The biggest line of bullshit ever spewed by bush-con supporters.

[Hugo Chavez]

"If you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about"

[headhuntersix]

Its the truth.......are u doing something wrong..maybe u should worry.

[240 is Back]

Here is the problem...

Information gathered from law-abiding people can be abused.

Can you tell me that those tapping email/phones aren't going to use this info for political purposes?  We already see the Bush white house fire people based on their political beliefs, then consider themselves ABOVE testifying about it.

The minute you surrender free access to everything to this group which has already demonstrated contempt for the law, you open the door for abuses tenfold.

Personally, I follow every law to a tee.  If I ever get stopped and suffer police abuse, you bet your ass I'm calling a lawyer, the ACLU, etc. I RESPECT the law, which is why the Bush admin pisses me off so much - they believe they are above it, abolve congressional oversight, etc.

If you think it's funny, guys, just wait until President Obama decides he has these same powers    Wait until Obama decides he has the right to access everything you've ever written, HH6, because after all, "you have nothing to hide".  Wait til he sees one anti-Muslim slur in your history (there are many we've read here lol) and decides to take your pension for it.

Obviously, that's a stretch... but if anyone had told you 8 years ago that today we'd be in 2 or 3 quagmire wars, $9Tril in debt, White house ignoring congressional oversight, etc, you'd call that a stretch too...

[headhuntersix]

See he can't take my pention for it...my pension and anything to do with it is mandated by Congress...oh and he'd have to take about 450,00 other guys pensions as well. I'm sorry but what I'm doing is exerciseing free speech...wire tapping douchebags trying to kill us is another. just wait until we get attacked again and the Military and the CIA etc are blamed for not doing enough.

[240 is Back]

See he can't take my pention for it...my pension and anything to do with it is mandated by Congress...oh and he'd have to take about 450,00 other guys pensions as well. I'm sorry but what I'm doing is exerciseing free speech...wire tapping douchebags trying to kill us is another. just wait until we get attacked again and the Military and the CIA etc are blamed for not doing enough.

you see my point tho - yes, today it's unthinkable.

however, pretend it's 2015... 7 years into the Obama "regime".

He inherited three wars just as most of the world dropped the buck and we started another Depression.  Seven years of stupid moves on his part and the nation is damn near bankrupted.  half the bases are shut down, social security is up for a complete overhaul, the meteor crash of 2012 just caused a giant food shortage, some new disease is threatening people...

(you see my point... under a weak leader with lots of bad shit)

Do you think it's outside the realm of possibility that President Obama wouldn't try something silly like cut the retirement of those who did anything he didn't like?  Already, people are pushed out of the military and demoted for questioning 911.  I'm just saying, Pres Obama will be the most powerful guy in history, as he'll inherit all the Bush powers.  Free speech might not be guaranteed in the military down the road, who knows?

[Purge_WTF]

  I forgot her name, but I remember seeing this Middle-Eastern Bush-bot bitch on TV once. She was a Christian convert from Islam and wrote a book about her experiences and said something to the effect of, "We need to investigate people who are opposed to the Patriot Act, because they have something to hide." I wanted to jump through the TV and strangle her.

[MB_722]

Ain't No Need to Worry
by Sean Gonsalves

This week's phrase for Orwell's dust bin is: ''If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about'' - as in, despite the illegality of the NSA's apparent ''data-mining'' spy program, ''if you're not doing anything wrong (illegal), you have nothing to worry about.''

The phrase, of course, begs the question: Who could possibly be opposed to such an important intelligence tool in the never-ending ''war on terror''? And if you don't think about it, it makes perfect sense.

Granted, it gives those pesky know-nothing peaceniks an opportunity to throw Benjamin Franklin's observation in the face of endless war hawks (''those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither''), but pay that no mind, my fellow citizen-soldier. Just remember, ''if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.'' Never mind that the whole idea silently denies that secret power breeds corruption and abuse or that it completely ignores history (i.e., government spying on terrorists like Martin Luther King).

''If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.'' I mean, you can find people's Social Security numbers, medical records, photos, addresses and all manner of highly confidential material on the Internet. So what's the big deal if the government spies on us to make sure none of us are terrorists?

OK, sure, there's a huge difference between some stalker using sometimes questionable Internet information to target you and the most powerful government in the world run by a president who thinks his constitutional views are authoritative (except they don't apply to anyone in his administration). That doesn't matter when you realize how patriotic you're being when you simply trust the public pronouncements of the most secretive government in the history of the United States.

