Hatch compares FISA critics to those "who wear tin foil hats..."

[agentw0]

I know what I know and I have my reasons and I will leave it at that.

[ThoughtCriminal]

Originally Posted by agentw0

Wow!

Just keep your heads buried in the sand and that is all you will ever see.

I would advise you to read the congressional testimony of Mark Klein. He was an engineer for AT&T. AT&T literally split their lines to run one to the network, and the other to a secret room staffed by the nsa, this split worked the same as a splitter you use for cable. So they received EVERY transmission that came through AT&T's network.

Ignorance is bliss, huh?

[LittleRedToyota]

Originally Posted by agentw0

I know what I know and I have my reasons and I will leave it at that.

that's fine.

you'll have to forgive me, though, if, in the face of evidence to the contrary, i do not just blindly trust what is told to me by a government that views "plausible deniability" as a legitimate policy and has been caught red-handed lying to the american public on more than one occassion.

you'll also have to forgive me if i will not just blindly trust an executive branch that has been caught many times overstepping the limits placed on its authority by both the constitution and the legislature to police itself.

and you will also have to forgive me for not ignoring the lessons of history that teach us that governments have the potential to do much, much more harm than terrorists.

[ThoughtCriminal]

Originally Posted by agentw0

I know what I know and I have my reasons and I will leave it at that.

Don't you remember why they came up with FISA in the first place?

because of rampant abuses!

[ThoughtCriminal]

Original Article Here

Mark Klein, the retired AT&T engineer who stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T, is furious at the Senate's vote on Wednesday night to hold a vote on a bill intended to put an end to that lawsuit and more than 30 others.

"[Wednesday]'s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and endorses an all-powerful president. It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.

The Democratic leadership is touting the deal as a "compromise," but in fact they have endorsed the infamous Nuremberg defense: "Just following orders." The judge can only check their paperwork. This cynical deal is a Democratic exercise in deceit and cowardice."

Klein saw a network monitoring room being built in AT&T's internet switching center that only NSA-approved techs had access to. He squirreled away documents and then presented them to the press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation after news of the government's warrantless wiretapping program broke.

Wired.com independently acquired a copy of the documents (.pdf) -- which were under court seal -- and published the wiring documents in May 2006 so that they could be evaluated.

The lawsuit that resulted from his documents is now waiting on the 9th U.S. Appeals Court to rule on whether it can proceed despite the government saying the whole matter is a state secret. A lower court judge ruled that it could, because the government admitted the program existed and that the courts could handle evidence safely and in secret.

But the appeals court ruling will likely never see the light of day, since the Senate is set to vote on July 8 on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which also largely legalizes Bush's warrantless wiretapping program by expanding how the government can wiretap from inside the United States without getting individualized court orders.

Klein continues:

"Congress has made the FISA law a dead letter--such a law is useless if the president can break it with impunity. Thus the Democrats have surreptitiously repudiated the main reform of the post-Watergate era and adopted Nixon’s line: "When the president does it that means that it is not illegal." This is the judicial logic of a dictatorship.

The surveillance system now approved by Congress provides the physical apparatus for the government to collect and store a huge database on virtually the entire population, available for data mining whenever the government wants to target its political opponents at any given moment—all in the hands of an unrestrained executive power. It is the infrastructure for a police state."

Neither the House nor the Senate has had Klein testify, nor have telecom executives testified in open session about their participation.

The bill forces the district court judge handling the consolidated cases against telecoms to dismiss the suits if the Attorney General certifies that a government official sent a written request to a phone or internet provider, saying that the President approved the program and his lawyers deemed it legal. Judge Vaughn Walker of the California Northern District can ask to see the paperwork, but would not be given leeway to decide if the program was legal.

[lexington86]

I browse the Wired blogs every day and saw this as well. It's a pretty good (and frightening) read.

Edit: Here are the original AT&T documents (PDF) for anyone interested in technical stuff.

[ThoughtCriminal]

Originally Posted by lexington86

I browse the Wired blogs every day and saw this as well. It's a pretty good (and frightening) read.

Edit: Here are the original AT&T documents (PDF) for anyone interested in technical stuff.

If you think this is frightening than you must be wearing a tin foil hat. Don't you trust the government with unlimited powers?

[awkx]

... the Senate is set to vote on July 8 on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which also largely legalizes Bush's warrantless wiretapping program by expanding how the government can wiretap from inside the United States without getting individualized court orders.

That will be a sad day for freedom.

[ThomasJ]

Originally Posted by agentw0

I know what I know and I have my reasons and I will leave it at that.

So do I. It's called the Constitution of the United States of America. You should read it some time.

[ungawa]

It's encouraging to see gun owners, and likely a number of conservatives, outraged about this. Most of the conservatives I run into think the gutting of the Constitution in recent years is appropriate. I say, "When exactly did you abandon your core principles?" Most of the liberals I run into think it's a travesty. To which I say, "When exactly did you start giving a shit about this sort of thing?" So, in review, I'm real popular with both sides – like a bridge across the aisle. A bridge over a rendering plant. And I don't count on anyone to come to our aid anymore.