Yesterday, Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers and 212 other members of the House voted against an amendment that would have removed the ability of the military to indefinitely detain Americans.
It's the illogic of saying terrorists hate our freedoms. Consequently, we must remove as much freedom as possible to protect ourselves.
Try Not to Sing Along
2 months ago
37 comments:
In related news:
President Obama committed the US to the Middle-East War, without Congressional authorization, after being taunted as a "wuss" by the Clintons.
You'd almost think Hillary was starting her campaign for President. She has a history of voting for wars as political calculation.
You'd almost think the President needed a distraction from his illegal surveillance, Gitmo, assasination, torture, signing indefinite detention into law and other scandals.
Here in Lilac City, the "right people" are holding hands and singing Kumbaya, while agreeing to expand surveillance of us "wrong people."
You'd almost thing the elites feared protests.
We're on the road to Damascus. S'all right, every Constitutional violation is justified under the pall of war.
No surprises ahead.
Joe Biden demands Congressional action!
"I don't have to listen to your phone calls to know what you're doing. If I know every single phone call you made, I'm able to determine every single person you talked to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. . . . If it's true that 200 million Americans' phone calls were monitored - in terms of not listening to what they said, but to whom they spoke and who spoke to them - I don't know, the Congress should investigative this."
The Honorable Darrell Issa
Chairman, House Committee on Government Reform & Oversight
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Chairman Issa:
Thank you for your ongoing efforts to investigate abuses of civil liberties by employees of the Internal Revenue Service.
These abuses seem to indicate a larger, higher pattern of ideologically-driven harassment of Americans which Congress has an obligation to fully investigate with every tool at our disposal.
Frankly I am disappointed by revelations Obama administration personnel have been less than forward about what they knew and when they knew it.
As you know, recent revelations show the National Security Agency has been keeping an “ongoing, daily” log of every domestic phone call in the United States.
I respectfully request your Committee subpoena the records of every phone call made from all public and private telephones of all IRS personnel to all public and private telephones of all White House personnel.
If President Obama is collecting such information, he certainly would want us to use it. If he has nothing to hide he has nothing to be afraid of.
Warmest wishes,
STEVE STOCKMAN
Member of Congress
Will Obama forbidden federal employees from reading the NSA documents, the way he did with Wikileaks?
I wonder if the banking system and paypal will cut off the Guardian.
I'd have a hard time believing Greenwald is raping women in Sweden, though.
Belatedly-briefed Representative Sanchez says Obama's surveillance is far broader than reported so far. Greenwald says he's proofreading the next revelations. The NSA admits there's more out there.
Administration officials are running around like headless chickens. The Right People are initiating wars, campaigns, twitter accounts--anything to distract. Hey, how bout Snowden is a Chinese spy?
We The Wrong People wait and watch and laugh.
Someone's praying, Lord, kumbaya
Someone's taping it, Lord , kumbaya
Metaphysical data tracking, Lord, kumbaya
Oh Lord, kumbaya
Gitmo's open, Lord, kumbaya
C-in-C can close it, Lord, kumbaya
But he blames Congress, Lord, kumbaya
Oh Lord, kumbaya
The elite bipartisan political agreement on surveillance cannot be sustained without ceding power to challengers promising a more literal and traditional understanding of the Fourth Amendment.
Americans see history as a destined progression to greater freedom. The elites safety-based counter-narrative does not offer a similar resonance. We are not Singapore.
The elites can extend their kumbaya moment, or they can retain power, but they cannot have both while maintaining any semblance of free elections.
Idealism or populism are not the only forces in play.
Data collected can no longer be segregated from political discourse by an agreed elite defintion of security. (Or by a de facto agreement to let secret agencies define security.). With the secrecy pulled back, everyone will want to advise or be the man behind the curtain. Everyone will have a different definition of security. Everyone will want agencies vetted for bias. Everyone will want that data for other purposes. What gets collected, for what purpose, and who can see it will become very divisive political questions.
