At this point we've got multiple lawmakers openly saying "Oh yes, this has been a regular occurrence since 2006."
— Zandar (@ZandarVTS) June 6, 2013
Yup:
UPDATE During a press conference, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that the order the Guardian obtained is "the exact three-month renewal" of program underway for the past seven years.
And:
Chambliss: "This is nothing new. This has been going on for 7 years...every member of the U.S. Senate has been advised of this." #NSA
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) June 6, 2013
Also, via David Corn, here's USA Today reporting on this, um, seven years ago:
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.I'm not saying this should make us feel better. It says we're being surveilled now just the way we've been continuously since 2006. How free did we feel across those years? Yeah, I thought we were a tad freer as of 1/20/09 than we actually were. But I still don't know what abuses this has led to.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews....
And, well, tracking cookies don't make me feel free, especially when I get two days of sidebar ads based on a couple of recent health-related searches (for a condition I don't actually have). And my bank wants to know where I go on vacation -- y'know, just for my sake, to prevent someone is some far-flung place from using my credit and ATM cards -- and thus requests that I inform it of my travel plans.
Up to a point, modern life requires some intrusiveness. Except for a few off-the-gridders, we generally shrug off the notion that government knows where we live, knows when we move, knows about our cars, licenses us to drive, etc., etc. But, um...
Once again the 2nd is caught sleeping as the other Amendments get the dogshit beat out of them. Thanks a lot, you broken down piece of crap
— norbizness (@norbizness) June 6, 2013
Yeah -- God forbid the gummint should know anything about our guns (even though that restraint doesn't protect us from, say, mass surveillance. Presumably because the gunners are mostly right-wingers who saw mass surveillance in the previous administration and said, "Hell yeah! Git 'er done!")
Republicans will demagogue this now, but President Rubio or President Christie or President Cruz will surveill without hesitation. We think President Rand Paul wouldn't, but then we also thought President Obama wouldn't.
16 comments:
You may hear some squawking from Rand Paul about this, but I seriously doubt the Republicans will try to make much of an issue about this. They are as "complicit" as anyone else.
Cool, thanks. Good to know that this is an unavoidable aspect of "modern life" that I shouldn't worry about, just a bit of "intrusiveness" that (because of the secrecy) we don't even know has led to abuses.
Nobody capable of being elected President of the USA would relinquish any of the surveillance that exists; those who might do so (and I exclude Rand Paul, regardless of his rhetoric) wouldn't survive the early primaries in either major party. Nor do I see any reason to think any conceivable Congress would effectively force the issue. I don't like it, but those seem to me, at least, to be the facts on the ground.
Sorry, I don't agree with the line, "We just trust Obama more."
It's more like, "we mistrust Obama less."
Very crankily yours,
The New York Crank
Poor, poor, Dennis...
He has a big, fat, mouth - and though it must scream, it just keeps getting smacked shut.
The boy can't be any too bright if he keeps trying to post here, can he?
Then again, we did go on vacation and couldn't get the credit card to work. When cursed, the bank said it knew we didn't live there and there was a lot of theft and fraud in our vacation spot.
None of your business, bank!
I'm sorry Steve, I've been coming here since I betaed cursor.org org ten years ago, but I'm not coming back.
Repubilcans, reichwimgers, the Jew "Christian" Mormon Cult of Male Domination are like egg-sucking dogs: there's only one cure for an egg-sucking dog. Believe me, I've tried. I once tied a chicken the egg-sucking dog around its neck until it rotted off, but in the end the only solution, the only cure, was/is to take it out behind the barn and summarily execute it.
Yeah, I know, if I quit the egg-sucking dogs win. I don't care anymore, and I no longer agree that violence is the last resort of the incompetent.
Violence is simply the last resort.
No fear, if you're not living on the edge you're just taking up space.
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