Jimmy Carter Is Pretty Sure The NSA Is Spying On His Email

[deminks]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/23/jimmy-carter-nsa_n_5017378.html

Former President Jimmy Carter thinks the National Security Agency is probably monitoring his email.

In an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell airing during Sunday's "Meet the Press," Carter said he favors snail mail when communicating with foreign officials.

&quot The justification for surveillance) has been extremely liberalized and, I think, abused by our own intelligence agencies," Carter told Mitchell. "As a matter of fact, you know, I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored. And when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write the letter myself, put it in the post office, and mail it."

(snip)

The former president later said the United States' democracy had been compromised by the spying.

(end snip)

[former9thward]

1. I watched the interview.

He also said Obama is the only President who has not asked him for any advice. I wonder why ....

[Autumn]

2. That floored me.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. President Carter started no wars, bombed no civilians,

President Carter started no wars, bombed no civilians, and committed no crimes against the Constitution. He did not sell weapons to terrorists or spy on his political opponents.



http://www.salon.com/2013/07/19/jimmy_carters_forgotten_history_lesson/

[Laughing Mirror]

30. Had solar panels installed at White House

banned hard liquor at White House functions and sent his daughter to DC public schools.

Clearly he was not presidential. Clearly he would have to be got rid of.

[Demeter]

33. By George (not W or Poppy), I think you've got it!

[Agnosticsherbet]

41. President Carter initiated Operation Cyclone -

the expensive CIA operation that ultimately armed the Mujahideen, first by funneling money to Pakistan for the Mujahideen, and later directly to the Mujahideen.

He also declared "The Carter Doctrine" that stated the US could invade any country in the Persian Gulf in our own national interests.

He also sent military troops into Iran in a failed and disastrous attempt to rescue the hostages held there.

I like Carter. I think he gets a bit of a bum rap in history, especially since he Reagan appears to have violated the law in his reported negotiation with Iran over the hostages before he was elected. (If this indeed take place.) But he was certainly willing to fight a war, and more than willing to use the CIA as a tool of Mayhem to further US interests.

[MannyGoldstein]

8. Carter's not one of the cool kids

A little pathetic the way he tries, no?

Regards,

TWM

[Jesus Malverde]

15. Seeing Obama sucking up to Bush the elder while Clinton jokes about with Bush the younger

Puts the "opposition" and "bipartisanship" into context.

Its up there with the repeated visits to the whitehouse by Jeb to give him some political vertas and fraternity brothers "running" against each other.



Has President Obama give President Carter a similar platform and courtesy as he extended the murderous Bush clan? Republican heroes were not made by their actions, they were lionized afterwards with airports and constant reminders about how great bastards like "reagan" were. Unfortunately with our party we allow the media and the republicans to define our hero's and issues or trash them.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

25. In a distant way the picture reminds me of Cynthia Dwyer

as I see a little pathetic above the photo. !@#$%^((_ but oh, that was a very long time ago.

[snot]

58. Obviously, you mean that as a compliment.

[Jesus Malverde]

16. "What would the president ask him about anyway?"

He's busy getting advice from Kissinger.

[Jesus Malverde]

74. There is a 90-year-old “war criminal” helping to frame the foreign policy of the Obama administratio

There is a 90-year-old “war criminal” helping to frame the foreign policy of the Obama administration. Perhaps a little surprising. Until, of course, you realise that the old boy in question is Henry Kissinger, and he has been advising the White House on a subject he knows well – the Russians.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/henry-kissinger-a-diplomatic-colossus-who-is-still-a-key-influence-in-us-amid-syria-crisis-8815533.html

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

37. yes and he believed he would win reelection.

The party split at that time went to Kennedy. There remains today plenty of speculation about it.
Things were pretty messed up back than. Splitting hairs.They went to Ted Kennedy the same way they sought out Jimmy Carter.Gerald Ford ran on whip inflation now.

Than came Ronnie.

