tapped!

Eureka!!!

ES!

Hello, Dick and George.

tapped!

As long as the bill is paid.

Hiya ES.

Gangs of NY on usanetwork. Bad movie. Got to switch.

a lovely ballad, indeed!

Its Elvis

Does anyone know whether the government is currently still able to spy on everybody in lieu of the fact that I read that they didn’t pay the bill to the telecom companies, so they quit providing the service. In other words, the telecoms won’t let the NSA play with their toys anymore? Is that still operative?

GET A WARRANT!

Glad this thread came up. didn’t want to say what was on mind last topic :)

Without a basket..)

Hey NSA, DFWMF

I’m in drive by mode so a few tunes fer yer pleasure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQOF_XzsWz0

Hi Christine.

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

I have something on my mind.
Why would Rupert Murdoch’s paper break the Sibel Edmonds story in the UK ?
How weird is that….

Oh no She’s (((back))) Watch out everyone!! Duck

Glad to see you here!

or impunity!

directed to NSA, not the pups

They had a new & different source. Listen to this. I was double tasking, so I can’t explain it in simple terms.
http://antiwar.com/radio/2008/01/21/luke-ryland-2/

Heaven is a Halfpipe

I don’t think they can listen in until the check clears at AT&T.

Speaking of which, wouldn’t that make a fantastic scene in a future episode of “24″?

Jack Bauer, listening in on a tapped call:

“We’re all set, Osama! The nuke is set to go off tomorrow at noon! I’m going to commit suicide right now, so no one can torture me for information! They’ll never find out that the code to disarm the nuke is 9-1-1! And even if they knew that, they’d still have to FIND the bomb in time! And no one would ever suspect that the exact location of the bomb is…”

[CLICK]

“The number you have tapped can no longer be eavesdropped on. Please pay your illegal wiretapping bills and try again.”

oh, Christine, now I must warn you - I have gotten the dogs off the couch but now they are out playing in the rain…

I suspect the smell of “wet dog” is an acquired, erm… taste…

cause…. he’s in the money, he’s in the money

I know … but just in case :>)

Digging this ES!

tis the odor du jour up here - and expected to rain here until thur or so of next week

dugg, newton, thanks for the reminder

Nice new facebook drawing, my fav color combo :D

margot makes lovely eye candy

I’ll take a fith for that one!

yes, talented artist!

my young pup has finally figured out it isn’t necessary to clamp her ears shut and that crouching down doesn’t necessarilly keep you dryer when dancing around outside… this is her first winter with actual rain falling from the sky…

geez! another week!?!

Oh no, am I using it too much?
(and no this is not a “Is my butt too big” kind of question!)

Grew up with collies OC — just push them off and make stinky comments about them (but LOVE them).

no

lol!

No I think it is great! I lover your drawings.

oh, well - then you understand! At least mine have short hair though… a paper towel is enough to blot up most of the moisture…

And now for a Traffic report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k1JyRLiDgE

“The number you have tapped can no longer be eavesdropped on. Please pay your illegal wiretapping bills and try again.”

Heh, heh!

eCAHNomics, thank you. I’m on dial up but I’ll take that over to civilization tomorrow and get informed.

My family of two parents and four kids and countless animals, used to joke about who had the worst breath… dogs or people.

The number you have tapped can no longer be eavesdropped on. Please pay your illegal wiretapping bills and try again.”

Please bring cash and a $1,000 security deposit to our business offices during Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between noon and 1:30. Closed Tuesdays, Thursdays for staff meetings. No chairs allowed in line.

Thanks, you guys.

I mostly laugh that I have no heating bills to speak of… now, dog food bills is a whole other matter…

Hey Margot,
We just found that Andy Stewart is playing in Bellville ,Ohio on Feb. 29. Is this near you? “Pumpkin Hollow Cafe.”
Do you like Scottish music?
Chris

Replying via f/b;)

A little motivation for tomorrow nite

Hi ES, Your FB photo is so cool — can you tell us anything about it? It looks like you are at Asheville or some really wonderful resort place.

