important to me. Curtailing the Fourth Amendment IS.

I'm getting deja moo.....the sense that I have heard this bullshit somewhere before....

There should be NO excuse for even the slightest infringement of ANY of the Bill of Rights.

There has always been an "excuse"....which is why we are in the quagmire we are in. None of them should ever have been tolerated for an instant.

The original idea was that human beings are endowed at creation with Freedom. Anything less is just more bull.

Because it is so outrageous I want to think through what I say before I post something I have to edit, heavily, as I did over the Cory Maye case.

Short to say, Bush should be impeached. At the least.

You need to practice for damn sure. You're not worth a damn at pissing me off. I was already pissed off at all the violations of our constitution. I don't care who does them, I don't care what else I may agree with them on.

If this is how you are going to try to piss me off, you would have a better chance offering me money to pretend. Yeah, that'll work. Agreeing with me doesn't get it.

Okay, we live in a country where the government can force you out of your home whenever it wants, enforce laws regardless of popular opinion, and in certain cases, allows one person to play judge, jury, and executioner (if you don't believe me, criticize a federal court judge sometime).

And you're heartbroken over an unsecure method of communication - currently not even covered by the SCotUS's version of the Fourth - being listened to?

Aren't there bigger things on your mind?

What Bush did is not illegal under the Constitution because the law allows eceptions in the case of foreign groups that are working against the US. Relevant discussions are taking place over at Jeff Goldsteins.

http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/19543/

http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/19547/

First the story is from the AP.
How can you believe anything the AP writes in regard to the Bush administration or the Republican party or anything about politics?
They have and are slanting, tayloring their stories to make Bush and the Republicans look bad ALWAYS. This includes ommitting facts and LYING.
Second and last, I remember reading a book called "The Puzzle Palace", or something like that over twenty years ago. It was about the "super secret" National Security Agency.
The book said that the NSA intercepted EVERY PHONE INTO AND OUT OF THE USA AND THIS WAS THEIR JOB, THE REASON THEY WERE CREATED AND EVERYONE IN CONGRESS KNEW IT.
This isn't news and Glenn Reynolds writes that phone calls are not as protected as people think.
I haven't read it.
But there is a good reason for it.
Imagine this.
Before WWII Naval intelligence had broken the Japanese codes, military and diplomatic codes.
Imagine the Japanese got suspicious and/or for security reason decided to call from a private residence to Japan instead of the embassy phones.
Would you want the government NOT TO TRACE THAT CALL? NOT TO KEEP CHECKS ON IT IN CASE THE JAPANESE USE IT AGAIN?
Absurd.
Why, after all these running this blog and seeing for yourself what liars the MSM are, you so quickly accept this as fact, that it was iniated by Bush and is illegal?
Don't you learn?
Terry

Carlos Marcello (a crime figure of New Orleans fame) once said that two people can keep a secret...if one of them is dead.

Your phone calls aren't priveliged. Anyone with a 900mhz scanner can listen to cell phone communications. It's against the law to record them, but not to listen to them. You're basically talking into a radio. Email security? Surely you jest!

The fourth amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure. If you put a communication out on the web, or into the radio ether, is it unreasonable that I listen to it?

I am fully as conservative as you are, Jeff, but if you want your communications to remain secret, whisper them into a receptive ear.

Jeff, I would argue whether e-mail communications are or should be protected, but thats not what is happening here. Thats not what the NYT reported. They reported that the President gave the NSA permission to eavesdrop on non covered persons (not US Citizens, here on a student or visitors visa). They might want to leave the impression of jack booted thugs standing outside your door, or an "enemy of the state" situation, but it is not what the meat of the report says.

There is a lot of meat on this bone!

It is kind of fun watching the libs squeel like pigs when one of their precious rights are allegedly infringed.

Who was is said be cautious the reasons ye violate (read infringe) the 2nd amendment for those very reasons may turn and bite you in the ass. (Derschowitz?)

Recall too the antis favorite claim to fame,"no right is inviolate".

As I understand it the NSA is operating under a PEO initiated by Clinton and the 2,000k intercepts were made on his watch. Also what you say "on a wire" is subject to "wire tap rule", but what you say in public (read over the air ways) has no constitutional safegards.

Taking a play from the anti handbook, "if you don't have anything to hide why are you concerned?"

Further moore my job is fairly common yet when the msm reports on my industry they invariably get it wrong. If they can't get the commonly known fact right how can anyone expect them to get the specifics right. Which leads me to believe that the msm is inept to the point of incompetance not only about what is important to me but *you* too.

Good thing there is the internet to turn to at least you can get a second opinion.

Note too that anything you send over the internet is fair game if not by the government then by anyone who want to listen. PGP is your only safegard

tg

If what I've read is true, Clinton did exactly the same thing. Why no uproar then?

Woops, meant to include the link.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/18/221452.shtml

This is, to say the least, old news.

I interviewed with NSA over 30 years ago, and was told at that time that any communication which is not completely domestic was "fair game".

I couldn't wait for 6 months for a top-secret clearance, or I might have taken the job, and then I wouldn't be able to tell you that. :-)

email is human readable - aloud.

If Clinton allowed it to happen then he was wrong but I didn't know about it. I was under the impression that a warrant was needed to tap phone lines and didn't the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act specifically detail that on domestic phones there must be a warrant issued by the court? Isn't there even a special high-speed court set up just for this? For that matter, they can tap a phone for 72 hours in an emergency situation before getting the court order.

Sorry, I don't care who did it before or why. If you set aside part of the Bill of Rights, then don't complain when your favorites are squashed later. Me, I'll complain all I want. If a phone is in a private home and the government wants to tap it (or the line) then show cause and get a fucking court order.

I don't recall the fourth amendment saying anything about this; merely that there is a prohibition on unreasonable searches.

The Constitution is entirely (and reasonably, no pun intended) mute about what constitutes the reasonableness of a search.

Unlike the examples of stifling the first and second amendments, there is no clear violation here, given that it is not clear that the searches in this case are, in fact, unreasonable.

In other words, I'm not at all sure a right is being abridged here.

Saying it is such is not showing that it is, or even an argument that it is, in fact. The legal mavens at Volokh claim the constitutional question is at best muddy, certainly not clearly against the claims that the President has made about it (which were evidently based on the assessment of DoJ and DoD lawyers, who are, to say the least, in a position to know the precedent and the letter of the law here).

I'm open to the argument that this could violate the constitution given specific legal precedents. But those precedents have not been shown, nor has the argument actually been made, at least not here.

Perhaps if some argument was made as to how such a search is, in fact, unreasonable?