You Know You’re Being Spied On: Here’s How
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Courtesy of Citizens for Legitimate Government:
The NSA is doing continuous intercepts of phone calls and personal email of all Americans, not to mention foreigners. In a manner that hasn’t been stated, someone momentarily roused Congress from its slumbers and it became irritated because it discovered the NSA’s spying is much worse than they initially disclosed.
Are we surprised?
The only surprise here is that Congress is surprised by this. The NSA and related agencies have been reading our emails and listening to our telephone calls for years. Only after 9-11 did these agencies find an official excuse to admit they were eavesdropping. And now Congress, agitated because their nap was interrupted, is mad because the NSA is spying more than they said they were at first.
Is your head spinning yet?
“It’s OK to steal, but you’re stealing a lot more than you said you were. No fair!”
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The NSA’s little bundle of joy is called Pinwale and is a database confirmed to be running today.
Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, is troubled by the NSA’s handling of domestic communications.
Good for Rush: he’s troubled. Notice that the emphasis is on handling of domestic communications. Notice that this is only after someone roused Congress. Does the phrase `too little too late’ mean anything? Apparently not to Rush.
To make this travesty even more absurd, the Justice Department and national security officials have excused this heinous violation of privacy and liberty by stating that the overcollection was inadvertent.
“We meant to deprive you of privacy but we slipped and deprived you of more privacy than we thought. Awful sorry.”
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Mind you, part of this debacle is the result of Congress allowing even more spying in legislation last year. (it’s for the children) So once again we have Congress making legislation on topics it cannot possibly understand. Then we have the president (Bush in this case) and his bosses telling Congress they have to put all sorts of unconstitutional legislation through. They dutifully bend over, possibly thankful that anybody noticed them in the first place.
This investigation is merely an attempt by Congress to cover its ample bottom.
The NSA had no comment.
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Go ahead, make tin-foil hat jokes NOW!
4 Comments
Buffet
June 17th, 2009
at 4:09pm
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Truer words were never spoken. The quote is even more relevent now than when originally uttered. It is most often attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Our freedoms that our forefathers fought and died for, are gradually being taken away from us, little by little. It’s shameful. I, for one, do not intend to stand idly by and watch this country become the U.S.S.A.!
HeX
June 17th, 2009
at 11:39pm
Many people have had the idea for years that they *could* be spied on, but didn’t act as if they actually *were* - because they didn’t believe they were. Throughout those years, the average citizen has forgotten this possibility.
The average, innocent citizen needs to start realizing the value of privacy. Many believe privacy, encrypted communication, SSL, and etc. is for the paranoid. They “don’t have anything to hide”. It’s becoming as such that these agencies really don’t have to try too hard. People give everything away on social networking sites time and time again. They end up incriminating or embarassing themselves unintentionally, with things they *think* that only the people they’re friends with or whatnot know about. Is that *not* something one “has to hide”?
In the offline world, these same people give up their right to refuse a search, because they “have nothing to hide”. You do, people. People are looking for something for a reason - because they want to find something. Eventually, they can and will.
JoWazzoo
June 18th, 2009
at 5:30am
This stuff goes back to Slick Willie, who started it - not like this was some evil plot by Bush and _just_ happened.. Confer Project Echelon.
[Please adjust tags accordingly.]
buffalo
June 18th, 2009
at 1:46pm
Pinwale is one of an indeterminate number of data surveillance programs. When one is discovered, another is started, but the bulk of the data is shifted to one that is waiting.
The speeding ticket you got 25 years ago, that was dropped out of the system after 5 years, can still be pulled up. Considering how trivial this piece of data is…
I didn’t give up my Essential Liberty. The government gave it up for me. You are free to do what you are told to do. They don’t tell you (waste the effort) until they feel compelled.
The government is not being reformed into a socialist state though if it were, it wouldn’t make any difference. The political religion in evidence is not how the population is governed.
You’ve never witnessed the politics you should be worrying about.
Your forefathers set up a government to govern 2.5 million agrarian people when rapid long distance communication traveled by sailboat and secure communications were accomplished by messenger. It doesn’t scale very well to a post-industrial population of 305 million. They fought and died because they got tired of being told what to do–because they were PO’d and not for any specific freedom except the freedom to do it how they wanted to do it, specifically not through the English middleman.
It’s never for the children.
Aluminum is among the most reclaimable of recycled materials.
Refusal of a seach is an invitation to having your name enscribed in a database that records applications for search warrants. Your only defense is having nothing that can be found.
Slick Willie was a blip. The most recent failure goes back to Tricky Dick.
Never do two things wrong at the same time.