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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTop Ten Things that don’t Make Sense about NSA Surveillance
08/06/2013 by Juan Cole
All these stories about the governments quest for Total Information Awareness about the phone calls, email, internet searches, etc. of 312 million ordinary Americans raise some questions in my mind. There are so many things about these stories that dont make sense.
1. The government says that they need everyones phone records because they want to see who calls known overseas terrorists from the US. But if the NSA had a telephone number of a terrorist abroad and wanted to see if it was called from the US, why couldnt it just ask the telephone company for the record of everyone who called it? It isnt true that it would take too much time. It would be instant. Obviously, the government wants the telephone records of millions of Americans for some other reason.
2. If the real reason they are getting our phone records from the phone companies is to check for drug sales and other petty crime inside the US not related to terrorism, and if they are lying to judges about how they initially came to know of these crimes, arent the NSA, DEA and other government officials violating the Constitutional guarantee of due process? Are they focusing on drug buys because law enforcement can confiscate the property of drug dealers, whereas busting other kinds of crime actually costs time and money? And, hasnt their dishonesty and its revelation just put in danger thousands of drug convictions?
3. If the NSA and FBI have all the phone records, bank account information and credit card transactions of everyone, why havent they been able to find any bankers or financiers who engaged in illegal activity while they were plunging ordinary Americans into poverty and homelessness with the Depression of 2008-2009? After all, they seem to have been able to discover illegal activity by former New York governor Elliott Spitzer, by illegally spying on his bank accounts. Was Spitzer, who was trying to crack down on Wall Street, the only prominent figure in New York engaged in such activities? Maybe some Masters of the Universe on Wall Street were, too? Surely there are telephone, bank and credit card records showing the guilt of the latter?
...
http://www.juancole.com/2013/08/things-surveillance-drones.html1. The government says that they need everyones phone records because they want to see who calls known overseas terrorists from the US. But if the NSA had a telephone number of a terrorist abroad and wanted to see if it was called from the US, why couldnt it just ask the telephone company for the record of everyone who called it? It isnt true that it would take too much time. It would be instant. Obviously, the government wants the telephone records of millions of Americans for some other reason.
2. If the real reason they are getting our phone records from the phone companies is to check for drug sales and other petty crime inside the US not related to terrorism, and if they are lying to judges about how they initially came to know of these crimes, arent the NSA, DEA and other government officials violating the Constitutional guarantee of due process? Are they focusing on drug buys because law enforcement can confiscate the property of drug dealers, whereas busting other kinds of crime actually costs time and money? And, hasnt their dishonesty and its revelation just put in danger thousands of drug convictions?
3. If the NSA and FBI have all the phone records, bank account information and credit card transactions of everyone, why havent they been able to find any bankers or financiers who engaged in illegal activity while they were plunging ordinary Americans into poverty and homelessness with the Depression of 2008-2009? After all, they seem to have been able to discover illegal activity by former New York governor Elliott Spitzer, by illegally spying on his bank accounts. Was Spitzer, who was trying to crack down on Wall Street, the only prominent figure in New York engaged in such activities? Maybe some Masters of the Universe on Wall Street were, too? Surely there are telephone, bank and credit card records showing the guilt of the latter?
...
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Top Ten Things that don’t Make Sense about NSA Surveillance (Original Post)
limpyhobbler
Aug 2013
OP
msongs
(67,199 posts)1. due process does not apply to elected politicians or the MIC. sorry bout that nt
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)2. K&R