constitution?

we don't need no stinkin' constitution!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rawstory.com/news/2008/FISA_court_rejects_ACLU_request_for_0829.html">FISA court rejects ACLU request for transparency

A court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act denied an ACLU motion Thursday that would have increased public scrutiny of how the Bush administration's new spying law is reviewed, according to a statement released Friday.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the motion 10 hours after President Bush signed the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) into law July 10, requesting that any further proceedings that might question the law's constitutionality be revealed to the public, according to an ACLU press release.

The organization also asked to participate in the hearings and submit briefs to court, which was denied as well.

"It's disappointing that the intelligence court intends to adjudicate these important legal issues in complete secrecy," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "The new surveillance law affects all of us because it allows the executive branch virtually unfettered access to the international telephone and email communications of U.S. citizens and residents."....

we all know you and i are being spied upon

i hope THEY (the they being those in government. YES OUR GOVERNMENT) know THEY are being spied upon too. do they think they're beyond the scopes of king george and his court? well i hope they think again. it's all ok when we, the little ones are having our rights and liberties tossed. i wonder when they'll figure out THEIR rights and liberties are being trounced on as well
king george is NOT exempting anyone. not me. not you or you OR YOU

FBI Data Transfers Via Telecoms Questioned

By Ellen NakashimaWashington Post Staff Writer
When FBI investigators probing New York prostitution rings, Boston organized crime or potential terrorist plots anywhere want access to a suspect's telephone contacts, technicians at a telecommunications carrier served with a government order can, with the click of a mouse, instantly transfer key data along a computer circuit to an FBI technology office in Quantico.
The circuits -- little-known electronic connections between telecom firms and FBI monitoring personnel around the country -- are used to tell the government who is calling whom, along with the time and duration of a conversation and even the locations of those involved.
Recently, three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, including Chairman John D. Dingell (Mich.), sent a letter to colleagues citing privacy concerns over one of the Quantico circuits and demanding more information about it. Anxieties about whether such electronic links are too intrusive form a backdrop to the continuing congressional debate over modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs federal surveillance.
Since a 1994 law required telecoms to build electronic interception capabilities into their systems, the FBI has created a network of links between the nation's largest telephone and Internet firms and about 40 FBI offices and Quantico, according to interviews and documents describing the agency's Digital Collection System. The documents were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group in San Francisco that specializes in digital-rights issues. .........

snuggly bear

by mark fiore explains fisa to us

(hat tip to boing boing)

if you don't think you are next

you are sadly mistaken my dears

Collateral Damage: Surveillance Aimed at Terrorists Can Easily Go Awry
By Jeff Stein, National Security Editor, CQ Staff
U.S. intelligence tapped the telephone calls of Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, starting in 2002.
This may well be news to many people, even though Wright revealed the taps himself in a sprawling, 15,000-word article on electronic surveillance in the Jan. 21 edition of The New Yorker magazine.
Perhaps because the article was not available online it lacked the link-juice to propel it into a frenzy over the “domestic spying” on the Web, the cable news shows and leading American newspapers.
As far as I can tell, only Pam Hess of the Associated Press picked up on Wright’s confrontation with spy chief Michael McConnell over the phone taps, and no major paper ran it. The version of her story that The Washington Post printed recounted McConnell’s telling Wright that water boarding would be “torture” if it were done to him, but dropped the five paragraphs Hess wrote on the eavesdropping. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal skipped Wright’s wiretap account altogether.
But The New Yorker’s Web site did feature an audio interview with Wright in which he described the visit of FBI agents to his Texas home in 2002 to quiz him about the telephone calls intercepted by U.S. intelligence. .........

.....It’s just not true, no matter how many times administration officials say it, that critical operations to find the kidnappers of American soldiers in Iraq and an al Qaeda cell in Germany were held up by FISA regulations. McConnell himself said he was mistaken.But what really troubles me is that so many, many years after the first terrorist attack here (on the World Trade Center in 1993), our spying agencies apparently still haven’t found an effective way to pursue the real bad guys.The huge electronic wires they want to wrap us in are no substitute for good human intelligence work out there — where the bad guys are. As former counterterror agent Michael Tanji put it on Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog: “It’s bad enough that the Director of National Intelligence is trotting out a bogus threat so the government can snoop on all Internet traffic. What’s worse is that this kind of mass surveillance is a pretty lame way to catch the honest-to-God bad guys.”....