Ya gotta like Jimmy,just like ya had ta like Ted. Splitting hairs.

[lark]

40. So you think that Jeb has good advice for Obama

but Carter doesn't? Hmm, that says a lot.

[joshcryer]

53. Possibly what Carter's original vision for FISA was.

Since it he was the one who signed it into law?

[DeSwiss]

60. I hear bitterness......

...but not coming from Jimmy Carter.

[Demeter]

29. Obama doesn't ask ANYONE for advice

unless he's a bankster, a spy, or a warmonger.

Time to get a clue. We was had.

[LuvNewcastle]

42. +1000

[DeSwiss]

61. Actually......

...that's reassuring, my faith in Carter remains intact.

- Since I know he had absolutely nothing to do with this administration.

[Sunlei]

3. what about all the cookies that also 'spy' on our emails and generate ads off email keywords.

Everybody, not just NSA 'reads' all the emails.

[sabrina 1]

26. Really? I did not know that everyone was spying on my emails, until Whistle Blowers revealed the

gross and massive spying on the American people.

I know for a fact that no one in my family or among my friends are reading my emails unless I have sent them one. They would not do so even if they could, due a thing called 'respect for privacy' and 'integrity'.

How does 'everyone' find out how to do this?

[Sunlei]

39. perhaps you didn't notice how ads are generated from your emails?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

Nothing should be considered private on your computer. Read the eulas (you agree to) for everything you do online, you have no real guarantee of privacy.

I agree, all the federal billions spent on raking in 'everything online' is a total waste of trillions of dollars. Everything put in place by our gov the month or two after 9-11 should be totally done away with. I doubt at this point, they could even stop the monster they grew.

[sabrina 1]

55. I did wonder about that when I first noticed and it freaked me out. Now we know how they know what

we are doing, interested in buying etc. Which I believe IS the scandal they are trying to hide. They used 9/11 to get billions of dollars for Corporate marketing. I could be wrong, but if that is what they've been up to, there are no words to describe the abuse of power. Billions extracted from tax payers on false pretenses, to do multi billion dollar marketing for Big Corporations.

I agree completely with the rest of the post.

[Pholus]

48. Ads are annoying and ignorable. One wrong slip by NSA genius programmers

and you're suddenly public enemy number one. So I guess I think it is a matter of degree.

And, of course, DARPA is looking for new loyalty detection algorithms which can be applied to large datasets. Wonder which dataset they have in mind?

Oh well, nothing to see here. When the next Republican uses such a program to purge the civil service of Democrats remember we tried to warn ya.

[PowerToThePeople]

4. President Carter, you should not be sending unencrypted (plain text) emails.

Please have your IT guys look into it.

http://www.gnupg.org/

GNU Privacy guard or other similar keyed encryption system.

[awoke_in_2003]

10. You really believe

the NSA can't crack it?

[PowerToThePeople]

17. No Really, the NSA Can’t Brute Force Your Crypto

I’ve talked to many people who assume that the NSA, the world’s most powerful and well-funded spy agency, can easily crack the encryption on messages they intercept by brute force. They speculate: “What if Big Brother has a massive cluster of supercomputers guessing keys at full power in a top secret and shadowy lab a mile beneath Maryland?” Even then, they still can’t crack your crypto.

Don’t get me wrong. There are many implementation flaws, bugs, misconfigurations, user errors, and rubber hose attacks that could lead to crypto being compromised. I’m referring to the NSA’s ability to use massive computing power to guess a crypto key.

https://micahflee.com/2013/01/no-really-the-nsa-cant-break-your-crypto/

http://www.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/pgp-faq-security-questions.html#security-against-nsa

Q: Can the NSA crack PGP (or RSA, DSS, IDEA, 3DES,...)?

A: This question has been asked many times. If the NSA were able to crack RSA or any of the other well known cryptographic algorithms, you would probably never hear about it from them. Now that RSA and the other algorithms are very widely used, it would be a very closely guarded secret.