Factions will arise even within the elite surveillance ideological paradigm, and their disputes will become public as elites seek popular support for their surveillance positions.
Surveillance stability based on current elite kumbaya will gobuhbye.
There is reason for guarded optimism for a return to the rule of law based on the Fourth, First, Fifth, and Sixth.
Besides factionalism on surveillance, there is the elite-popular chasm on the Syrian War. Obama-McCain-Clintons unConstitutionally forced Americans into this war in the most insulting, dismissive manner possible. Nonelites are united in shock to suddenly find ourselves at war again, with no public debate, and in a far more dangerous scenario than Libya. So the elites secretly committed us weeks ago, and that's supposed to make us feel better?
No one has any love for the Syrian dictatorship. But, what are we signing onto in Turkey (do we support that dictator?), in Lebanon (!), and what are we allowing Israel to do in our name, including against Iran?
The Elites Secret War in Syria puts a different spin on surveillance for security's sake. Surveillance of Americans for whose benefit? If Obama's illegal war continues to be unpopular, then the current trend in polls toward popular condemnation of surveillance and praise of whistleblower Snowden will accelerate. Whistleblowers are becoming heroes as our leaders lie and scheme wars in secret.
The polls on Syria are solidly against intervention, even though the questions are phrased in almost hillariously pro-intervention language:
http://www.pollingreport.com/syria.htm
Obama-Clintons-McCain-NSA etc may have meant the Elite Syrian War as a diversion and to rally Americans around the flag. But if so, they misalculated the current popular mood, and risk support for either policy by linking them in the public mind.
We have no say, and they're watching us to make sure we don't say anything. As a political scientist might observe, technically speaking, people could grow tired of this shit.
Obama is routing weapons through Turkey to Syrian rebels, which indicates a tilt toward Erdogan and against prodemocracy demonstrators in Turkey.
I'm so ignorant. I didn't realize Bill and Hillary were still in public office, let alone offices that allowed them to declare war.
Their server keeps going down, but CNET reported a couple hours ago that the NSA admitted to massive, warrantless phone wiretaps--content, not just metadata--at the Congressional hearing this week. These wiretaps would apear to be in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment.
If true, we are looking at the greatest Constitutional crisis since the Civil War.
I fear for my country.
So now we're allowed to talk about PRISM and metadata, but we are not allowed to discuss the larger truth: The current regime has completely gutted the Constitution.
Are we being distracted and railroaded?
From CNET, but none of the major papers or outlets:
The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."
If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.
Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.
Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler's disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.
The disclosure appears to confirm some of the allegations made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA infrastructure analyst who leaked classified documents to the Guardian. Snowden said in a video interview that, while not all NSA analysts had this ability, he could from Hawaii "wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president."
Watch the video, anon. Nadler is apparently trying to highlight an inconsistency, perhaps deception, for public debate. That inconsistency may involve listening to calls or metadata, but the exchange has some ambiguity.
My sense from Mueller and Clapper is a lot of deceptive procedural ass-covering and distracing fingerpointing. Even taken at face value, these various NSLs and FISA warrants lack any 4th amendment substance.
I suspect they listen to calls using various legalistic rationalizations and tactics, but Nadler should clarify what he was talking about in this specific exchange.
In fact, why doesn't some rep just record the damned secret briefings and publish them? This secrecy has about zero to do with national security I'd wager.
Nadler is back:
The congressman, Jerrold Nadler, issued a statement Sunday to CNN regarding his his exchange with Mueller at the hearing.
“I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, as I have always believed, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans’ phone calls without a specific warrant,” Nadler said.
The wording is interesting. One interpretation is that Nadler's exchange with Mueller pushed the administration into agreeing publically that the NSA was subject to same warrant requirements as the FBI. My guess is that the NSA had portrayed itself as above those restrictions in the secret briefing, while FBI Mueller said it was bound by them in public, leaving a false impression with the public that surveillance is limited. Actually, discovery, not surveillance, is limited. Nadler laid a clever trap for Mueller that let him point that out.