so now it looks like you may be growing a set

a TINY set, but there are the starting of some buds............so, there's still a little somethin' somethin' called the iraq war or health care for children (and adults as far as i'm concerned), or ADEQUATE care for wounded veterans OR help for the elderly OR on and on

Democrats standing up to Bush on warrantless wiretap bill
Nick Juliano
Update: Senate votes against GOP telecom immunity plan
In the shadow of the president's final State of the Union address, Senate Democrats are preparing for an 11th-hour showdown with George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress over controversial surveillance legislation.
The Senate voted down a GOP proposal that would cement an expansion of the president's authority to spy on Americans and free from legal jeopardy any telephone or Internet service provider who helped the country's intelligence agencies to collect vast amount of data on US citizens without a warrant. Anti-immunity activists say they expect the GOP gambit to fail.
On a 48-45 vote, Republicans failed to garner the necessary three-fifths majority of the Senate to end debate on a bill to expand the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.........

just when you thought it was safe

(to make a phone call or send an email or a real live written letter) HE'SSSSSSSSSSSSS BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKKKKKKK

the big dick that is
Cheney Pushes for Renewed Wiretap Powers
WASHINGTON - US Vice President Dick Cheney called on Congress Wednesday to make permanent legislation permitting security agencies to tap foreign telephone calls and emails in the US “war on terror.”As Congress geared up to weigh new legislation permitting the warrantless wiretaps, Cheney said it was “urgent” to renew and update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) “immediately and permanently” before a key modification from last year expires on February 1.
But the legislation could stall over objections to the White House’s desire to grant US telecommunications companies which assist in the wiretaps retroactive immunity for possible rights violations.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the White House Wednesday that a short-term extension would likely be necessary first......

draw your brakes brodda*

and in this case i mean BIG BRODDA (cause he really IS watching)

US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.
Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”
The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America's intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker's Web site........

things like this just leave me wondering. right now let's just say, screw MY rights (just for now). i must wonder why our government is spending money on shite like this when our returning veterans (just as ONE instance out of a kazillion) aren't getting the care they need.

*one of my favorite reggae songs. it was on the album the harder they come by jimmy cliff

now THIS is justice!

dang, this is GREAT

FBI wiretaps dropped due to unpaid bills

Lax FBI Money Controls Lead to Shutdown of Surveillance, Justice Department Audit Finds

LARA JAKES JORDAN

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies........

we have two senators in connecticut

a halfway (well a little bit more than halfway) decent one, chris dodd and of course the OTHER one, da liebs (who is a steamin' pile)
(now if all of 'em, including dodd can grow a set an filibuster against ALL of king george's crap, THEN we'd have some representation)

Dodd's filibuster threat scuttles immunity in Senate, for now
Nick Juliano
Senate to return to controversial FISA update after new year
After nearly 10 hours of discussion Monday, the Senate decided to delay a final vote on a controversial domestic spying bill until the new year, under the threat of a protracted filibuster from Sen. Chris Dodd.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spent the afternoon Monday huddling with Senate leaders and fellow Democrats to try to work out a deal over an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. As the FISA update was written, it included a provision for legal immunity to telecommunications companies that facilitated a warrantless wiretapping scheme that Dodd and other Democrats said was illegal...........

help

chris dodd bring our constitution back!

NEW MISGIVINGS?

you pack of gutless spineless whining do-nothings! new? YOU F**KING SHOULD HAVE HAD MISGIVINGS ALL ALONG! so many, this NEVER should have been passed to begin with.

believe me, if i have to vote for ralph nader come election time i will. the democrats are pissing me off almost as much as king george and his court.

New misgivings on wiretap law
Some Democrats regret updating FISA to expand the NSA's ability to tap American calls.

By Peter Grier Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Washington - The administration's warrantless wiretapping program looks set to be the subject of renewed and bitter wrangling between Congress and the White House when lawmakers return to Washington in September.
And this upcoming battle promises to be far more complex than a run-of-the-mill dispute over an agriculture bill, say, or tax legislation. The law in this area is unusually dense and difficult. The underlying activity is classified. One of the key administration figures dealing with the issue is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, an official in whom many in Congress have little trust.
"Essentially, it's a difficult situation to have a rational conversation on the merits," says Benjamin Wittes, an expert on national security law at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The expanded snooping powers of the National Security Agency (NSA) have been controversial ever since they became public in 2006. To critics, the program opens the door to the possibility of dangerous infringement on the civil liberties of US citizens. To supporters, they're a necessary tool against terrorism in an era of cellphones and Internet communications. ......