Redstate

Obama is a 'con man'

But I DO KNOW that he'll bring that and worse with him from Cook County.

"They" "own" him and if he wins they will be there to collect.

The first "we" is "we-the-Right-and-Middle," which favored telecom immunity*; the second "we" is actually "I," which did very little besides write on the subject; and the last "we" is actually "them," the people on the Left who tried their best - and failed - to overturn the wishes of the American people. I'm not sure about that last one: I don't think that I actually used "we are lame," or any variant thereof.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

*We will now pause while someone hunts up a poll or whatnot to figleaf their shame.

Telecom companies already have immunity under existing law for situations where they were acting in good faith.

From 18 USC 2520 (d):

(d) Defense.— A good faith reliance on—
(1) a court warrant or order, a grand jury subpoena, a legislative authorization, or a statutory authorization;
(2) a request of an investigative or law enforcement officer under section 2518 (7) of this title; or
(3) a good faith determination that section 2511 (3) or 2511 (2)(i) of this title permitted the conduct complained of;
is a complete defense against any civil or criminal action brought under this chapter or any other law.

This new law is about giving them immunity for situations where they knowingly broke the law in bad faith. This should not be a partisan issue, and for the life of me I can't understand why anyone - conservative, liberal, or otherwise - would support it (other than the people who broke the law).

Ofus, just keep lobbing 'em in like you did last night.

And Rightly So!

You lost. Deal with it.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

And Rightly So!

The House version of the bill does not grant immunity to the telecoms. Now that the White House has admitted that they did in fact use the telecoms, this could become a major fight on Capitol Hill.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

...and whisk me away to a magical steampunk adventure set in the Triple Monarchy of Arcadia-Southeast.

Dude. Nancy Pelosi.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

I played that game!

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

For real?

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

It sounds a lot like a game called Arcanum (2001).

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Hmm. Apparently a region of Mars has the official designation Arcadia Southwest. I see a plot possibility there.

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

I lost and you won. I congratulate you on your tremendous victory.

However, I would really love to hear a substantive defense of retroactive immunity from someone who supports it because I honestly don't understand your side of this issue. The only defenses I've heard from anyone involve straw man arguments, e.g.

"If officials have to get a warrant, they will miss their window of opportunity to eavesdrop" (warrants can be obtained retroactively)

"Telco companies need immunity because they aided the government's requests in good faith - and they might not help again if we punish them" (current law already immunizes for good faith situations)

"Warrants are special rights for terrorists" (warrants are a safeguard against corruption and wasting resources)

Everything you need to get started.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Really? You have nothing, no argument?

:tousling ofus's hair: Deal, Sparky.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

The point is to deny standing to complaintants in order to avoid a flood of politically (or otherwise) lawsuits in multiple courts that the telcos would have to defend against.

Each of these suits costs money to defend and with a proliferation of courts and judges, the results are not going to be predictable or reproducable from court to court.

This leads to a substantial risk of high legal fees, potential losses in one or more cases (due to the imprecision of multiple proceedings) leading to appeals and loss - on top of the bad press.

In a company's weighing of benefits vs. risks & costs, this vulnerability will bias the telco into adopting a withdrawal, avoidance position if there is any ambiguity - or at least involve the company delaying while they seek legal counsel.

The "good faith" defense provides a possible line of defense in court after the fact, but is very different than immunity in advance. This "defense" will not be of much comfort vs. a rash of lawsuits and bad press.

This is my off-the-top take on this. Others here are far more knowledgeable, so don't view me as the last word by any means.

Take your time, I won't be back for several hours...

And Rightly So!

I couldn't resist "Playstation Johnny," because it rolled off the tongue so; but generally I don't have enough respect for these guys to call them names.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

So long as your visceral contempt for them bubbles to the surface on occasion. Like now.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

The answer for me is yes. I want to see the balance. I don't think we have to settle for either or. We can have the security strength of wiretaps and the privacy as well, it seems a no brainer just to do both.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Nope, I don't think that monitoring overseas calls to phone numbers with a known connection to terrorists is unreasonable.

