Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 1824
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@ Casual Observer
[Read the article: Gonzales' yearlong effort to block Comey's testimony]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Frontline on Domestic Spying
A good program, but I don't think the show will scare many americans. Americans have chosen to be afraid of the wrong things.
My comments on seeing the show:
Yes, the massive snooping is worrisome. Loads of the Narus biggies seem to be ex-NSA or from associated places. But the practicalities of the Internet/telecom volume are that you will have a hard time grabbing all the traffic, and you'd be snowed if you could. NSA used to have the hottest machines on (or in their case, off) the market (first Crays, etc.), but they've been falling behind on the technology end, for many reasons. Nowadays, they buy commercial more and more, amd they need an order of magnitude more power to do surveillance of a given bandwidth. Google may very well have them out-MIPSed right now.
Not to mention, IP with its decentralised backbones provides too many alternative paths for them to grab everything (which is why the gummint got the CALEA law to insist that ISPs have to provide the capability themselves. But I know just how hard it is even for the ISPs just to pick the spots to put in targeted taps to intercept a specific target.
But that doesn't prevent them from vicarious snooping in hopes of catching one in ten (or one in a hundred) of the baddie's communications. The problem is that there's a lot of bad that can come from such snoops, and not much hope of it's being actually useful for anything, given the lack of anything near comprehensive coverage along with the lack of ability to analyse the data. They're snooping your shopping lists in hopes of finding a needle in one of the haystacks in the field, well knowing it could be in any of the others if it even exists (al Qaeda has gone a bit "low-tech" lately, from what I've read).
The CALEA act is being faulted by some, I think unfairly. The CALEA act requires the ability to snoop a specific target, and pass on that information only. And the control of the CALEA wiretaps is within the telcos and IPSs, not in the hands of the gummint (unlike in some countries, I might add). The gummint needs paperwork or authorisation to get the taps in place, and as long as the paperwork is done (and probable cause is shown to a responsible third party), shouldn't be any issue with doing such taps (not to mention, the same facilities are useful for emergency location, such as when someone is missing or their car goes off the road; emergency locations seem to be around hald of all requests for LI services near as I can tell).
What AT&T did in Ess Eff was not CALEA compliance. Most CALEA equipment I know of doesn't even have the ability for gregarious snooping (and why put such in when the law doesn't require it?; it costs money).
More later, I guess.... it's late, and the NSA is homing in on my DCHP lease as we speak.
Cheers,
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@ kovie
[Read the article: Gonzales' yearlong effort to block Comey's testimony]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]arne
Trolling for trolls, eh? ;-)
Uhhh, he's already here (as "Jake007"). Just want people to know that dialogue is impossible and courtesy (of any kind) misplaced.
Cheers,
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@ kovie
[Read the article: Gonzales' yearlong effort to block Comey's testimony]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was just teasing, of course. ;-) Not that you were intentionally looking for him on other blogs, but the fact that you found him on one was something that I found kind of funny. Think of him as the dolphin you caught while trolling for tuna. Or, perhaps more appropriately, the sea worm you caught while trolling for signs of intelligent life forms.
Actually, I spotted him the millisecond he stepped in the front door here several threads back. I just wanted to highlight some of his "greatest hits" so that people will know exactly what they're dealing with and respond appropriately.
"Jake" is a Ph.D historian, a vet, a registered "independent", an old man horrified by today's incivility, fluent in many languages, and an expert on the law ... and -- mirabile dictu -- echos every "talking point" of the RW Mighty Wurlitzer over and over again (not to mention throwing in "red herrings" as fast as he can shovel 'em into an conversation to distract and disrupt).
Cheers,
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@ Iokannan in the Well
[Read the article: Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you had been paying attention, son, you'd know from the outset this nonsense of "power to spy on the enemy" was never the damned issue.
Don't let the troll throw in that favourite maladministration "red herring" about "spy[ing] on the enemy". That's been hashed over waaaaayyy too many times, even here on Greenwald's blog. FISA doesn't even require a warrant for (nor does it or any other law prohibit) spying on foreign al Qaeda. That's always been the case, and probably always will be.
The question is whether they've been spying on "U.S. persons" without a warrant (or FISA court order). IF they can show that the "U.S. person" is an "enemy", they can spy on them as well, as long as they show the FISA court cause. That's what the law requires.
Cheers,
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@ stevkar
[Read the article: Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What changed? Domestic spying program had been going for about two years already. It seems like Ashcroft and Cromey had not objected for the first two years of the program. Had they been signing of on approvals previously? Certainly had not been threatening to resign over it previously. So what changed?
A fresh pair of eyes:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-was-presidents-role.html#1660231551262071325
"In early 2004, several Justice officials who were not in office at the launch of the NSA program began questioning whether it violated civil liberties. Jack Goldsmith, the new head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, said he doubted that the program was lawful. After listening to Goldsmith, Comey and Ashcroft agreed, Comey said."
Cheers,