To me, the CNET article is a fairly correct interpretation. The NSA collects everything in raw form and without warrants. Prism and metadata are more like indexing tools (Dewey Decimal) that come from telcoms or web corporations and get applied to that data dump. The FBIs role is to require the indexing tools from the corporations (Patriot Act) and apply for warrants (FISA) to get the data from NSA by using the indexing tools.
But, that's just the legal front. NSA performs discovery (Snowden's job) and then informs the FBI, which in turn gets warrants to request it. This arrangement provided a legal facade for the NSA, FBI, and corporations.
Nadler just blew that facade away. So, if Snowden can show that the NSA is recording phone calls, Alexander and perhaps Clapper may not be immune.
OK, Short Stack, but in that case, Mueller potentially gained in the exchange. "Trap" makes it sound like he gave up something. If you're correct, NSA loses its analysts, and likely the FBI picks them up. As a turf war, FBI won. Mueller could have rehearsed the exchange with Nadler to allow Nadler to compare the secret NSA testimony with the public FBIs.
Also, Nadler's statement here, and at the hearing, says "listen" not "record." So, the FBI is the listening agency, and the NSA is the recording?
That may seem to restore some checks and balances to some, but I doubt that distiction will please (or be believed) by most Americans.
We don't want our private conversations recorded by the government without probable cause! The recording is a greater violation under the 4th than simply eavesdropping. Recording is the larger meaning of surveillance.
Congress and the administration and spy agencies keep shifting the conversation to listening. That's particularly troublesome because "listening" does not seem to include automated speech and text recognition. Of course government-paid human ears "listen" to a fraction of conversations, but that doesn't prove there is no 4th Amendment violation.
And, the restrictions on the FBI (or NSA) are meaningless anyway. NSLs? FISA? LMFAO.
You may agree.
I don't get why the mainstream media isn't picking up on the Nadler-Mueller exchange, whatever it means.
Hey no worries, the President has promised to give a speech on the NSA. That'll clear things up. Just like the drones speech cleared up...oh, nevermind.
Dick Cheney denounced Snowden as a traitor or a bad shot. Can't remember which, but either way Cheney sounded a little defensive. Have a heart, Dick!
Diane Feinstein called Snowden's leak treason, but she said the same thing about the Louisiana Purchase and bloomers.
Adding some youthful zest to the debate, John McCain offered to interrogate Snowden's girlfriend. "I speak pole dance," explained McCain.
Trying to reassure Americans of their unified commitment to privacy, James Clapper and General Alexander issued a joint statement asking American women to change nothing about their online habbits.
"Especially not those thong selfies," said Mr. Clapper.
"Whew! Damn right! We LOVE those!" agreed General Alexander. "Pop that American booty! Saaaalute!"
On a related note, FBI Director Mueller quietly changed the name of the PRISM program to PRIAPISM. "It just sounded more honest," he explained. "We want to be upfront with the American people."
Usually The bathrobe-clad Clapper spends Sunday afternoons enjoying milky tea and cookies while mounting new specimans in his collection of dried toads. But GOSHDANGIT that FROOKIN Nadler and his statements!
Not trusting his computer (FROOKIN CHINESE ARMY!), The Clapper had to drive all the way to the office to release a least-untruthy statement to the CROCKLICKIN press:
"The statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to congress. At least not, y'know, wittingly."
Well I guess that settles that! Why would we ever doubt Mr. Clapper's word on it.
Oh, Mr. Clapper? Most people define "eavesdropping" to include secret recording or digital mining of private conversations. Can we assume you have the same commonsense definition? Or does your agency routinely violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution you swore to uphold?
Just wondering, cuz lots of people are mad at Mr. Snowden for breaking a contract with the Boozers. You wouldn't be doing the same, would you? The Constitution may not matter to you, but some of us kinda like it. And you do work for us, remember?