The best defense against this is the fact the algorithms are known worldwide. There are many competent mathematicians and cryptographers outside the NSA and there is much research being done in the field right now. If any of them were to discover a hole in one of the algorithms, I'm sure that we would hear about it from them via a paper in one of the cryptography conferences.

For this reason, when you read messages saying that "someone told them" that the NSA is able to break PGP, take it with a grain of salt and ask for some documentation on exactly where the information is coming from. In particular, the story called NSA Can Break PGP Encryption is a joke.

Imo, statements such as yours are FUD used to stop the public from using encryption. Why take the time to encrypt if it can just be cracked by the NSA?

[cprise]

21. These are mathematical theorems we're talking about here.

If an astronomer finds a large asteroid, does it make sense to assume NASA can pulverize it?

There is plenty of low-grade encryption used in things like cellphones. Cracking that stuff is the lions' share of the NSA's cryptography work. They push ahead with quantum computing in hopes they can someday crack strong public key encryption, but QC is more than a decade away.

OTOH, Carter using paper and USPS is staying within a realm that is subject to classical forensics. There are myriad more ways to detect tampering of physical objects like signed+sealed letters vs a block of digital bits.

[grasswire]

6. If NSA wasn't already reading his snail mail...

......they are as of now.

I believe they were already, of course.

He may need to get an old fashioned wax seal to ensure validity.

[MannyGoldstein]

7. If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear.

Snowden Suxx!

Regards,

Third-Way Manny

[progressoid]

27. Why do you hate Murica TWM?

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

9. Ya gotta like Jimmy

Plain and simple is the truth as it is. I still have my old word processor ,also serves as a unhackable data bank!
And I like snale mail too, if I think it's important, I'll hand deliver it to the post office.

You just gotta like Jimmy.

[treestar]

11. Odd they would worry about what he might be doing

He isn't working with them whenever he does things that are diplomatic? I would have thought he was.

Dennis Rodman, on the other hand, is definitely on his own.

[JDPriestly]

12. Did you read the entire article?

Carter likes Snowden, says the NSA has overstepped and agrees with me that we no longer have a functioning democracy.

Those are the words of an experienced and wise man. Remember, he was a nuclear engineer and served in the Navy before he became president. He is no traitor. He is just more intelligent than some.

If anyone would understand when and how we lost our democracy, it would be Jimmy Carter.

NSA is a precursor to a fascistic government. If we don't get the NSA under control very soon, the US is doomed to devastation by the extreme, extreme right-wing. It's happened before in other countries and can happen here.

[MannyGoldstein]

13. Carter might get banned if he were on DU.

Ya think?

[cprise]

22. This makes no sense whatsoever. n/t

[adirondacker]

23. I forgot...

[sabrina 1]

28. Romney was running for president. He's a public figure. He was giving a talk

which was intended to help his bid for the WH. Public figures running for public office, talking about their goals, what they need to get there, who they are talking to, all come under 'that is part of being a public figure running for high office'. Why should what Carter's grandson did bother Romney? Surely he had the expectation that once he announced his run for the highest office in the land, the public had a right to know what his plans were?

How on earth does that compare to a private individual, who is not running for office, emailing their friends and family?

I'm sure Repubs would agree with you though, as if they haven't done the same to Democrats.

[adirondacker]

38. Uggh. That wasn't the intention of my sarcasm and after rereading I can see how that came across as

Fucked up. I need a break.

[sabrina 1]

54. No problem, we all slip up, don't worry about, sorry to have misunderstood.

[adirondacker]

56. Ha! My intention was to imply that the Carter bashers should recall his grandson's

role in Romney' defeat (which was a MAJOR chink in his armor to allow Obama to win). I had no intention of comparing recording some fundraising rally with NSA's overreach into private email. Major Derp on my side and you weren't the only one I confused.

It probably won't be the last time I blunder

[sabrina 1]

69. Lol, no problem, and I agree with you.

Next time I'll ask first!

