Letters to the Editor
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Could Someone Remind Me Where My A** Is, Given Two Hands & Flashlight?
Illegal surveillance?
Could someone remind me which actions were illegal?
* datamining?
* Keyword search?
* listening in to wiretaps of individuals outside the US?
Did I miss anything?
-- shooter242
No, of course not. You didn't miss anything. Except that one time there was this Greenwald guy, some sort of lawyer or something, and he wrote a lot for some blog type thing. And this one time, in Constitutional lawyer blog camp, he wrote about a case and in that case there was this one ruling thing which said this:
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker:
The court also notes that based on the facts as alleged in plaintiffs’ complaint, AT&T is not entitled to qualified immunity with respect to plaintiffs’ constitutional claim, at least not at this stage of the proceedings. Plaintiffs’ constitutional claim alleges that AT&T provides the government with direct and indiscriminate access to the domestic communications of AT&T customers. See, e g, FAC, ¶ 42 ("On information and belief, AT&T Corp has provided and continues to provide the government with direct access to all or a substantial number of the communications transmitted through its key domestic telecommunications facilities, including direct access to streams of domestic, international and foreign telephone and Internet communications."); id, ¶ 78 (incorporating paragraph 42 by reference into plaintiffs’ constitutional claim).
In United States v United States District Court, 407 US 297 (1972) (Keith), the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment does not permit warrantless wiretaps to track domestic threats to national security, id at 321, reaffirmed the "necessity of obtaining a warrant in the surveillance of crimes unrelated to the national security interest," id at 308, and did not pass judgment "on the scope of the President’s surveillance power with respect to the activities of foreign powers, within or without this country," id. Because the alleged dragnet here encompasses the communications of "all or substantially all of the communications transmitted through [AT&T’s] key domestic telecommunications facilities," it cannot reasonably be said that the program as alleged is limited to tracking foreign powers.
Accordingly, AT&T’s alleged actions here violate the constitutional rights clearly established in Keith. Moreover, because "the very action in question has previously been held unlawful," AT&T cannot seriously contend that a reasonable entity in its position could have believed that the alleged domestic dragnet was legal.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/18/rockefeller/
But that was some stupid Stalinisto-American liberal commie surrender monkey district judge who don't know half of what those awesome chickenhawks from the NRO do.
Thank god that for now we have a Benevolent Leader who only decides what laws or rules he is or isn't interested in based on his great love for Our Safety and Our Security.
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@ Blue Meme
I would take your excellent point one step further; people are not only willfully ignorant, but they are encouraged to be by the right wing's assault on the very idea of truth.
Faced with political irrelevance and saddled with unpopular elitist dogma, the right wing adopted a two-prong strategy that has led us to this point.
First, re-brand cutthroat economic policies and police state practices to appeal to racists. "Law and Order" and "Welfare Queen" were quite successful lyrics in the song that charmed the south and middle America to the joys of upward wealth redistribution and illegal surveillance.
Next, attack the media for even the mildest criticism, decry its "elitist" liberalism, and demand equal time. Remember that Roger Ailes of Fox News devised Nixon's media strategy, and now his entire lineup constantly reminds their audiences that all other news is false and biased.
Honest journalists, facing withering assaults from the right, and maybe a letter or two from the left, feel compelled to give lies and truth equal billing, and hope that bewildered Americans can sort it out for themselves.
I have been deeply depressed at how many times I have heard from otherwise intelligent and decent people that "the truth must be somewhere in between."
Mission Accomplished.
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Corporations are First Class Citizens
The rest of us, even shooter242, are irrelevant second class citizens. In fact, we are discouraged at every turn from behaving as citizens. We are to be consumers and do as we are told. If we object, we are to be terrified by the Terrorist bogeyman, just like naughty little children. Hence Dubya's post-9/11 exhortation that in these tough times we should sacrifice and--go shopping!
This state exists for the well-being of our corporate class. The bulk of our taxes go to the Military-Industrial complex, to enrich them and to make the world safe for their depredations. When our bridges collapse, our schools run out of funds, and our health care system fails us, we're told: tough; money is tight. Meanwhile, Haliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater et. al. get billions of our money for mismanaging the Iraq "reconstruction." And our telcos are paid hundreds of millions of our dollars to help the corporate class keep the second class citizens in line. All for our own good, of course.
The sad thing is that so many of us naively believe that this is what "Freedom" is.
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You Pwoggy Woggy, You
Innovation in government
That's the beauty of the security partnership between the government and the companies running the surveillance state infrastructure: they can charge us for it indirectly. No new taxes, just pay your cellphone provider, satellite TV provider and internet service provider a third of your salary, and get spied on for free. Not only that, but the same system provides Safeway with inventory control, Blue Cross with a list of your pre-existing conditions whenever they want to escape paying a claim, and your employer with a virtually cost-free way to count your keystrokes per hour, check for excessive liquor purchases, and find out where you are without hiring a foreman to check all the john stalls.
Please show me where in the constitution any of this is prohibited by private businesses and/or corporations.
BTW, Acheyachey called you Grampa.
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@anonymous
I'm scanning this morning's discussion and want to affirm what you said about kitchen conversations and the need to be specific.
American plain speaking will never go out of style - as long as we are aware of it, keep tasting and nurturing it, and pass it between ourselves as friends and family.
There are many literate people blogging here, many able writers.
There's also a significant amount of intellectual candle power coming through in the writing, supported by solid literary, poetic, scientific, and philosophical references.
It's fun and it's invigorating as something see, look forward to, and take part in.
As I write here, I sense, every day, a challenge to be clear, fair, rigorous, fearless, and, above all, witty.
Wit always helps a good argument get through.
High flying rhetoric and a tendency toward the use of jargon, or cant - bullshit - indicates inexperience with good writing and plain speaking. Or, in the hands of a dishonest political broker, it's propaganda.
The array of issues surrounding the government's war and security policies is daunting and frightening. We're dealing with an unprecedented threat to our liberties. Trust between the people and the government is evaporating. Fear is not striking out. Anyone with half a brain, or anyone with "half his brain tied behind his back," should know this.
I want to stop writing on this site right now, throw this contraption out and go back to a quill.
Of course, that is an absurd notion; but, it's not absurd dammit. I'm a romantic. It's just impractical; I'm in the matrix. Besides, I've already been dressed down in family kitchen debates about my romantic tendencies. Screw it.
TWO OBSERVATIONS ABOUT LANGUAGE
As a former reporter with a continued interest in professional writing, I search the Internet every day, trying to figure out how to do business while playing catch-up with the technology. Quills don't work very well here. Anyway, on many, many business sites, I notice a peculiar and irritating linguistic animal known as "global English." Boil this down and call it corporate speech. I don't want to write that crap.
The military, with which I'm familiar, famously engages in its own "global speech." It's not necessary to go further. Indoctrination and practice require tons of "can do" jargon. None of this particular public language is supposed to be clear to the uninitiated. I never reacted well to it, which is why I don't like to listen to football coaches.
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Having thousands, or millions of very specific kitchen conversations is a good idea. Rigorous, specific, jargon-free language is at the heart of the recipe for discussion.
Turn off the computer or the television. Make a good omelette and some strong coffee or tea. Break some eggs; boil the water. Think. Re-engage.