As a matter of fact, why don't we require all U.S. citizens to display - (oops), properly display - an American flag on their door post? Those who don't should be made to wear a scarlet letter, bound in stocks in the town square and pelted with vegetables. Due process? Hah! ''If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.'' And don't let the traitors throw you off your talking points by pointing to the eerie signs of creeping fascism we see in the fight against an enemy that actually poses less of a threat than being killed in an automobile crash or a Category-5 hurricane.

Also, pay no attention to those intelligence experts who say humint (human intelligence) is much more useful than signit (signal intelligence) or that data-mining is like looking for a needle in a prairie as deep as the Grand Canyon. Efficiency and actionable results don't matter, in this case. What matters is that you remember, ''if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. ''Sure, there's a possibility you could become a bureaucratic ''mistake'' and be put on a no-fly list on the way to your mom's funeral. Or, you could be arrested because some analyst put two-and-two together - that the solicited donation you gave at the mall to the Crescent Society combined with your planned travel arrangements to visit the pyramids in Egypt ''appeared'' suspicious. Therefore, you had to be rendered to an unknown detention facility before the whole ''mix-up'' gets sorted out. Even if that should happen, don't worry. You'll get a really nice apology letter, signed by the big cheese himself.

But why stop with illegal wiretapping? This is the war on terror, we're talking about! We should put Pentagon-monitored GPS chips in all privately-owned vehicles to better track the movements of suspected terrorists who have been known to use a vehicle of some sort to commit a terrorist attack. That shouldn't be a constitutional problem because doesn't the Constitution say something about the government having the authority to regulate transportation and commerce?

Now, when you hear loosed-lipped left-leaning liberals start talking about creeping fascism, you can dismiss it as paranoid, conspiracy-theory nuttery on the completely rational grounds that creeping socialism is worse. And no, there's no contradiction in calling universal health care for Americans socialism while celebrating the spending of billions of tax dollars in building civil infrastructure, including hospitals, in Iraq (which the mainstream media never report).

But, if you remember nothing else, remember this: ''If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about'' - except the terrorists.

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and a syndicated columnist.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0523-25.htm

Why, Even If You Have Nothing To Hide, Government Surveillance Threatens Your Freedom

by John W. Dean | October 19, 2007 - 10:44am
 from FindLaw

The Case Against Expanding Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Powers

"I've got nothing to hide, so electronic surveillance doesn't bother me. To the contrary, I'm delighted that the Bush Administration is monitoring calls and electronic traffic on a massive scale, because catching terrorists is far more important that worrying about the government's listening to my phone calls, or reading my emails." So the argument goes. It is a powerful one that has seduced too many people.

Millions of Americans buy this logic, and in accepting it, believe they are doing the right thing for themselves, their family, and their friends, neighbors, community and country. They are sadly wrong. If you accept this argument, you have been badly fooled.

This contention is being bantered about once again, so there is no better time than the present to set thinking people straight. Bush and Cheney want to make permanent unchecked Executive powers to electronically eavesdrop on anyone whom any President feels to be of interest. In August, before the summer recess, Congress enacted the Protect America Act, which provided only temporary approval for the expanding Executive powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). These temporary powers expire in February 2008, so Congress is once again addressing the subject.

The FISA Amendments: The Administration Is Seeking Immunity for Miscreants

Because of the way electronic traffic is directed from foreign countries through the United States, the FISA Court had previously rejected requests to intercept certain foreign-person- to-foreign-person communications in the United States. It was a technical problem, arising from the fact that FISA was written before modern data routing had been designed, and FISA thus needed fixing. On this, everyone agreed.

However, when the Bush Administration asked for the necessary fix to FISA, it also requested much more, including immunity under the existing laws for all the telecommunications companies that have been assisting the government in its illegal warrantless surveillance. Significantly, this practice - justified by reference to the "war on terror" - apparently started well before 9/11 under the Bush Administration.

Ironically, in requesting this immunity, the Bush White House has refused to disclose exactly what type of activities Congress would be retroactively immunizing. Preliminary congressional inquiry has revealed that a massive amount of electronic surveillance of Americans has gone on under the Bush/Cheney Administration. For example, one of the telecom giants, Verizon, reported that between January 2005 and September 2007 they provided information on 94,000 occasions. These numbers suggest that Verizon was operating as merely another (and a secret) extension of the federal intelligence establishment.

