Spooks React:"You do weird shit. But you don't fuck with your own people"

Defensetech.org has some reactions to the NSA story from sigint professionals.

Wiretap Mystery: Spooks React

A few current and former signals intelligence guys have been checking in since this NSA domestic spying story broke. Their reactions range between midly creeped out and completely pissed off.

All of the sigint specialists emphasized repeatedly that keeping tabs on Americans is way beyond the bounds of what they ordinarily do -- no matter what the conspiracy crowd may think.

"It's drilled into you from minute one that you should not ever, ever, ever, under any fucking circumstances turn this massive apparatus on an American citizen," one source says. "You do a lot of weird shit. But at least you don't fuck with your own people."

Another, who's generally very pro-Administration, emphasized that the operation at least started with people that had Al-Qaeda connections -- with some mass-spying master list. As the Times, in its original story, noted:

But this call chain could very well have grown out of control, the source admits. Suddenly, people ten and twelve degrees of separation away from Osama may have been targeted.

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002032.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/

eom

This mailing list is putatively about cryptography and cryptography politics, though we do tend to stray quite a bit into security issues of all sorts, and sometimes into the activities of the agency with the biggest crypto and sigint budget in the world, the NSA.

(...)

The President claims he has the prerogative to order such surveillance. The law unambiguously disagrees with him.

There are minor exceptions in the law, but they clearly do not apply in this case. They cover only the 15 days after a declaration of war by congress, a period of 72 hours prior to seeking court authorization (which was never sought), and similar exceptions that clearly are not germane.

There is no room for doubt or question about whether the President has the prerogative to order surveillance without asking the FISC -- even if the FISC is a toothless organization that never turns down requests, it is a federal crime, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, to conduct electronic surveillance against US citizens without court authorization.

(...)

Our President has chosen to declare himself above the law, a dangerous precedent that could do great harm to our country. However, without substantial effort on the part of you, and I mean you, every person reading this, nothing much is going to happen. The rule of law will continue to decay in our country. Future Presidents will claim even greater extralegal authority, and our nation will fall into despotism. I mean that sincerely. For the sake of yourself, your children and your children's children, you cannot allow this to stand.

discuss...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=180022&mesg_id=180022

peace

who really do love America and serve for all the right reaons.

They are pissed. They know they AND other citizens are being abused. They will be a force to be reckoned with

and "most recently visited" is a tedious but secure electronic funds transfer paradigm.

similarly, as explained to me - this is a standard data mining technique -- so ultimately is "on the net."

within six degrees. :eyes: This is a horrendous fishing expedition against our own citizens. OK. So if this is going to be how we live from now on, you know, with KGB style spying and neighbors turning on neighbors, just what the hell does the USA stand for again? Oh that's right, "freedom." :grr:

if you want to listen to u.s. citizens, you ask the aussies to do it. or the brits. or the canadians. and if the aussies want to listen to one of their citizens, they ask the u.s. to do it. or the brits. or the canadians.

it's all a circle. they're all dirty. they know how the game's played.

they're just creeped out 'cause the lights were turned on.

He is being SO wiretapped by the NSA.

But seriously, 10 to 12 degrees of separation from Osama? that is nuts.

A top lieutenant (1) in America has contacts with some guy (2) who knows some radical campus organizer(3) who has organized some pro-Palestinian group and this group has coordinated with the leader of some socialist group (4) who also is the editor of the campus' progressive weekly paper. If you are a contributor to that paper and correspond frequenty with the editor, there is only five degrees of separation between you and Osama bin Laden. Please don't strike up a conservation with me. I don't want to have only six degrees of seperation between me and Osama.

Frankly, they have so little confidence in the American people's capacity to make judgments for their own country that, they have no qualm, whatsoever, in manipulating and conning the people into doing what they otherwise would not do had they been given all the facts and potential outcomes.

BushCO & the neoconsters believe people are for exploitation,...they are truly ANTI-democracy.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=taxonomy/term/2


Also, check out Treason's Greetings: Photos from Caroling at Karl Rove's

much we can trust the government to use its snooping abilities wisely. An 81-year-old retired history professor here at Kansas University has had his private correspondence with a retired history prof (also in her 80s) in the Philippines opened by Border Protection. Here is the link to my thread. You really should read it and use this example to show people why unlimited snooping powers are not appropriate. Even within the legal limits they use their powers to violate our privacy for no good reason, and then claim that doing so "saves American lives." I would love to know exactly what American lives were saved by opening this old professor's letters from his old friend in the Philippines.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5646196&mesg_id=5646196

may have been targeted."
But we let all of his relatives leave the country without interrogation. Great.

You know that Right Wing expression Freedon Isn't Free?
Maybe we need to change it to Freedom Isn't Freedom.

So you can bet your ass they are abusing this power to spy on their opponents.