---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.

Agreed, but the problem comes from monitoring all phone calls (including domestic-to-domestic) to look for possible terrorist connections.

J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon are just a few of the reasons to zealously protect privacy unless there is specific grounds for an investigation (probable cause). To put it in a different context, imagine if you found out the FBI was checking everyone's bank records or medical records - still comfortable?

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

...but we've had this discussion already, thanks. We've heard the arguments against the government being able to sieve through overseas calls for terrorism communications. We've rejected those arguments. The People, through their duly elected representatives, have decided to reaffirm the government's ability to do this.

You guys are perfectly welcome to try to get this overturned. Until then, deal.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

FISA act nor the Administrations current practice allowed for monitoring all phone calls to look for possible terrorist connections.

Could you provide documentation of this?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a FAQ on their lawsuit against AT&T.

The American Conservative Union has posted a couple of columns on the topic:
Right to Privacy Destined for Endangered List
Oversight Board Needs Authority, Resources

See also:
AT&T Whistleblower: Telecom Immunity Is A Cover-Up, TPMmuckraker
NSA Judge: 'I feel like I'm in Alice in Wonderland', Wired
NSA Domestic Surveillance Began 7 Months Before 9/11, Convicted Qwest CEO Claims, Wired

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

.

The EFF link engages in circular reasoning by repeatedly calling it 'illegal wiretapping' without ever once talking about why such wiretapping is illegal or giving any justification for calling it illegal. Furthermore, it totally ignores the distinction between domestic-domestic wiretapping (which isn't covered in this act) vs. domestic-foreign and foreign-foreign wiretapping, deceptively calling it all 'domestic surveillance' and 'domestic spying' (using 'spying' itself is a loaded and biased term).

Bob Barr (first ACU link) at least has the honesty to slip 'international' in there:

Allow warrantless surveillance of virtually any international phone call and e-mail of American citizens without any evidence of conspiracy with al-Qaida or other terrorist entities.

Note how he wants 'evidence of conspiracy' on the American side before he would allow surveillance of phone calls. But if what we have is a terrorist phone number, how are we supposed to find evidence of a conspiracy on the American side if Americans are allowed to call said phone number with impunity? That theme continues throughout his points; if we had evidence of conspiracy on the American side, we would be able to act already. In short, he's putting the cart before the horse, wanting proof before he'll allow looking for evidence.

The other ACU link talks about the oversight board, and while guilty of some of the same hyperbole, probably makes some valid points.

---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.

I'm still planning on reading the links provided for myself this evening but your post seems in line with what I thought the facts were.

If you wanted more information than theEFF's FAQ provided, you could have looked through the web site. Try this link; NSA Multi-District Litigation: Documents Relating to All Cases and Dismissed Cases. The last three links on the previous post were also revealing.

FYI: All calls (including domestic to domestic) are searched; AT&T’s Role in Dragnet Surveillance of Millions of Its Customers.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

If I want to find all calls to phone number (xxx) xxx-xxxx, I have to search all phone calls, domestic and international. It's not like the phone company has separate databases for the purely domestic and the international calls.

Criticizing AT&T for having to search through all its phone numbers to find the international ones and claiming that that's somehow domestic spying would be like me noticing that you were googling for porn and some child porn came up in the search and busting you for it, even if you never tried to look at the child porn. There's a big difference between looking at an index and looking at the actual stuff the index points to.

---
Finrod's First Law of Bandwidth:
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it takes the bandwidth of ten thousand.

If that was all that the NSA was doing, there wouldn't be much of a controversy. What they are doing, in fact, is quite literally searching through all of the calls to find suspicous patterns. It is not a probable cause search, but a "fishing expedition" wherein they haul up and sort through the catch to keep the ones most promising. (To put it in a in a different context - imagine that the FBI was allowed to search our medical records to find patterns of prescription drug abuse.) Now we can argue back and forth about the evidence, but what I'd like to know is this - do you have any problem with such a search?