And if recording isn't eavesdropping, can we record all of your meetings, private calls, and secret congressional briefings?
What? You don't trust us? Imagine that.
More good news!
As I write this, Bill Clinton is in Aleppo singlehandedly fighting back the Syrian national forces!
There will be no need to spend American lives or resources on the Syrian War! Clinton is using his bare fists against tanks in a brave humanitarian effort.
Did I say singlehandedly? Well, actually Chuck Norris is with the ex-President. But, when Bill is in a fightin' mood, Chuck curls up in a ball and cries like a little girl.
If Clinton's bravery on the battlefield brings back memories, it's because you know the story of how The Man With The Cigar single-handedly won the Vietnam War. No sir, and no ma'am, no one was prouder to suit up and fight for his country than William Jefferson Clinton!
So when Bill Clinton knocks back an acai berry spritzer and demands a war, by God you know he'll do more than his share of the actual fighting!
"Single analyst?"
What about two or more?
"Dude, can I check out this chick's sexts?"
"G'head bra, just share the assets yo."
I was in Portland this weekend with my most extreme Obama supporting friends. I knew something had changed when I saw they had generated a new Obama HOPE poster. They'd replaced HOPE with LIAR.
The new polls agree with them. Most people distrust this President. Negatives leapt, positives dropped. It's almost all due to NSA. People of all backgrounds distrust the President on the NSA 2 to 1. Interestingly, the drop includes increased distrust on terrorism prevention.
Obama is in free fall. The geriatric Congress is at historic lows. The privatized spy agencies are packed with smug, creepy weirdos.
The more people learn about the illegal surveillance regime, the more they hate it. And, the more they feel the surveillance isn't about terrorism but elite social control.
There's a perfect storm brewing, particularly for young people. Obama has added to their burdens, ignored their issues, suppressed their political involvement, and now treats them with contempt like criminals who need to be watched. The sense of betrayal is growing.
And now comes the Clintons' war.
We're doing it wrong.
It's not just the numbers, it's the momentum of declining support. The CNN/Rasmussen polls capture a snapshot in motion, and the data are already days old. The entire political-surveillance elite is hemorrhaging credibility.
It's like Snowden threw on a light switch, and with the light came disillusionment. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you scream in disgust. The carefully timed revelations keep revealing more shadows, lies, and cockroaches.
The elite's hair-splitting legalism approach has failed to convince Americans to give up the Bill of Rights. "Bodies on the canopy" has failed to terrorize them into submission. Obama is still saying he's unconcerned. Will that be the theme of his speech, "My fellow Americans. I don't give a shit. I'm making no changes. You're on your own. Fuck you very much."
Somehow, the corrupt anti-democracy Booz Allan still has government contracts, and Clapper, Alexander, and even short-timer Mueller still have jobs. How far will politicians sacrifice their popular support to protect the illegal surveillance elite?
If 2008 and the banksters are any guide, very, very far. Can the nation afford another elite bailout, while fighting another illegal war?
Obama and Congress ard awol. The surveillance elites don't answer questions from public and lie to our reps.
But Snowden is doing an AMA at Guardian at this moment. fascinating.
How about a Snowden "hope" poster? But he reminds me less of campaign-Obama and more of young Nelson Mandela, during the period when Mandela was on the run and kept popping up around South Africa. If Mandela was the Black Pimpernel, Snowden can be the Digital Pimpernel.
As the ObamaBots become ObamaNots and join the Pimpernel League, their media is opening up to franker discussions. Good article by Sirota on the Fourth today at Salon:
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/17/were_all_terrorist_suspects_now/
"Privacy" is giving way to "probable cause" pretty much across the spectrum today. Obama will have to explain why he has probable cause under the Fourth to conduct searches on everyone, not just prattle on about privacy and secret court decisions he can't discuss.
