Eavesdropping May Go Beyond NSA

[RedOnce]

Gonzales Seeks to Clarify Testimony on Spying

By Charles Babington and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.

In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago.

At least one constitutional scholar who testified before the committee yesterday said in an interview that Gonzales appeared to be hinting that the operation disclosed by the New York Times in mid-December is not the full extent of eavesdropping on U.S. residents conducted without court warrants.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/28/AR2006022801587_pf.html

[FreedomAngel82]

1. Oh wow

I wonder if we'll find out.

[TomInTib]

2. Oh, yeah, here it comes..

the old "what I meant to say..."

Fork Spector for not swearing the bastard in.

[wtbymark]

3. Gonzales definitely skirted around the notion that there was...

another program. I remember a senator questioning him if there were any 'other' progams and Gonzales refused to answer (classified). Let's face it, they have a file on you, me and possibly every American. If not for their corperate buddies' marketing databases, then for 'national defence' = fascism.

[democrank]

4. If I was a gambler

I`d bet the ranch on the existence of other warrantless domestic spying programs. If this issues gets any hotter, Rove will have to dream up a new batch of threats so he can keep the oversight at a workable minimum.

[RedOnce]

7. Yep, me to...

"It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about," said Bruce Fein, a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations.

[dogday]

9. There is a lot that this President hasn't told anyone about

and the shit is slowly seeping from the ground at the WH... There won't be enough dirt to cover all the shit coming up everywhere. People are going to start to see and smell the evil deeds...

[RedOnce]

10. I hope you are right about people starting to see,

because it's been smelling for a long time!

[dogday]

11. Seen the polls lately?

I would say, they are smelling the wind already.....

[RedOnce]

12. Good point! They are following the Nixon curve...

right into the ground.

[leveymg]

5. We already know that AT&T gave NSA every phone call & e-mail

for a 3 year period. That's 300 Terabytes of data. By comparison, Able Danger was only 2.5 Tb.

AT&T (now owned by Verizon/SBC) is the common carrier for much of the long-distance traffic inside the US, so even if AT&T wasn't your long-distance company, chances are they still recorded your calls.

So, it gets worse than that?

See, http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18006792-15322,00.html

AT&T sued over spying
From: Agence France-Presse Correspondents in San Francisco
February 01, 2006
INTERNET privacy advocates have filed a lawsuit charging US telecom giant AT&T with being an accomplice to illegal domestic spying by the US government.

AT&T broke the law by allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to "data-mine" its records and eavesdrop on telephone and email conversations of US citizens, the Electronic Frontier Foundation charged.

The class-action suit called on the US District Court of Northern California to order the telecoms giant to pay damages and stop co-operating with US officials seeking information without proper warrants.

"AT&T's customers reasonably expect that their communications are private and have long trusted AT&T to follow the law and protect that privacy," foundation attorney Lee Tien said.

"AT&T has betrayed that trust. At the NSA's request, AT&T eviscerated the legal safeguards required by Congress and the courts with a keystroke."


Advertisement:
Controversy regarding domestic spying ignited after it was revealed that US President George Bush had authorised the NSA to intercept telephone and internet communications without court orders.
Domestic spying is a sensitive issue for many Americans who are proud of their civil liberties. Similar revelations in the 1970s led to legislation that allowed wiretapping but required government agencies to obtain a special court warrant for it.

SNIP

The lawsuit charged that the company gave government officials "unfettered access" to its 300-terabyte database of caller information and allowed wiretapping of telephone and internet conversations.

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. Since most of my phone calls

are from solicitors, they can waste 100's of valuable man hours shifting through shit.

[leveymg]

16. LOL

I suspect that there are all of 5000 people in the US who really do need to be monitored, and the rest of this is a giant DHS fork-over to private contractors. In the end, the phone company will be running the U.S. and will tax us directly for the "service" of bugging our every communication.

[Norquist Nemesis]

6. Bush had a full year to clean up the NSA program and craft

talking points for framing it. THAT's what pisses me off the most when Bush etal talk about the NSA program: THEY ALWAYS SPEAK OF IT IN PRESENT TENSE!

Let me repeat that: THEY ALWAYS SPEAK OF IT IN PRESENT TENSE!!!!

So, if Bill Clinton had come out and said, "I am not having sexual relations with that woman"...well, you catch my drift? The piece about the spying was past tense: they "were" and not they "are".

I want an independent party to investigate the period between October 2002 through the end of December 2004 to know exactly WHO they spied on, HOW they did the spying, and the REASON for the spying.

When the press questions Scotty or anyone else about this, I want questions that are specificically targeting past actions.

[librechik]

23. oh, rely on it--they're still doing it

and I don't know what it will take to make them stop.

[0rganism]

8. Would anyone be surprised if the bushistas spied on the Kerry campaign?

After all, the Kerry/Edwards campaign was a "wartime" president's "opposition", hence not "with us", ergo "with the terrorists" and, by Gonzo's reasoning, eligible for unauthorized, unwarranted surveillance.

[caledesi]

18. O That, my friend, is a "gimme" nt

[Just Me]

13. Does this have something to do with the domestic spying by the,...

,...DoD and U.S. Military in addition to NSA (which all seem to be the same these days)? :shrug:

[anitar1]

15. Duh. We have been spied on for a loooong time.

Nothing surprises me. I have talked to a few the last 5-6 yrs who have talked about this. the phone service cannot be as bad as it is cometimes! Clicks here and there -screwed up for a few minutes. Some call it paranoid, I call it eavesdropping.

[Ksec]

17. I knew it.

It goes way beyond what they claimed. I would bet my arse that they spied on Kerry and the Dems during the 2004 elections. My gut feelings usually come true.

[Independent_Liberal]

19. Hmmmmm....

This is interesting. Thanks!

:)

[RedOnce]

24. You're welcome!

[caledesi]

20. Did you hear what Gonzo did in reference to Ashcroft?

At the hearing, when asked if he minded former people that were there at the time the surveillance occurred, such as Asscroft, he say 'no.'

But, I read that last week he wrote a letter to Specter, et al saying that he did not want former people to appear at subsequent hearings.

LIAR! I despise this man!

[RedOnce]

22. Yes, he is a sad excuse for an Attorney General.

[Minnesota Libra]

21. Can you say 1984? I knew you could! nt