dagblog - Comments for "How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Matrix"

Yeah, it's up to Congress,

NCD — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 23:14:44 +0000

Yeah, it's up to Congress, and Congress would rather play politics with Benghazi, the debt ceiling, abortion or the IRS. Or they would rather cut banking regulations so they get more contributions from the fat cats.

Congress does not want to do the hard job of setting standards and ensuring they are enforced at the NSA. It's hard work, and if an underwear bomber slips through the metadata net, Congress might find they are blamed, not the President, the easy political target. So they do nothing.

They view their job as winning the next election. That takes money, getting suckers charged up to vote for them, usually over some hot button issue like abortion, gays or taxes, issues rarely resolved with finality. Until voters demand a responsible Congress that is focused on moving the nation forward, with responsible governance, compromise and oversight, not obstruction, there will be talk and little else.

I didn't vote for NSA

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 21:32:49 +0000

In reply to National intelligence

I didn't vote for NSA directors, and is he supposed to scrutinize himself? Congress is being denied access to review - see Wyden & Udall, others. John Roberts is a single justice - not the whole Supreme Court - and couldn't even manage to get through his confirmation without lying. So it's back to the Unitary Executive theory - which for all purposes might as well be some king.

No, I'm not saying there should be no secret info - but there should be checks and balances as via the Constitution, and not a new class of courts for tribunals and FISA and everything else, cutting out Congress in the process. Even the gang of 8 in Congress that's supposed to get the really confidential stuff isn't getting it. The executive branch just thumbs its nose, and nothing happens to it.

National intelligence

NCD — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 19:56:19 +0000

In reply to How can you judge the

National intelligence operation should be open, public and transparent, because we can't trust Chief Justice John Roberts, Congress, the NSA directors or the President to protect our rights. Right?

The only problem is, how on earth can effective intelligence gathering be done if it's all subject to public scrutiny - which would include scrutiny by the very people we're trying to stop from harming the nation or breaking it's laws?

How can you judge the

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 19:19:51 +0000

In reply to Determining the

How can you judge the constitutionality of something if no one's allowed to see what it is except for a rubber stamp judge that John Roberts appointed? (hint: Roberts doesn't seem to be the greatest advocate for personal rights on the court - even Scalia was to his left & a dissenter to his last decision)

I guess I should post a

artappraiser — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 17:03:52 +0000

In reply to Hi KGB Re: Have any

I guess I should post a larger-size snippet for those who don't have NYT access, with the critical description of the program included:

Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.

Together, the two programs show that postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail.

The mail covers program, used to monitor Mr. Pickering, is more than a century old but is still considered a powerful tool. At the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered. (Opening the mail would require a warrant.) The information is sent to the law enforcement agency that asked for it. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny.

he Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retrace the path of mail at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping.

I would like to add that the fact that Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny of specially-ordered old-fashioned mail covers suggests that the usefulness of the search of the bigger metadata program must be limited. Why else would they still order them if it were the case that they could just do a quick search of the database to get the same result?

Then you have the keystone cops example of the mail cover for Mr. Pickering, where the carrier exposed the mail cover by putting the message meant for the carrier in Mr. Pickering's box....

Determining the

NCD — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 16:51:36 +0000

In reply to We have a Constitutional

Determining the constitutional basis for intelligence gathering, how, why and on whom, cannot be safely decided by a secret court or by secret bureaucracies, true?

What they are doing, and how they are doing it, must be examined in public because, frankly, those doing it cannot be trusted to operate in secret.....?

Can everyone here at Dag

NCD — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 16:44:22 +0000

In reply to Hi KGB Re: Have any

Can everyone here at Dag agree that ALL US government intelligence gathering, whatever the agency, have open and ongoing public scrutiny so we the citizens know what exactly what these people are doing and how they are doing it?

How else can we ensure our constitutional rights are being protected?

We have a Constitutional

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 16:39:37 +0000

In reply to While apparently the post

We have a Constitutional Scholar as President - 2 jobs in one - we don't need that time-wasting review stuff anymore. It's legal if he says it's legal. In fact I think we have precedent on that comment, so it shouldn't be news to you.

Hi KGB Re: Have any

artappraiser — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 16:35:01 +0000

In reply to Oh ... hey ... it's me, BTW.

Hi KGB

Re: Have any documentation for this? I can't find any discussion or confirmation of it at all.

Are you serious? It's allover the internet since this NYT article by Ron Nixon was published:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html

Search for The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program (different from separate mail covers ordered by law enforcement of days gone by):

The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was created after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 that killed five people, including two postal workers. Highly secret, it seeped into public view last month when the F.B.I. cited it in its investigation of ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. It enables the Postal Service to retrace the path of mail at the request of law enforcement. No one disputes that it is sweeping.

As with all oppressive

Lazy KGB — Sun, 07 Jul 2013 16:07:40 +0000

In reply to Wolfgang Schmidt was seated

As with all oppressive regimes, the primary failure of the East German government was the fact that the assholes didn't elect the American Democratic party to oversee their police state.

Being placed in the care of a Democratic administration is sufficient to render any and all repressive policy into something progressive and good ... or at least justifiable.