Snowden offered some good, if brief, explanations on recording/listening today, and the media should really grill the authorities on them. Snowden paints a believable picture that is much more permissive, expansive, and role-confused than Clapper has said. Clapper is a liar and perjurer, so it is past time to stop deferring to his self-serving version.
Pimpernel is good, but I'd go with the American Pimpernel.
Sorry gotta go with the American Phoenix! He keeps rising from the ashes.
"I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."
My favorite quote:
Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead.
Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American.
Obama's staggering loss of support among young Americans is catastrophic for Democrats. 17%. Worse on the issues. Even worse on "trust."
It's not just the NSA. Young people have just seen the incredible increase in health premiums they will have to pay. That increase is how a system that taxes health, rather than wealth, funds itself. The redistributive mechanisms are inadequate and ridiculously complex, untrustworthy. Obamacare looks like cynical regressive taxation to the young, particularly for the lower middle class (eg recent grads) who cannot access subsidies by cruel design. Those with jobs also pay for Medicare.
With a loss of overall trust in the political system and unaffordable premiums, young people will have to opt out. It will be the easiest passive resistance, unmotivated by ideology, but most devastating to Democrats. The only option for Democrats will be to increase IRS penalties which will further erode their party's popularity, and further politicize the broken IRS.
And of course, the illegal war, no tuition reform, crappy pay, secret trade deals, surveillance etc etc. No one is offering anything to young people but burdens
The wise American young sadly watch Obama manipulate their Irish counterparts. Want him? Have him. Send a case if Guiness and we'll call it good.
OK, we'll send the Guiness.
Rose: Should this be transparent in some way?
Obama: It is transparent. That’s why we set up the FISA court.
That made laugh. The FISA court (FISC) is a secret court. Obama is out to imprison or murder Snowden for making a FISC decision transparent, thereby making telecom spying transparent. Obama sets a new standard for chutzpah.
Almost nothing about FISC is transparent, and it is designed to entirely evade the Fourth Amendment. There are zero checks and balances, defendents aren't represented, and last year it aproved 100% of requests. As Snowden revealed, these request are not all particularized as per the Fourth Amendment. they include surveillance requests on everyone, without probable cause. These judges are violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution.
FISC is corrupt. Chief Justice Roberts (no friend of due process or the Bill of Rights) alone appoints the members and he uses the court as a sort of reward system for dependable judges. The hours can be bad, but anyone with a rubber stamp could do it. It's easy money. Just leave your conlaw and conscience at the door.
FISC is a lot of things, but transparent or a check or a balance it is not.
The President failed, again, to explain why he is violating everyone's Fourth Amendment rights and maintaining Stasi dossiers on all Americans.
Wait til he tries this chutzpah legalistic schtick in Germany.
I couldn't laugh, or even watch more than a few minutes. I'm so disgusted. I voted for the guy, even last time.
It is the height of absurd arrogance that a secret court can abrogate to itself the power to overturn the US Constitution. The very power of the court is supposed to derive from that Constitution. FISC's rulings on mass surveillance have absolutely no basis in law. Just the contrary--what the court is doing is straight up illegal and, to use a popular word these days, treason.
You have to wonder if the NSA has a hand in these results, given Snowden's claims that NSA analysts can access the private email of federal judges.
Clapper and his associates are beginning to look like more than garden variety revolving-door turf expanders. Something very evil is afoot at our spy agencies and spy corporations. The three branches answer to them, rather than the other way around.
How can there be checks and balances when Clapper and Booz types operate entirely outside any law, and have the goods on everyone?
I see Obama as flailing to share responsibility with the other branches. Nobody wants this one. FISC is mostly just derelict in duty, probably not simply corrupt or blackmailed. By signing off on everything they evade responsibility.
Congress just doesn't want to hear it. Some of them may also want to be able to talk about surveillance. They don't want to get stuck like Wyden and Udall. Knowing, outraged, unable to speak. So either to evade responsibility or to accept it,, they skip the hearings. Obama has said he wants Congress signed on--informed, complicit, and silent.
