Seriously, someone please give me the skinny.

[busterbrown]

Wasn’t the electronic surveillance program started under the Bush Administration?
Isn’t Obama just rubber stamping this program and wouldn’t the CIA be actively supporting this program year after year explaining to the Civilian Chiefs how important this spying is to our Nation’s Security?

Finally, what would have happened if there was an attack on U.S. soil after Obama took steps to dismantle the program.. I’ll tell you.... we would have lost the Senate and Presidency within 2 1/2 years..


Anyway, I’m very disappointed with my President with regards to many issues.. However I have a suspicion that things are not always as they seem..

Perhaps the President is pissing us all off enough to get rid of the right wing dem. crowd in our party.
Would you not be surprised if he offered his support for Warren over Clinton..

I donno, just asking.. Really I’m asking.. I’m not such a smart guy...

[NYC_SKP]

1. AFAIK, there's nothing new here. Just the MSM Outrage Du Jour.

It's top of the Drudge Report, so, you know...

[uponit7771]

5. +1

[sweetloukillbot]

9. I'm not going to say it's a hoax...

But if these powerpoints that look like they were made for a ninth grade science presentation, that say the files are located on the Prism Web page in the "Top Secret" folder are really how these sophisticated government agents are presenting the information, I'm scared on a whole new level.

[NYC_SKP]

10. More of those "slides" here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data

Hell, I don't know. I'm pretty sure, though, that Obama's crew didn't come up with them.

[sweetloukillbot]

13. One of them has an April 2013 date on it and is stamped as classified in 2007

This is less sophisticated than the stuff Jack Black was doing in that Gene Hackman/Will Smith movie from 15 years ago...
I'm really, really disappointed if this is what an overview of a Top Secret program looks like.

[RobertEarl]

2. You're right

If Obama had shut it down, he'd have made some very important people very mad. They love this spying. They can spy on us and their competition. And really, they are just getting started. Very few people today are connected. But in another 10 years half the world will be connected.

[randome]

3. Plus the Verizon records gathering has been reviewed by Congress every 90 days since 2006.

And it requires a judge's approved warrant. So while I do want to know more about the program, it does not, to me, rise to the level of 'outrage'.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[CakeGrrl]

4. Glenn Greenwald told people to light their hair on fire, and

a number have obliged despite the false equivalency between what is going on now and what transpired under Bush.

How about voting for a Congress who will curtail the sweeping powers granted the Bush Administration?

[rustydog]

6. Wrong is wrong, whether Bush did it

or if Obama is continuing it.

[GeorgeGist]

7. nailed it.

Obama's the real victim.
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[busterbrown]

8. Where did I state “he was the victim”?

I was just asking questions. It seems far to often around here, people are looking for something thats
not.... I guess its a way of showing enlightenment..

[Trekologer]

11. I have difficulty believing that everyone is under surveillance

Not because a government agency such as the NSA wouldn't want it but because it is highly unlikely that they would be able to collect such data.

First, in the screenshot NYC_SKP posted, it notes that "Notification of target activity -- logins, etc" will be available. Now it could be read to mean that the activity is targeted (ie everyone's logins) or, more likely based on the specific language of surveillance/wiretapping, the term "target" refers to the user being monitored. In other words, the data and activities of specific users, not everyone, is being collected.

Let's say for a moment that the NSA (or other government agency) did have the capability to tap all Internet traffic (as is suggested by those who point to a locked room in an AT&T CO that was circulated a couple years ago). The global Internet bandwidth capacity is about 90 terabits per second. That would mean that the Internet would generate the equivalent of over 2,400 single layer DVDs per second, that's more than 210,000,000 DVDs worth per day. The government would need to transport that amount of data and store it somewhere, that's before even looking through it.

Is that impossible? No, but it is pretty darned hard to do. Even if you're limiting to the service provides listed in the slide, that's still a lot of data to be stored.

[LWolf]

12. Here:

There are plenty of reasons to be disappointed with Barack Obama. Things are not always as they seem.

Those are both true.

It's also true that our political system is corrupt to the core and has been bought and paid for. Never forget that.

There are some who will cling to partisan and personality loyalty no matter what. There are some who will instantly do the opposite.

Then there's this lone wolf, who has no difficulty believing the allegations, but will wait and watch to see how the situation unfolds.