Back in the 90s and before, I worked with the nuclear activist James L. Acord a lot. Whenever he stayed at the house for more than 48 hours, we had to assume the phone was being illegally tapped. Either by DOE or by Wackenhutt, who does a lot of contracting in security in Alaska. I’ve found out since that we were being tapped without a warrant on at least three occasions.

I heard it was a billing problem, but was resolved. So the answer is “Hi NSA…1+1=3, really! Julia did it, not me JULIA!”

Well the drive by is over… Tucker is making my bed ready. I guess he is hinting.
G’night all good firepups catch up with you when I can
one more for the night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIupB4tr4Z0
Be sure to support Dodd and his endevors tomorrow.. I will be there in spirit!!

ET - Interesting. How did you find out about the three occasions?

g’nite nahant and i’ll be thinking good thoughts tomorrow for you

Been so long since I have been to my profile page, I had to double check..) That photo was taken in Eureka Springs.. (Better than Asheville)

from a woman who had worked for Wackenhutt.

Well, I’m totally in love with Asheville, so this must be bliss.

goodnight, pups… keep dry!

g’nite oc

I heard it was a billing problem, but was resolved. So the answer is “Hi NSA…1+1=3, really! Julia did it, not me JULIA!”

Bummer!

I thought everything was blamed on the Clintons?

Thanks for the answer, Cinnamonape. Must be time for bed, gettin awful tired, so ‘nite all.

OC It is quite dry here at 20 degrees (heat wave) and we are waiting for 3 inches of snow. Yea!

Good night, Nahant.

Night OC and Ann!

We have had one or two dustings of snow this year.. Just today I declared we are having a winter drought.

ET - Back in the day I had similar experiences but was never able to verify. (I had no insider on the other side - darn) Thx

g’nite ann

howdy!

wow, did i miss out today… and i thought fisa wasn’t coming up until next week.

tsk tsk. *g*

Does anyone know whether the government is currently still able to spy on everybody in lieu of the fact that I read that they didn’t pay the bill to the telecom companies, so they quit providing the service. In other words, the telecoms won’t let the NSA play with their toys anymore? Is that still operative?

Would that it were so.

IIRC, the disconnected wiretaps were FBI.

The NSA is the agency hard-wired into the internet backbone. And the agency “asking” for access to phone networks (at Qwest) only days after Shrub came to office - nine months before 9/11.

On the bright side:

The same clever cryptographer who devised PGP to hide your email from spooks has come up with a program to mask our phone calls from spooks.

And - in 2006 - Wired shared a way to see if your email is routed through the ATT backbone - the one the NSA is known to have hooked into.

On the dark side:

For over a decade, the spooks have been able to turn your (non-rotary) phone line into a tap.

Modern communications systems are virtually transparent to the advanced interceptions equipment which can be used to listen in. Some systems even lend themselves to a dual role as a national interceptions network. For example the message switching system used on digital exchanges like System X in the UK supports an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) Protocol. This allows digital devices, e.g. fax to share the system with existing lines. The ISDN subset is defined in their documents as “Signalling CCITT1-series interface for ISDN access. What is not widely known is that built in to the international CCITT protocol is the ability to take phones ‘off hook’ and listen into conversations occurring near the phone, without the user being aware that it is happening. (SGR Newsletter, No.4, 1993)

And for decades, the US/UK/Aus/NZ have all spied on one another’s domestic (business/private party) communications and shared the results, allowing each nation’s spooks to evade national laws barring domestic spying simply by having the other spooks do it and hand over their results.