[Ikonoklast]

24. Many forget that Carter was more than a bit of a fiscal as well as social conservative.

He would be catching the same hate from the usual suspects here if he were currently president.

[MannyGoldstein]

35. And to think... he was still light years to the left of today's Democratic Party. nt

[rhett o rick]

51. Spot on. nm

[Demeter]

34. Also more ethical

Carter is truly old school.

[treestar]

45. If he's saying that, he's lost his mind

I doubt that. We have a functioning Democracy.

[PowerToThePeople]

49. I do not think we have EVER had a democracy here

The United States is a federal constitutional republic, in which the President of the United States (the head of state and head of government), Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_United_States

Elections
For more details on this topic, see Elections in the United States.

Unlike in some parliamentary systems, Americans vote for a specific candidate instead of directly selecting a particular political party. With a federal government, officials are elected at the federal (national), state and local levels. On a national level, the President, is elected indirectly by the people, through an Electoral College. In modern times, the electors virtually always vote with the popular vote of their state. All members of Congress, and the offices at the state and local levels are directly elected.

Both federal and state laws regulate elections. The United States Constitution defines (to a basic extent) how federal elections are held, in Article One and Article Two and various amendments. State law regulates most aspects of electoral law, including primaries, the eligibility of voters (beyond the basic constitutional definition), the running of each state's electoral college, and the running of state and local elections.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#Republic

Republic
Main article: Republicanism

In contemporary usage, the term democracy refers to a government chosen by the people, whether it is direct or representative.[85] The term republic has many different meanings, but today often refers to a representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a president, serving for a limited term, in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are representative democracies with an elected or appointed head of government such as a prime minister.[86]

The Founding Fathers of the United States rarely praised and often criticised democracy, which in their time tended to specifically mean direct democracy, often without the protection of a Constitution enshrining basic rights; James Madison argued, especially in The Federalist No. 10, that what distinguished a democracy from a republic was that the former became weaker as it got larger and suffered more violently from the effects of faction, whereas a republic could get stronger as it got larger and combats faction by its very structure.

What was critical to American values, John Adams insisted,[87] was that the government be "bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend." As Benjamin Franklin was exiting after writing the U.S. constitution, a woman asked him "Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?". He replied "A republic—if you can keep it."[88]

[JDPriestly]

68. From the organizational and constitutional point of view, we have a republic.

But, our Constitution has been amended to permit some direct voting of, for example, senators, and the 14th (equal protection), 15th (all races may vote), 17th (direct election of senators by popular vote) and 21st (women may vote) amendments among other changes to our Constitution and system further democratized our government.

The president is still elected by the electoral college, but beyond that, we are about as direct a democracy as is practical. Of course, gerrymandering is a problem, but rather hard to avoid. Someone has to decide on the boundaries of congressional districts, and it is easy to hand that task to incumbents in office. California has a different system.

Here is the modern Constitution.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution

However, even though Democrats won the most votes in the 2012 House elections, we did not win the most seats. So, it could be argued that is quite undemocratic.

"The American people elected a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate, and the majority of them voted for a Democratic House, but we have a Republican House, and it's necessary for all sides to come together and take responsible action," Hoyer said.

. . . .
Hoyer spokeswoman Stephanie Young directed us to a December 2012 analysis by the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan, Washington, D.C. publication that analyzes and handicaps congressional and gubernatorial races, with the headline "House GOP Won 49 Percent of Votes, 54 Percent of Seats." (The story and corresponding chart are accessible to subscribers only.)

By Cook’s calculations, House Democrats out-earned their Republican counterparts by 1.17 million votes. Read another way, Democrats won 50.59 percent of the two-party vote. Still, they won just 46.21 percent of seats, leaving the Republicans with 234 seats and Democrats with 201.

. . . .

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/feb/19/steny-hoyer/steny-hoyer-house-democrats-won-majority-2012-popu/

And, of course, we all remember that Gore won more of the popular vote nationwide than did Bush, so in that sense, we are a republic, not a democracy.