The Ultimate Net Monitoring Tool
Robert Poe, Wired, 05.17.06

Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record," says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company. "We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls...

...Narus has little control over how its products are used after they're sold. For example, although its lawful-intercept application has a sophisticated system for making sure the surveillance complies with the terms of a warrant, it's up to the operator whether to type those terms into the system, says Bannerman.

That legal eavesdropping application was launched in February 2005, well after whistle-blower Klein allegedly learned that AT&T was installing Narus boxes in secure, NSA-controlled rooms in switching centers around the country. But that doesn't mean the government couldn't write its own code to do the dirty work. Narus even offers software-development kits to customers.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

On Cusp of Senate Telecom Immunity Passage, White House Admits Phone Companies Spied
Ryan Singel, Wired, February 12, 2008

At today's press briefing, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino responded in a non-sequitor to a question about whether telecoms were asked to spy on Americans months before 9/11 by saying:

"The telephone companies that were alleged to have helped their country after 9/11 did so because they are patriotic and they certainly helped us and they helped us save lives," Perino said.

It's unclear why Perino felt obliged to use the word alleged, though it may be just out of sheer force of habits.

The admission could help the lawsuits pending against telecoms such as AT&T and Verizon, except that the Democrat-controlled Senate is set to deprive Americans of their right to seek redress in a court of law. The admission also contradicts the government's longstanding position that confirming or denying any of the spying allegation would cause "exceptionally grave harm to the the national security," to use the government's words (.pdf) used in the court case against Verizon.

"Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account" - Winston Churchill, 1921

"To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it." AR

Simply because I understand the 4th Amendment, and I'm concerned that warrantless wiretapping of AMERICANS may be unconstitutional?

It seems to me that there is a very strong possibility that a Democrat will be elected President - do you want Hillary listening to your phone conversations with this kind of unchecked power?

...that you don't understand the 4th Amendment.

Nor do you understand that while we want smaller government, one of the very few enumerated functions of government is the common defense.

And since Hillary already has no problems amassing FBI files on citizens, I don't see this bill affecting her either way.

Fortuna Favet Fortibus

...merely entertains our readers. I'm not telling you to stop, mind you - but some lingering sense of fairness dictates that I point this out to you.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Does simply questioning automatically brand me a "liberal"??

and jumped right into this argument people are prone to be suspicious.

I haven't posted to a message board like this before. Nice welcome. Thank you very much.

And yes, that was sarcasm.

just one, where an innocent American, not even suspected of terrorist connections was wiretapped and then prosecuted or otherwise duly harassed by government.

Your citation of the fourth amendment was touching but as an educative project a failure. The FISA courts have been at least as aware of the forth as you are, as well as being aware of the ongoing, 6/12 years now, NSA program warrantless and all.

You would think this was a situation where the IRS was being sicced on a President's sexual assault victims or that hundreds of FBI files where being held in the White House and guarded by a fat ex-bouncer, or that a Defense Dept employee had her personnel file illegally released to the media, { she won a $600,000 lawsuit BTW}.

I might add that members of Congress may be almost as aware of the fourth amendment as you are. If not they have their staffs to remind them. If that fails you can step in as fourth amendment adviser. But my guess is that they have heard of it and yet renewed NSA, approved it, six months ago and knew of the program well before that.

I surmise therefore that not too many of their constituents have been hauled off into the night. Get off it !

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville

"Suspected" terrorist is a pretty freaking big umbrella, btw. The government would probably assert that anyone under any warrantless surveillance is potentially a terrorist, if the surveillance is exposed and their asses are on the line.

of ordinary Americans shanghaied by the Gestapo, a list please.
I take it that the "pretty freaking big umbrella" is in storage.
Have a good night.