Within Europe, all email, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency, transferring all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by Satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York Moors of the UK. The system was first uncovered in the 1970’s by a group of researchers in the UK (Campbell, 1981). The researchers used open sources but were subsequently arrested under Britain’s Official Secrets legislation. The ‘ABC’ trial that followed was a critical turning point in researcher’s understanding both of the technology of political control and how it might be challenged by research on open sources.(See Aubrey,1981 & Hooper 1987) Other work on what is now known as Signals intelligence was undertaken by researchers such as James Bamford, which uncovered a billion dollar world wide interceptions network, which he nicknamed ‘Puzzle Palace’. A recent work by Nicky Hager, Secret Power, (Hager,1996) provides the most comprehensive details to date of a project known as ECHELON. Hager interviewed more than 50 people concerned with intelligence to document a global surveillance system that stretches around the world to form a targeting system on all of the key Intelsat satellites used to convey most of the world’s satellite phone calls, internet, email, faxes and telexes. These sites are based at Sugar Grove and Yakima, in the USA, at Waihopai in New Zealand, at Geraldton in Australia, Hong Kong, and Morwenstow in the UK.

The ECHELON system forms part of the UKUSA system but unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the cold war, ECHELON is designed for primarily non-military targets: governments, organisations and businesses in virtually every country. The ECHELON system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and then siphoning out what is valuable using artificial intelligence aids like Memex. to find key words. Five nations share the results with the US as the senior partner under the UKUSA agreement of 1948, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia are very much acting as subordinate information servicers.

19

Each of the five centres supply “dictionaries” to the other four of keywords, phrases, people and places to “tag” and the tagged intercept is forwarded straight to the requesting country. Whilst there is much information gathered about potential terrorists, there is a lot of economic intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of all the countries participating in the GATT negotiations. But Hager found that by far the main priorities of this system continued to be military and political intelligence applicable to their wider interests. Hager quotes from a”highly placed intelligence operatives” who spoke to the Observer in London. “We feel we can no longer remain silent regarding that which we regard to be gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment in which we operate.” They gave as examples. GCHQ interception of three charities, including Amnesty International and Christian Aid. “At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their communications for a routine target request,” the GCHQ source said. In the case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With telexes its called Mayfly. By keying in a code relating to third world aid, the source was able to demonstrate telex “fixes” on the three organisations. With no system of accountability, it is difficult to discover what criteria determine who is not a target.

Note - for the sake of the servers, please do NOT quote this comment :)

I think tomorrow morning is the time for a last round of phone calls and hope for the fight to last another day.

wow and thanks for the note, kirk :)

warrantless and illegal surveillance by governments and industry aren’t new. the pervasiveness and brazeneness of it since Bush took office is, of course, quite new.

ATT according to MSNBC

I agree.

great historical perspective kirk, thanks. so much for being a member of the “free world” - hah.

can anyone catch me up or direct me to a post anywhere on what is expected tomorrow procedurally-wise? i’m a little confused on the “dodd will filibuster” thing… didn’t that bit already happen? and it ended by UC. now it’s time for the amendments to be considered and voted on and then the underlying bill.

Their credit’s good with corporate America.

there was some stuff on cspan 2 this afternoon right before KO aired (pacific time) but I caught the end of it. It was Dodd talking about fisa - maybe someone can say if that was the pre-fillibuster that I remember from last time.

Love it.

AT&T will start monitoring “to stop crime”.

The audacity of corps.

All you really need to know is that Harry Reid is controlled by Dick Cheney.

since corporations now have personhood status, does that mean they can be sworn in as cops?

Thank you, Suz - it was the least I could do.

Hey selise - good to see you! Thanks.

Hey - oppression - it’s part of the at whole White Man’s Burden thing.

Tally ho!

can anyone catch me up or direct me to a post anywhere on what is expected tomorrow procedurally-wise?

Don’t know of a good post on that. Hopefully CHS in the a.m. It all happened so fast today.. at one point we thought the filibuster might start Tues. evening.

i really do wonder about this. what is held over harry and nancy’s head that prevents them from doing their jobs? or are they just greedy forkers?