Many of the companies appear to be violating a number of federal criminal statutes - such as 18 U.S.C. 2511, which requires a warrant for such surveillance and 18 U.S.C. 2702, which prohibits any "entity providing an electronic communication service to the public" from knowingly divulging "to any person or entity the contents of a communication" without a court order.

Currently, the telecoms are not likely to be particularly worried about being prosecuted by the very same government that instructed them to violate the law, and is leading the way in doing so itself.

But what about under the next Administration? The five-year statute of limitations will make them potentially criminally liable after Bush is gone - at least, unless the Bush Administration gains for them retroactive and future immunity. In a new Administration, the telecoms may be viewed not as cooperative patriots, but rather as criminal co-conspirators.

Civil Liability Appears To Be Driving the Immunity Request

Meanwhile, civil liability for these companies is also a realistic prospect. For example, in a San Francisco federal court, AT&T customers are seeking to protect their privacy with actions under laws like 18 U.S.C. 2520, which provides a civil remedy and hefty damages -- ranging up to $10,000 per day per violation. Since it is possible that, over five-plus years, there have been tens upon tens of thousands of such violations, the, if liable telecoms could be looking at hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars of damages.

The Bush Administration clearly wants to help its partners in crime; it also wants to avoid accountability for what it has done and is still doing. If the civil litigation proceeds - and one judge already ruled that the "state secrets" privilege does not prevent the plaintiffs from going forward - the Bush Administration faces the risk of a federal court's forcing it to disclose its unsavory surveillance activities.

Privacy advocates are horrified at the prospect of Congress's potentially protecting this activity through immunity legislation. Yet, in sharp contrast, most people could care less. Indeed few people seem to care about their loss of privacy, notwithstanding the fact that, like an invisible pollutant to our air or water, it is increasingly eroding our freedom. Unfortunately, it seems that the invasion of our privacy, like the destruction of our atmosphere, may be tolerated until it is too late to fix it.

One of the leading causes of both problems is ignorance. Privacy is a highly complex issue, so people easily accept the claims of those who assert that, if you are not doing anything illegal, you have nothing to be concerned about government surveillance, and if you are, you have no right to privacy to break the law.

Understanding the Misunderstanding about Privacy

For several years I have been reading the work of George Washington University Law School Professor Daniel J. Solove, who writes extensively about privacy in the context of contemporary digital technology. The current apathy about government surveillance brought to mind his essay "'I've Got Nothing To Hide' And Other Misunderstandings of Privacy."

Professor Solove's deconstruction of the "I've got nothing to hide" position, and related justifications for government surveillance, is the best brief analysis of this issue I have found. These arguments are not easy to zap because, once they are on the table, they can set the terms of the argument. As Solove explains, "the problem with the nothing to hide argument is with its underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things." He warns, "Agreeing with this assumption concedes far too much ground and leads to an unproductive discussion of information people would likely want or not want to hide." Solove's bottom line is that this argument "myopically views privacy as a form of concealment or secrecy."

In his work, Solove addresses the reality that privacy problems differ: Not all are equal; some are more harmful than others. Most importantly, he writes, "to understand privacy, we must conceptualize it and its value more pluralistically." Through several years of work, Solove has developed a more nuanced concept of privacy that rebuts the idea that there is a "one-size-fits-all conception of privacy."

The concept of "privacy" encompasses many ideas relating to the proper and improper use and abuse of information about people within society. Privacy protects information not only because it would cause others to think less of the person at issue, but also simply to give us all breathing room: "Society involves a great deal of friction," Solove writes, "and we are constantly clashing with each other. Part of what makes a society a good place in which to live is the extent to which it allows people freedom from the intrusiveness of others. A society without privacy protection would be suffocation, and it might not be a place in which most would want to live."

Professor Solove's work - much of which he makes available online - helps clarify thinking about privacy in its fuller context, and helps explain what is wrong with reductive dismissals of privacy using the mantra, "I've got nothing to hide." Before rushing to give the Bush Administration more ways to invade our privacy, not to mention absolving those who have confederated with him to engage in the most massive invasion of America privacy ever, members of Congress should look at Solove's work. Too many of them have no idea what privacy is all about, and grossly underestimate the value of this complex and essential concept.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/10547

[MB_722]

Obama’s FISA Betrayal

By Matthew Rothschild, June 24, 2008

Barack Obama’s rightward sprint is nowhere more obvious than in his betrayal on the FISA bill.