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville

...to try this tack.

Look, nothing personal, but if you're trying to troll yourself off of the site, could you skip the foreplay? I'm coming down with a cold and would like to take a bit of a nap.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

I merely asked the question that has been bothering me. I'm a moderate trying to find a balance in a discussion with other Republicans.

Why not reply with substance instead of rudeness? I don't get it.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Maybe you should write your backstory down on paper before you post, so you can keep the details straight.
---
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

You can bite me. I am a moderate Republican, and in some ways I tend toward the liberatarian way of looking at things. I may even hold some views that could be perceived as *gasp* liberal - like on gay marriage. I'm also pro-choice.

Is that permitted? Or must I conform to YOUR beliefs...?

Or he will deal with you harshly.
____
CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

I merely asked the question that has been bothering me. I'm a moderate trying to find a balance in a discussion with other Republicans.

Why not reply with substance instead of rudeness? I don't get it.

I merely asked the question that has been bothering me. I'm a moderate trying to find a balance in a discussion with other Republicans.

Why not reply with substance instead of rudeness? I don't get it.

I've had my worries about it, too, but these are extraordinary times and signals intel has always been the realm of the Executive Brance. WWI and WWII had extensive wiretapping of overseas communications. It's nothing new.

I think it should sunset and be reapproved. I would hate to see the Clintons using in in peacetime.

Cheers

"The most dangerous form in which oppression can overshadow a community is that of popular sway" -James Fenimore Cooper

Like I said, I'm new at this, and I was unaware of the rule that says I must be complete agreement with everything anyone says - or be treated with rudeness and suspicion. Yikes. :o/

The question is a legitimate one but the way you approached it was two fold. First you asked if any of us cared about the fourth amendment which of course we do and someone interested in fairness would probably be carefull not to imply that most of us might not.

Second you said "This unlimited and unchecked spy apparatus smacks of Stalinist Russia to me" this statement is by no means true. While the limits may not be to your likeing, a fair minded person cannot say that the program in discussion is a "unlimited and unchecked spy apparatus". In addition to compare it to Stalinist Russia is a stretch. If you want to discuss the details or the merits then have at it but this isn't really a "drive by and throw out some rhetoric" type of site.

But I intended no disrespect. I say what I mean and I mean what I say. The government spying on Americans without warrants - even in these extraordinarily dangerous times - absolutely does make me think uncomfortably of extremist regimes. I'm sorry if that offends you, but it does.

see why your comments came across a bit heavy handed. Similar to if I said. "Killing babies by the millions is genocide, doesn't it bother anyone that Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama are conspiring in the genoicide of an American generation just like Hitler did to the jews!"

Actually, I don't think I implied that anyone was killing babies or anything that extreme. I merely said I was worried about the constitutionality of the warrantless wiretapping. It does remind me of Big Brother. I can't help that.

with Stalanist Russia. I'll agree I was deliberately hyperbolic if you will.

*Wink*

Timing and phrasing is very important for a newbie.

Regarding timing, this FISA matter has been around for several months and today was the final action by the Senate on this first go-round. Obviously most of us at RedState are quite pleased by how completely we prevailed, and many here are in a partying mood.

For you to come on at this time and try to disturb the party with your questions, expressed as all-to-familiar Talking Points which have been thoroughly discussed in previous posts, is going to evoke a rather caustic response from the revelers. You're timing couldn't have been worse if you really wanted a serious discussion.

The second aggravating factor was the way in which you phrased the question, which DGaines very aptly tried to point out. Coming here with loaded questions (loaded in the phrasing) is not going to get a straight answer.

So here's my advice. If you're a genuine "moderate Republican", take a time-out on this issue for two days. In the interim (1) peruse the diaries on this topic and others to learn the "lay of the land", and (2) compose a thoughtful diary detailing your concerns that avoids bombast and extreme analogies. I think you would get a more courteous response.