All you really need to know is that Harry Reid is controlled by Dick Cheney.

that’s what i used to think.

not any more… i think when it comes to sides, reid lines up with cheney and not us. there’s no explanation i can find that is more consistent with the evidence.

Dang. Wall Street folks are thinking the fed will lower rates another 3/4 point next week.

In fact, neither are torture, death squads, mercinaries, illegal armaments, renditions, pre-emptive bombings, sanctioned assassinations, everything. But his father and the presidents before and after him made an attempt, however feeble, to hide it. W had to stick our noses in it. He forced us to accept it as business as usual, which we sort of knew already, damn him. The bulk of Americans were willing to accept what they always knew was so. We are the freaks who weren’t willing to accept it as business as usual. And, strangely, the electorate in general agrees with us. But the mainstream press is holding out, because they should have been reporting on what was happening all along.

oh sure, that will help - inflation (eyes rolling)

Ain’t irony grand?

at one point we thought the filibuster might start Tues. evening.

but that’s just my point. what filibuster? last time dodd insisted on the 30 hours of debate after the cloture vote. that end prematurely when reid pulled the bill and there was a UC that ended debate. i think all that remains before an immediate vote on the bill is consideration of amendments already submitted. if reid and the Rs think they have the votes to defeat the dodd/feingold amendment without filibustering it (this was the issue, i think, last go around - they didn’t know if they would have the votes without a filibuster), then what filibuster?

am sticking it up next in the news ticker, loo hoo. thanks

But it won’t help with mortgage rates.

Hi selise! Where have you been?

Ah, well, I thought there was some sort of agreement that allowed Dodd to renew his filibuster when the whole affair returned to the senate floor. You are the procedure queen.. so I am sure you are correct.

Their personal NSA files?

ack. my own damn fault for not being around….

well, i’ll be here bright and early tomorrow. to make another round of phone calls.

i better go hook up my brand new c-span2 cable tv line to my computer so i can rip all the exciting events… and post youtubes.

Not as bad as Kissinger’s Nobel, but close….

no, no! don’t think i’m right… especially when there is a question mark after my sentence - that makes it a question, and not a statement. at least that’s what i meant!

i’m all questions… it’s a learn as we go process, and only after the fact i’ll probably really understand it.

i’ll go look for the UC i’m thinking of and post it here to see what you-all think.

Calling it an early evening myself.. I want to be up and on the phones in the morning.

Sorry the song wasn’t great tonight. I thought the spirit made up for other shortcomings.

Good night all.

g’nite es, sleep well

Selise, here’s a comment from two threads back from folks I truly admire:

Steve-AR January 23rd, 2008 at 7:08 pm
84
In response to Hugh @ 43

That’s my understanding. Reid had lots of options. He could have respected the hold. He could have put forward the SJC version as the base bill. He could force the Republicans to mount real filibusters. His power to affect the Senate’s agenda was evident in how he was able to pull the FISA bill at a moment’s notice in December.

I am sitting here with a copy of the Rules on filibusters and Cloture….With the Thugs and the Bush Dogs he doesn’t have the votes to stop it. What pisses me off is he could play chicken and make them spend weeks grinding it out hour by hour vote by vote. (BTW there really is no special thing called a “hold”) The Thug “holds” are “honored” because he doesn’t have the votes to bring the bill to the floor.

no, no! don’t think i’m right… especially when there is a question mark after my sentence - that makes it a question, and not a statement. at least that’s what i meant!

i’m all questions… it’s a learn as we go process, and only after the fact i’ll probably really understand it.

Good evening, selise.
Your lack of iron-clad certainty is the most refreshing thing I’ve heard all day.
Brava!

howdy loo hoo!

missed all you guys.

just ended up working on other things, kinda OD’ed on the primaries which was all rage throughout the blogosphere and thought i’d take a short break to spend the time on a couple of other things.

but with the fisa fight starting again tomorrow, i’ll definitely be here all day to watch events unfold.

Hi Selise: What’s a “UC,” and what is its significance? Thanks.