I think there is a good chance the administration actually unloaded at the hearing Nadler attended and admitted warrantless NSA recording and listening. Everyone is saying Nadler backed down, but his statement actually doesn't. He's simply saying NSA _legally_ can't listen, not that they don't. He's repeating that from Obama. That put NSA back in the box to denying it.
Snowden's descriptions remain most granular and convincing. They are also reminescent of the way Cheney, Rumsfeld etc created a torture state, with quasi legality and rewarding illegal lower level decision making, particularly by creating a permissive environment where anything goes.
I think Obama did try to create a legal/legalistic footing, just to share the culpability if nothing else, but it's pretty absurd stuff given the categorical language in the fourth.
Snowden's little QandA was so much more realistic than Obama's. His stated and implied outline of foreign spying also seems more reasonable.
Snowden for President! He can have Clapper's job until he meets the age requirement.
How long will Obama, Clapper and Alexander continue this charade? Greenwald has more docs from Snowden backing his account. Former NSA veterans who complained through official channels are backing Snowden entirely. Fewer Americans believe officials every passing day. Obama is like Wile E. Coyote running past the edge of the cliff, breaking the fourth wall, and about to look down.
Where the hell is Axelrod? Forget the peril for the rule of law, don't you political people see the disaster here for your man? Is no one trying talk some sense to him? Are you all spineless sycophants? Are you going to keep the Clapper anvil falling and the Acme Booz dynamite in his hands?
Fire them. Clean house. It's Obama vs the spies. He's losing. He should champion a new day for the Fourth, because the Fourth is the future. Same goes for Hillary. Paul has accused Clapper of perjury and that's the opening round for 2016.
"It has come to my attention that NSA and FBI employees have systematically violated the Fourth Amendment and US law, and we will punish those responsible."
If you can't do it for your country, do it for yourselves.
A cartoon, or perhaps a video game? Players have choices, cartoon characters do not.
Snowden withholds, responds.
This, from his Q and A:
Ryan Latvaitis
17 June 2013 2:34pm
What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?
What evidence do you have that refutes the assertion that the NSA is unable to listen to the content of telephone calls without an explicit and defined court order from FISC?
Answer:
This country is worth dying for.
And just that.
Elsewhere:
I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.
So, perhaps there are documents that Snowden might legitimately fear could result in his retaliatory death if he releases them, that illustrate the NSA spy capabilities against US citizens, but which also wouldn't break Snowden's promise not to release dangerous information?
Was he ignoring (overlooking) Latvaitis' second question or responding to it?
If Snowden wanted to illustrate the invasiveness and capabilities of NSA spying, and the danger of thinking "I have nothing to hide," and the rubber stamp of the court, he might best reveal a powerful person's secrets, while following the FISA law to the letter.
From Greenwald today:
One typical example is a document submitted by the NSA in July 2009. In its first paragraph, it purports to set forth "minimization procedures" that "apply to the acquisition, retention, use, and dissemination of non-publicly available information concerning unconsenting United States persons that is acquired by targeting non-United States persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States in accordance with section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, as amended."
That document provides that "communications of or concerning United States persons that may be related to the authorized purpose of the acquisition may be forwarded to analytic personnel responsible for producing intelligence information from the collected data." It also states that "such communications or information" - those from US citizens - "may be retained and disseminated" if it meets the guidelines set forth in the NSA's procedures.
For example, Greenwald adds, such a tap could capture a conversation between a US citizen and his lawyer.
Hint?
Well, we know Snowden is a gamer.
Why isn't the OCD-linker Greenwald supplying any for his documents?
Here's another:
When it is time for the NSA to obtain Fisa court approval, the agency does not tell the court whose calls and emails it intends to intercept. It instead merely provides the general guidelines which it claims are used by its analysts to determine which individuals they can target, and the Fisa court judge then issues a simple order approving those guidelines... As but one typical example, the Guardian has obtained an August 19, 2010, Fisa court approval from Judge John Bates which does nothing more than recite the statutory language in approving the NSA's guidelines.