On the other hand, when we use the term "democracy" to refer to the US, we are also referring to the quality and nature of the process we use in choosing our representatives. That is, in our system, the democratic aspect. It is, to my mind more valuable and important to protect the democratic quality of that process than to have every person voting on every issue. (With that kind of democratic government, we would never get anything done but discuss issues and pass laws -- no time for other work, business or even recreation.)

It is the democratic participation in election campaigns, the discussion of issues and the introduction and advocating for new ideas and new policies that is no longer democratic. Carter is absolutely right about this. Once a government agency is observing the activity on the internet to the extent that the NSA and possibly other private and governmental entities are, we no longer have the right to speak freely, assemble freely, even exercise our religions freely. The NSA always has the ability to find something to punish us, to chill our speech. Carter has found that true in his life.

The only thing I disagree with him about is that snail mail is a better way to communicate without government surveillance. I have sent items through international mail and had them opened, even very specifically damaged. This was in the 1980s. I had lived in Europe a long time and at some point long ago bought a pair of binoculars and a metronome that were made in East Germany (never been there, bought them in the West). (Now you know it was a long time ago.) Upon my return, I mailed many items home. Some were fragile, certainly more fragile than a clunky pair of binoculars although admittedly, the metronome was somewhat fragile. Of all the items I mailed home, only the binocular case (made of a sort of cardboard with a thin lever cover and the metronome were ruined. I always suspected tampering on the part of the mail service, and I always will. Maybe just paranoia, but I do not think that the international mail is that secure.

[MosheFeingold]

19. Probably Correct

I guess I am an old-time Democrat, because I don't trust the military/government/industrial complex one bit, regardless of what party is in power.

I don't doubt Carter is correct.

There are forces in the government --- again, regardless of party in power -- that are not friends of anyone but themselves and their cronies.

[JDPriestly]

20. Right.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. Correct and welcome to DU

And since this is the subject. remember to say hi to Agent Mike, our resident spook. (That joke has become eerily relevant folks)

[MosheFeingold]

59. Thank you

I had an ID years ago, but my wife got sick and passed and I just didn't feel like being involved in politics back during the Bush II regime. Had too much to deal with.

I've sadly grown even more cynical.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. Carter's a pretty dangerous guy. We need the NSA to protect us from him..and millions of others.

[Hissyspit]

36. Libertarian!

[Kurovski]

57. Yeah! What's peanut dude hiding!!??

[mackerel]

43. we need to put

Lisbeth Salander on the case!

[eallen]

44. Of course. Why...

Why would he be the exception?

[idendoit]

46. President Carter, seems to me, still has that dry sense of humor.

[JoePhilly]

47. I heard they're too busy spying on everyone at DU.

[blackspade]

50. Carter is a gem.

And the best president of my lifetime.

[joshcryer]

52. The NSA monitors all plaintext posted to the internet.

All. This post. Every post in this thread. Every post on DU. Every email. Every post on the entire internet.

[malthaussen]

62. As far as Mr Carter goes, I wouldn't be surprised...

... if they don't steam open his letters, too. The rest of us, not so much. But he has a high profile.

-- Mal

[AtheistCrusader]

63. If he has an e-mail account, yes, he's being spied on.

Next question.

[grahamhgreen]

64. They must consider him a threat!

[ProSense]

65. Carter: Snowden's leaks 'good for Americans to know'

Carter: Snowden's leaks 'good for Americans to know'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024718889

[Hulk]

66. One of the truly compassionate and most decent Presidents in our history...

...and yet he gets labeled by the reich wing as inept and passive, due to the oil fiasco and de-escalation of the Vietnam War of the time. Shame on us for letting their message become "history".

[crimeariver1225]

67. He also thinks the mouse in the corner is speaking Sanskrit to him

I don't want to say anything about Jimmy Carter. He is a great American.