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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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 Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 6:54 pm Post subject: FISA still just a joke. |
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No, the US is in no way a F/fascist or totalitarian nation...
Top officials: Bush can still wiretap US citizens without warrant
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Senior Bush administration officials said Tuesday that they believe the president still has the constitutional authority to continue his domestic wiretapping program without first seeking court approval.
"Senior U.S. administration officials have told the U.S. Congress that they could not promise that the Bush administration would fulfill its January pledge to continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program," reports the International Herald Tribune.
In January, the administration agreed to seek court-approved warrants for all wiretaps of US citizens and other living inside the US.
But during a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), that he could not promise that Bush would always seek warrants for domestic wiretaps.
"Sir, the president's authority under Article II is in the Constitution," McConnell said. "So if the president chose to exercise Article II authority, that would be the president's call." |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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You disagree with the President's Constitutional authority? Seek an amendment.
Also, if you are going to cite surveillance operations as proof that the American govt is "fascist and totalitarian," you will need to include Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand's govts under that heading as well.
It would appear that we are all equally living under the terror of fascist, totalitarian regimes, then.
| Chalmers Johnson wrote: |
Since 1948, a highly classified agreement among the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand allows them to exchange information not just about target countries but also about one another. This arrangement permits the United States's National Security Agency, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Canada's Communications Security Establishment, Australia's Defense Signals Directorate, and New Zealand's General Communications Security Bureau to swap information with one another about their own citizens -- including political leaders -- without formally violating national laws against domestic spying. Even though the U.S. government, for example, is prohibited by law from spying on its own citizens except under a court-ordered warrant, as are all the other countries in the consortium, the NSA can, and often does, ask partners to do so and pass the information its way. One former employee of the Canadian Communications Security Establishment revealed that, at the request of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, the GCHQ asked the Canadians to monitor certain British political leaders for them.
Since at least 1981, what had once been an informal covert intelligence-sharing arrangement among the English-speaking countries has been formalized under the code name "Echelon." Up until then the consortium exchanged only "finished" intelligence reports. With the advent of Echelon, they started to share raw intercepts...Echelon monitors or operates approximately 120 satelites worldwide...
According to several knowledgeable sources, the British government has included the word "amnesty" in the system's dictionaries in order to collect information against the human-rights organization Amnesty International.
...and this is but another sign of the implacable advance of militarism in countries that claim to be democracies. |
Chalmers Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 165-167.
Also consider Britain's MI5, a domestic intelligence agency with no equivalence in the United States.
| Wikipedia wrote: |
In July 2006, Norman Baker MP accused the British Government of "hoarding information about people who pose no danger to this country", after it emerged that MI5 holds secret files on 272,000 individuals - equivalent to one in 160 adults. It was later revealed that a "traffic light" system operates:
Green � active � about 10% of files
Amber � enquiries prohibited, further information may be added � about 46% of files
Red � enquiries prohibited, substantial information may not be added � about 44% of files...
With the emergence of other terrorist threats in the United Kingdom the service has increased its resource commitment to the detection and prevention of these activities. Numerous raids against suspected militants, and the internment of key suspects in HM Prison Belmarsh in London, have been credited to Security Service intelligence. It has been reported that Security Service officers have been involved in interrogation of British citizens interned at the United States' Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba. |
Indeed, last summer journalists broke a story that rapidly became a small scandal in Germany, when they reported that German intelligence had penetrated and was running ops against the German press. So, Germany, too, has returned to or is at least well on its way toward returning to fascist totalitarianism. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Thu May 03, 2007 5:54 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| You disagree with the President's Constitutional authority? Seek an amendment. |
Blah, blah, blah.
FISA already exists. It in no way hinders his authority and he has NO authority to break the law. I don't care if God himself plops down and says otherwise, the Constitution stands on its own.
The US asking others to spy on its citizens is also illegal, in my opinion. And yes, as an American citizen, my opinion DOES matter. What is constitutional is what, in the end, WE say is constitutional.
That you would defend such crap, as you do all other such crap, says a great deal about you. Ironically, you are the most "antiAmerican" person on these boards. I have yet to see you defend even the most basic of civil rights. |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 3:19 am Post subject: |
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EFLTrainer wrote:
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| That you would defend such crap, as you do all other such crap, says a great deal about you. |
That you would use the word "crap" twice in the same sentence as part of what you imagine to be an articulate rebuttal says a lot more about you.
Must be the long lost brother of Beavis. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 5:33 am Post subject: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
EFLTrainer wrote:
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| That you would defend such crap, as you do all other such crap, says a great deal about you. |
That you would use the word "crap" twice in the same sentence as part of what you imagine to be an articulate rebuttal says a lot more about you.
Must be the long lost brother of Beavis. |
Pointless. Your mastery of the straw man argument is superb.
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