I stand corrected.

You identified 1 American out of 300 million who had his liberties denied for a couple weeks due to erroneous evidence that linked him to Madrid bombings.

Someone please violate my rights since Mayfield received over 2 million dollars from the government for the inconvenience and an apology.

How about citing 2 Americans out of 300 million.

Why don’t you do a little of the work, yourself, before challenging facts about which you are uninformed? You asked for one example, I gave you one example.

Yeah, they were caught red-handed in the Mayfield case, which is both why he got a settlement (with a lot of help from pro bono, pro-American legal eagles, including Oregon public defenders who did the digging to establish crucial facts in the case) and why we know as much as we know about what happened to that man and his family and law practice – it’s an appalling tale of abuse of federal police powers, based on religious prejudice, in defiance of information to the contrary from the Spanish police authorities who were investigating on behalf of the actual victims of the attack in Spain.

Since you can’t be bothered to research the public record for all the many egregious cases already known, and the evidence – circumstantial and otherwise – already courageously proffered at great personal risk in many cases (see, for example, Mark Klein’s smoking gun documentary evidence as cited in the editorial which is the subject of this post) – why don’t you prove to us that we aren’t being unConstitutionally surveilled? Prove that politician ’skeleton-in-closet’ files, business competition and stock-trading secret spying, National Security Letters to ISPs in order to secretly compile dossiers on political activists, airport “watch lists” restricting free and unmolested airline travel, persecution of minority “others” (via spying on Americans and their attorneys) like the many localized groups of Arabs or Muslims or even Quakers in America – etc., etc., are all figments of our fevered imaginations, and ‘no big deal.’ Show us how that $40 BILLION of our money is being spent every year, wisely and prudently, to identify and isolate only actual, realistic, likely threats to our nation, while leaving innocent American citizens in peace. You are the naysayer. Prove us wrong.

Because another very well-known case impacting multiple Americans [since you’re counting, at least two, and likely actually in the hundreds or thousands under the “TSP,” unbeknownst to the secretly-surveilled domestic targets], about which you are apparently oblivious – and which is specifically related to the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” – just had a Ninth Circuit appeals ruling come down on Friday. That’s the case where American lawyers had a smoking gun document (the transcript call record of their conversations) provided (mistakenly) to them by the government that evidently proves that our government (the same government that was pursuing their clients on certain charges) was unConstitutionally monitoring their attorney-client conversations on American soil (and apparently secretly searching their homes and law offices).

Of course, that documentary “proof” of standing is now a verboten “state secret” – so I guess we’re all wrong to be concerned. Since if it’s a “state secret” it must be Constitutional – right? What were those Founders thinking, by requiring the feds to contain their police powers within the parameters of the Fourth Amendment… Didn’t they know that “our betters know best” and will let us know, in their own good time, what actions our government takes “for our own good” that may, or may not, be disclosed to those paying the bills, whom they rule, rather than serve??

Which is the whole point, isn’t it? If we could prove we weren’t being spied on, because we knew the Judicial Branch was still an unavoidable check on the awesome modern technological spying powers of the Executive Branch within the continental U.S., I suppose we could all return to being as blase as you apparently are about our right to privacy. But we can’t prove it, one way or the other, because – whatever it is or isn’t – it’s all now a “state secret” if and when it even gets into court via the personal sacrifice and courage of individual Americans (who you prefer to taunt and mock), with the dedicated help of American patriots like those at the ACLU and CCR.

Any comfortable myth, to the contrary, that we can all surrender our will to the federal “authorities” and just “trust” in the benevolence of actors in the Executive Branch, has long since been blown out of the water by this administration. Only those of bad faith determined to create and enhance secret, totalitarian government would continue to demand unobtainable-by-definition “proof” of unilateral Executive Branch secret domestic spying, before acknowledging that all indications are that such unilateral Executive Branch secret domestic spying does exist, and needs to be stopped if our claim to be a free people, living under a Constitution, is to survive.

I trust the American people, both with all the information they need to make informed choices about the government they want, and with the defense of their nation and its borders, if and when the next real threat draws near – so long as they have not been kept in the dark. It was, after all, despite White House propaganda to the contrary, American citizens who prevented a commercial jetliner from destroying the White House or the Capitol on 9/11. Those citizens gave up their lives, on their own initiative, to do so, and have been given scarce credit for it, by either the media or the government. Dick Cheney still thinks he “ordered” the airliner shot down. Our air defenses didn’t even know where the plane was by the time American civilians were sending it into the ground – which ended up being the only “defense” that worked on behalf of “national security” the way it needed to on 9/11/2001. And that successful civilian defense didn’t cost the taxpayers a dime.

We, the people, are the best defenders of this nation, and its well-being, that anyone could ever hope for or ask for. If we are in the dark about the actions of our own government – not only our rights, but our nation’s defense itself is endangered.

I stand corrected.

You identified 1 American out of 300 million who had his liberties denied for a couple weeks due to erroneous evidence that linked him to Madrid bombings.

Someone please violate my rights since Mayfield received over 2 million dollars from the government for the inconvenience and an apology.

How about citing 2 Americans out of 300 million.

The only way to find that out is to force the telecoms to tell us. They won’t do that with retro-active “immunity” because lawsuits against them will be thrown out.

