Russell Tice, former NSA security analyst,
just came on the Keith Olbermann show revealing that the NSA's domestic surveillance programs were not only far greater in scope than formerly thought, but also were specifically targeted at journalists.
posted by dunkadunc
on Jan 22, 2009 -
82 comments
Cheney Pushed U.S. to Widen Eavesdropping In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and his top legal adviser argued that the National Security Agency should intercept purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without warrants in the hunt for terrorists, according to two senior intelligence officials.
posted by Postroad
on May 13, 2006 -
62 comments
Bush administration signals intent to invoke the obscure
state secrets privilege in order to stop the
EFF lawsuit against
AT&T, (previously discussed
here) for providing the NSA direct access
all 312 terabytes of its customers' telephone and internet traffic since 2001, (including those Good Vibrations charges you racked up).
In a nutshell, according to legal experts, invoking the privilege kills the judicial process dead: the courthouse doors are closed, and there's nothing but grownup stuff to see here; move along, kids.
posted by squirrel
on May 2, 2006 -
51 comments
Man tells President Bush that he should be ashamed of himself. Bushie has been touring the country talking to the people and the people have been talking back. Today he met with his toughest and most elequent angry citizen, one Mr. Harry Taylor who began with this salvo:
Q: You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are --
THE PRESIDENT: I'm not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what's your question? (
full transcript here)
posted by tsarfan
on Apr 6, 2006 -
106 comments
Evidence of a slippery slope continued:
Newsweek reports that White House counsel Steve Bradbury
believes President Bush can order killings on US soil as part of the Terrorist-Surveillance Program
TM. Meanwhile, while
Attorney General Gonzales "lashes out" at the media and insists that the TSP
TM is "not a dragnet that sucks in all conversation and uses computer searches to pick out calls of interest,"
the Washington Post reports it's precisely that -- "computer-controlled systems collect and sift basic information about hundreds of thousands of faxes, e-mails and telephone calls into and out of the United States before selecting the ones for scrutiny by human eyes and ears" -- and has led to very few leads. (See also discussion of Arlen Specter and the legality of the TSP
TM here.)
posted by digaman
on Feb 6, 2006 -
137 comments
"
I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running
the story..." President Bush
really did not want journalists to reveal his NSA spying program against Americans [discussed
here.] And in yesterday's rare
press conference, the President said: "An open debate about law would say to the enemy, 'Here's what we're going to do.' And this is an enemy which adjusts... Any public hearings on programs will say to the enemy, 'Here's what they do. Adjust.' This is a war." Neocon guru William Kristol
argues that talk of Bush being an "imperial" president" is "demagogic" and "irresponsible" since "Congress has the right and the ability to judge whether President Bush has in fact used his executive discretion soundly." What is the role of "open debate" in a war against terror that may last for decades?
posted by digaman
on Dec 20, 2005 -
222 comments