On the other hand, if you're a troll, you've had your fun already, and I'm just spitting into the ocean.

The ball's in your court.

And Rightly So!

If you are really interested on informing yourself, do a search. This stuff was covered over and over again dozens of times back when the story originally broke. Or just keep reading about it on dKos and hyperventilating about how the government KNOWS WHAT YOU CHECK OUT AT THE LIBRARY!!111!11!1!11
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

...and existing law. How much evidence has been thrown out in criminal cases because of unlawful searches/wiretaps, etc. If this was no big deal, then why has it been a big deal for the last 100 years??

And frankly, I don't particularly like the fact that the government knows what I check out at the library. It'd none of their business.

Maybe I am more of a Libertarian than a Republican, but honestly the rudeness is out of line here.

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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

Existing law says that there must be a warrant issued for any domestic wiretaps. To the best of my knowledge, the existing FISA statues say that a wiretap may proceed for 72 hours and then a warrant may be issued after the fact by the FISA court.

What about that statement is false...?

don't expect an answer on this one.
But: your library privacy is safe, safer in fact then your banking records. Are you aware that an IRS agent can walk into a bank, whip out an administrative subpoena and walk out with your financial information. The FBI has only recently obtained a similar power, aimed at terrorists, not people past due in their tax payments, and in time of war. That is, in a much more serious and potentially dangerous time they now have a power similar to the Internal Revenue.

I hope I'm not causing you to lose sleep, but rest assured, and with the wiretapping issue, it is astronomically unlikely they they will pursue one anniekatz, or even johnt. You may read your Sidney Sheldon in peace.

Besides, apart from the utter paucity of such information requests from libraries, what the G-Men are interested in is computer usage, Guess why?

As for wiretapping cases and apart from the numbers thrown out of court, only to avoid wasting more time, think of the differences between international terrorists and ordinary criminals, between war and peacetime, and while you're at it the aborted London airport bombing plot that saved between two and three thousand lives. Ah, but you're worried about your library records.

Gotta keep things in perspective don't we?

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville

You know: that DLC splitoff group that has the same basic mission and principles?

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Well, I had not heard any lefty blame-America-first posturing as paranoia today. Got it.

Kill the terrorists
Protect the borders
Punch the hippies -- Frank J

I'm sorry that some people consider protecting the Constitution as "blame-America-first paranoia". The fourth amendment means a lot to me, as do the rest of the Bill of Rights.

But what do I know. I mean, it's completely clear that our Founding Fathers had complete confidence in the government and the people that worked for it, and that's why they didn't bother putting any restrictions on government power in our founding documents. Errr, waitaminit...

Sarcasm aside, "Just trust us!" isn't good enough for this American. I've known too many government employees.

We must give amnesty to illegal aliens even though admittedly they broke the law, but we mustn't give it to telecommunication companies because they broke the law!

John McCain 2008
FDT's Principles

nt

He's gonna build the *&^#$$% fence now.

John McCain 2008
FDT's Principles

He's just pro-enforcement first now.

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

If we actually get the secure border, electronic security measures, and enforcement this will be the last time we have to deal with amnesty on this scale.

John McCain 2008
FDT's Principles

that there would be "no controlling legal authority"? Al Gore, call your office.....

"The day you think you know it all is the day your trouble starts."

"How the heck can Congress pass a law that isn't the final word (as the previous one supposedly was) and why would they want to do that when the jealously guard their role?"

They don't want to piss off the Telecom companies in their districts, many of them probably grudgingly acknowledge the necessity of Bush's position, but are afraid the Daily Kos wing of the party will primary them if they vote otherwise, so they create a provision where the onus of "illegality"
falls on President Bush while they say they TRIED to get him to comply.

As David Mayhew once said: "If a group of planners sat down and tried to design a pair of American national assemblies with the goal of serving members' reelection needs year in and year out, they would be hard pressed to improve on what exists."

And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they may be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. ~ Winston Churchill