Once the NSA has this court approval, it can then target anyone chosen by their analysts, and can even order telecoms and internet companies to turn over to them the emails, chats and calls of those they target. The Fisa court plays no role whatsoever in reviewing whether the procedures it approved are actually complied with when the NSA starts eavesdropping on calls and reading people's emails.
So, if this is Snowden's setup leading to an individual, does Greenwald know?
Also, is someone on the other side catching any significance in the dates? Surely that aspect is a communication, at least. The NSA will be tracking down the ensuing investigation allowed by these orders and will know what Snowden has. Who he has.
I buy it in the sense that Snowden had gone from the general orders (PRISM, Verizon business)to these more specific, though not exactly particularized warrants The next logical step would be to show the data that resulted.
Yes, he could be showing how it works. He said he was going to do just that.
To me it reads like a mystery.
Specific date: 8/19/2010
Specific judge:John Bates.
Content: Statutory boilerplate.
Straight from Wiki
On December 10, 2010, U.S. District Judge Bates dismissed a challenge to President Barack Obama's targeted killing order against Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a dual American and Yemeni citizen with ties to al-Qaeda. Judge Bates ruled that al-Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki, who filed the suit with assistance by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, lacked legal standing in the case against the Obama Administration. In the ruling, Judge Bates stopped short of granting the executive branch "unreviewable authority" to order the killing of an American citizen, instead concluding that the case would likely be settled in another forum outside the courtroom.[7]
Snowden may be showing a link between domestic spying and drone killings, if this order concerned al Awlaki. If Bates both gave a spy order and ruled against al Awlaki's father, there is a deeper conflict for federal judges who also sit on FISC. Judges should not act as executioners.
We can't know (yet) the evidence produced from the Bates order, but, yes Obama and the NSA do now, and that may be a communication from Snowden to them, yanking their chains.
However, there are many scenarios on what Snowden is pointing to, if he us pointing. The judge, the process, a pol's secrets, a drone victim. He may be allowing more legal grounds.
There is also the matter of al Awlaki's teenage son. What if the NSA used Bates order to intercept al Awaki's father's conversations with his lawyer, and that led to locating and killing al Awlaki's son? But, maybe the timing is coinicidental and this has nothing to do with al Awlaki.
Many scenarios.
Would Greenwald bury a lede like a Bates bombshell, though? I'd like to think so. Eventually our lazy media will have to ask about the Bates reference.
Germany:
Obama continues to evade the Germans' (and Americans) basic concern on RECORDING and keeping files, but he implicitly acknowledges recording in violation of the Fourth Amendment in his explanation. Again he diverts issue to listening and phone metadata. No mention of datamining
Snowden is still more believable.
Check it out:
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/06/new-leadership-for-federal-courts-administrative-office.html
Did Roberts give Bates both a reward for offing Awlaki and a lucrative escape hatch from the bench, just in time for Snowden's revelation?
Timing is very odd.
"Judge Bates is not only a very talented and experience judge, but a skilled administrator with broad managerial experience," Roberts said in a statement. "He brings wise judgment to sensitive issues. I look forward to working closely with John on the many challenging issues facing the judiciary."
Yeah. I'll bet. Here comes the enforcer.
The plot thickens!
My contribution to the Bates conspiracy.
Valerie Plame is thanking Snowden. Bates is the judge who quashed her lawsuit against Cheney, Rove, and Libby.
Sides are forming (or revealed) in the intelligence community.
Today's bombshell suprisingly from the usually dozing New York Times.
The courts have lied to us.
Obama has lied to us.
Congress has lied to us.
Of course the spies have lied to us.
But holy crap, the biggest liars of all may be the creeps in Silicon Valley!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-and-spy-agency-bound-by-strengthening-web.html?hp
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