This bill allows the President to grab all incoming and outgoing international communications without a warrant.

The ACLU says it represents “an unprecedented extension of governmental surveillance over Americans.”

Obama, sounding on Friday a lot like Bush, said: “Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay.”

Here’s what Bush said the same day as Obama: The bill “allows our intelligence professionals to quickly and effectively monitor the plans of terrorists abroad, while protecting the liberties of Americans here at home.”

But it doesn’t protect our liberties, and Obama ought to know that.

Obama said it “firmly reestablishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance.”

But the ACLU notes that the bill “permits only minimal court oversight. The FISA Court only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what, or where will actually be tapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment.”

What’s more, in the incredibly rare instances where the FISA Court denies a warrant to the President, under the new bill the President can go ahead and do the wiretapping anyway while the appeals process continues, a process that the ACLU says can take two months.

Russ Feingold calls the idea that this is a good compromise “a farce” and “political cover.”

Says Feingold: “Anybody who claims this is an OK bill, I really question if they’ve even read it.”

Has Obama?

If not, that’s a problem.

And if he has, and still approves of it, that’s an even bigger one.

http://www.progressive.org/mag_wx0602408

[Hugo Chavez]

  I forgot her name, but I remember seeing this Middle-Eastern Bush-bot bitch on TV once. She was a Christian convert from Islam and wrote a book about her experiences and said something to the effect of, "We need to investigate people who are opposed to the Patriot Act, because they have something to hide." I wanted to jump through the TV and strangle her.

lol...

[Hugo Chavez]

not happy with Obama on that.

[youandme]

  I forgot her name, but I remember seeing this Middle-Eastern Bush-bot bitch on TV once. She was a Christian convert from Islam and wrote a book about her experiences and said something to the effect of, "We need to investigate people who are opposed to the Patriot Act, because they have something to hide." I wanted to jump through the TV and strangle her.

She raised a good point.


Are you hiding something?

If not you have nothing to fear.

[Hugo Chavez]

She raised a good point.


Are you hiding something?

If not you have nothing to fear.

I'm fully against crossbreeding sheep and people.  It's just wrong.

[headhuntersix]

I would imagine u beinga sheep u would be against it. 

[Hugo Chavez]

I would imagine u beinga sheep u would be against it. 

you have some real logic problems.  You would imagine I'm against myself, brilliant...  You captioned that pic of a cylon holding a McCain pic "Vote McCain because Obama is a Cylon"  I'm starting to wonder if you might be mildly retarded.

[Arnold jr]

which is why the Bush admin pisses me off so much - they believe they are above it, abolve congressional oversight, etc.

Above the law? Almost. Although it is not in the constitution, the supreme court has ruled time and time again that the executive office has the right to Executive Privilege. Whenever the executive branch invokes this, they by law do not have to disclose any information. The court found this to be constitutional under the separation of powers clause in the constitution.

I know some who are Bush haters will say this is BS, since Bush himself has invoked this power more then once. But Clinton himself did the exact same thing. Granted, the executive privilege law is not total immunity, that's why it didn't work for him. For the privilege to remain in tact for the president who uses it, an investigation by congress must produce a prosecution that has substantial hard proof that the privilege should be ignored in that instance...that's why Clinton couldn't use it...so far no one has been able to force this hand on Bush.

That's the deal, you can't take away executive privilege just because you desire classified or secret information. You have to be able to present hard facts, not rumor or speculation.

Last off, many might say that there should be no executive privilege since those words are no where in the constitution. Well, neither is the term the right to privacy in regards to abortion. But you won't find to many on the left arguing with that.

[MB_722]

..

[24KT]

See he can't take my pention for it...my pension and anything to do with it is mandated by Congress...oh and he'd have to take about 450,00 other guys pensions as well. I'm sorry but what I'm doing is exerciseing free speech...wire tapping douchebags trying to kill us is another. just wait until we get attacked again and the Military and the CIA etc are blamed for not doing enough.

I got news for you HH6, if any president wants to take your pension away, he can simply order your platoon into the hottest hotspot on the planet without adequate protection. Not only will your pension be gone, but your salary too. 

[Hereford]

I got news for you HH6, if any president wants to take your pension away, he can simply order your platoon into the hottest hotspot on the planet without adequate protection. Not only will your pension be gone, but your salary too. 

No, that's what we have canucks for.

Cannon Fodder.