When did they start the illegal tapping? That is what we need to know.

http://cybersafe.gov/olc/sitting_president.htm

Link to (VERY LONG) piece on whether or not a sitting president can be indicted- don’t have time to read it before the cocktail hour…

I think we’re going to need a truth and reconciliation commission after this administration ends.

I do think the stuff about doing these wiretaps BEFORE 911 needs more publicity. I can at least understand the arguments for post-911. I DON’T agree with those arguments…but I can at least see the argument.

But, BEFORE 911??? I can’t come up with any good reason at all.

Ghostman

Ghostman, I asked John Dean about this, what Cheney was up to with the NSA surveillance prior to 911. I got the impression from his answer that this NSA stuff turns Cheney on (my words, not his). Why I haven’t a clue.

Well… you can have all the laws on the books you want. But if the people who are supposed enforce the laws don’t, then law becomes meaningless. The other Decider, the Speaker of the House has decided there will be no impeachment. As we know.

OKK

“The other Decider” – lol

It is noteworthy that all the rhetoric and accusations regarding Federal surveillance and nobody can [c]ite a SINGLE American who has either lost their life, job, or liberty.

Isn’t it about time to redirect efforts to something substantive?

Brandon Mayfield, for one, an innocent American citizen (who could prove standing, unlike other innocent victims of secret Executive Branch-authorized spying), illegally and unConstitutionally imprisoned (i.e., ‘lost his liberty’), spied on, house and papers and effects secretly searched by federal authorities, slandered: in Oregon, the United States of America. Read all about it (don’t wait for the corporations to “inform” you via television):

http://www.ord.uscourts.gov/ru…..pinion.pdf

Just another day in the life of the “domestic security surveillance” spying now being done by our Department of “Defense” and its $40 BILLION dollar (every year, and growing) military intelligence apparatus (largely contracted out to private, for-profit entities), in order to watch us within our borders:

FISA was designed to address the issues left open by the Supreme Court in United States v. United States District Court (commonly known as the “Keith” case), 407 U.S. 297 (1972). In that case, the Court distinguished between three types of surveillance:

(1) electronic surveillance for domestic criminal investigations — the Court held a warrant with probable cause is required pursuant to the Fourth Amendment.

(2) “domestic security surveillance” — the Court held that “different standards may be compatible with the Fourth Amendment if they are reasonable both in relation to the legitimate need of Government for intelligence information and the protected rights of our citizens.”

(3) surveillance of “foreign powers or their agents” — the Court declined to indicate whether the Fourth Amendment would apply to this kind of surveillance but suggested that warrantless surveillance of foreign agents [within our borders] “may be constitutional.”

So, to sum up, there are three categories of surveillance — (1) domestic criminal surveillance gets strong Fourth Amendment protection (warrant and probable cause); (2) domestic security surveillance gets less stringent protection under the Fourth Amendment (reasonableness); and (3) foreign intelligence surveillance may or may not be covered by the Fourth Amendment, the issue remaining unresolved.

This set the stage for FISA, which operates in category (3) above. Congress sought to avoid Fourth Amendment problems by confining FISA to situations involving the gathering of foreign intelligence from foreign powers or agents [within our borders]. That’s why, in order to get a FISA order, the government had to establish that the purpose of the investigation was gathering foreign intelligence and that it had probable cause that those under surveillance were foreign agents.

Thus, FISA operates in a zone that is supposedly left open under Fourth Amendment law (which would require a warrant to engage in wiretapping and many other forms of surveillance). The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 (which incorporates Title III, commonly known as the “Wiretap Act”) regulates domestic wiretapping and surveillance and is designed to comport with the Fourth Amendment’s requirements (it is sometimes even more protective than the Fourth Amendment). If FISA doesn’t apply, government surveillance is governed by the stronger protections of ECPA.

The USA Patriot Act upset this delicate balance.

[snip]

The issue would turn on whether the procedures of FISA are reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Are FISA’s post-Patriot Act procedures reasonable? I’m not so sure. The FISA surveillance regime is radically different in scope and purpose of the Fourth Amendment. It is hard to say that the Fourth Amendment applies yet allows for a surveillance regime that is so alien to its basic principles.

http://www.concurringopinions……kes_d.html

P.S. Robyn Blumner – Your editorial hits the bullseye, with unerring precision. That enormous and growing “haystack” of dragnetted data is obviously now absurdly and dangerously unmanageable, even aside from the blatant disregard for our Fourth Amendment-protected [not -granted, -protected] right to privacy that such activity so threateningly exhibits. What a propaganda-dissecting piece of writing that is. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, dakine and Christy.

LS @ 65

There was a reason floating around…cyberterrorism…Now, the problem with that is that they will say it was Clinton’s policy, and they were just acting on it.

They are, after all, the Thought Police.

and if my thought dreams
could be seen
they’d probably put my head in a guillotine
but it’s allright ma…….

bob

It is noteworthy that all the rhetoric and accusations regarding Federal surveillance and nobody can site a SINGLE American who has either lost their life, job, or liberty.

Isn’t it about time to redirect efforts to something substantive?

How bout’ them Packers!

rwcole @ 35

Scotty’s pretty smart to use a sentence that appears to ding Bush as a teaser- he’s gettin tons of free publicity- which will be likely followed by tons of invitations to come on teevee and talk about the fuckin book. Good goin–fuckhead.

Since the book is not out till April, I can’t help but wonder why they came out with a teaser this early? Why just before Thanksgiving when whole families will be getting together and having discussions?

:-) why indeed!