BUSH wants your freedom

clevohardcore - 9-19-2007 at 04:07 PM

FORT MEADE, Md. - President Bush said Wednesday that a law hastily passed in August to temporarily give the government more power to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign terror suspects must be made permanent and expanded.

If this doesn't happen, Bush said, "Our national security professionals will lose critical tools they need to protect our country."

"Without these tools, it will be harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to train, recruit and infiltrate operatives into America," he said on a visit to the super-secret National Security Agency's headquarters in suburban Fort Meade, Md. "Without these tools, our country will be much more vulnerable to attack."

The 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act governs when warrants for eavesdropping must be obtained from a secret intelligence court. This year's update ? approved by the Senate and House just before Congress adjourned for an August break ? allows more efficient interceptions of foreign communications.

Under the new law ? the Protect America Act ? the government can eavesdrop, without a court order, on communications conducted by a person reasonably believed to be outside the United States, even if an American is on one end of the conversation ? so long as that American is not the intended focus or target of the surveillance.

That change was urgently requested by the Bush administration, which said that the modernization of communications technology had created a dire gap in the nation's terrorism intelligence collection capabilities.

Such surveillance was generally prohibited under the original FISA law if the wiretap was conducted inside the United States, unless a court approved it. Because of changes in telecommunications technology, many more foreign communications now flow through the United States. The new law allows those to be tapped without a court order.

But civil liberties groups and many Democrats say the new changes go too far. Congress' Democratic leaders set it to expire in six months so that it could be fine-tuned, and that process is beginning on Capitol Hill now.

Democrats hope to change the law to provide additional oversight when the government eavesdrops on U.S. residents communicating with overseas parties.

Bush timed his visit to the NSA facility to press his case.

"The threat from al Qaida is not going to expire in 135 days," he said, "so I call on Congress to make the Protect America Act permanent."

He also pleaded with lawmakers to expand the law, not restrict it. One provision particularly important to the administration, but opposed by many Democrats, would grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies which may have helped the government conduct surveillance prior to January 2007 without a court order.

Bush was joined at the podium in an NSA hallway by Vice President Dick Cheney, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and others.

The president received private briefings from intelligence officials and mingled with employees in the National Threat Operations Center. While cameras and reporters were in the room, the large video screens that lined the walls displayed unclassified information on computer crime and signal intelligence.

Along one wall at NSA is a sign that says, "We won't back down. We never have. We never will."

CR83 - 9-19-2007 at 05:38 PM

Call me crazy but the extention of this evedropping deal is OK with me.

moforn - 9-19-2007 at 06:22 PM

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Siczine.com - 9-19-2007 at 06:26 PM

Herman Goering was a weird ass gay dude who had an extremely perculiar mind.

newbreedbrian - 9-19-2007 at 06:52 PM

an assessment of his character, even an extremely well thought out like that, is hardly necessary. anyone familiar with german history around WW2 knows he was hardly a saint. a typical conservative trick, attack someones character, thereby nullifying their argument. the fact remains that it is a lucid thought, as valid today as it was 60 years ago

upyerbum - 9-19-2007 at 07:04 PM

Putin did it in Russia to justify Chechnya. Does anyone else find it strange that a lot of former heads of intelligence organizations are now running countries, or have in the last decade?

DaveMoral - 9-21-2007 at 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by ChrisReed83
Call me crazy but the extention of this evedropping deal is OK with me.

You're crazy.

Siczine.com - 9-21-2007 at 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by newbreedbrian
an assessment of his character, even an extremely well thought out like that, is hardly necessary. anyone familiar with german history around WW2 knows he was hardly a saint. a typical conservative trick, attack someones character, thereby nullifying their argument. the fact remains that it is a lucid thought, as valid today as it was 60 years ago

Not arguing the lucidity of the point made, merely saying the dude was a fucking weirdo, but I could see how you would think I meant to discredit the validity of the statement made with my "assessment of his character". And I am far from a conservative my good man.

hardtone - 9-22-2007 at 06:36 PM

What freedom, he already has it?

DaveMoral - 9-22-2007 at 07:04 PM

I recently watched this mockumentary called "Death of a President" in which Bush was assassinated. It sucked, mostly because it didn't get into what Cheney would do were he president. I mean, they initially pegged the shooter as a Syrian-born Arab American who is quickly railroaded in court and convicted, put on death row. It later emerges that it was the father of 2 Iraq war veterans, a veteran himself of the first Gulf War. One of his sons was killed in Iraq. Only at the end of the movie do they say anything about what Cheney was doing in the aftermath, making Patriot Act III a permanent law and granting more powers of warrantless wire-tapping to the President and the expansion of executive powers.

So instead of a cool mockumentary thought experiment of how freedoms would be taken away and what would happen to the US Muslim population in the aftermath of a presidential assassination blamed on a Muslim, I got an hour and a half of lamentation over Bush's death instead of a tyrant Cheney.

Six66Mike - 9-23-2007 at 12:02 AM

Doesn't surprise me at all, I actually thought this was done years ago to allow taps without warrant. Warrants or not, there's still Echelon a lot of people believe in, full data collection on all communications in & out of the North America + monitors around the world, including Pine Gap here in Australia collection data in the Southeast Asia region.

upyerbum - 9-23-2007 at 07:26 AM

The US government has the capability to monitor 10% of all phone traffic going on at all times. They are alerted by certain buzzwords. I was going to make an answering message that just lists them off (or at least what I think they might be) in a row. But my wife wouldn't let me.