NSA claims they know how not to spy on Americans

Of course, that begs the question, are they actually using this knowledge or have they just put it in a draw somewhere?

With the news that the NSA has been gathering metadata on pretty much everyone inside the United States, people are getting pretty riled up. There is the appearance of the director of the NSA having lied to congress and now Edward Snowden has checked out of his Hong Kong hotel and disappeared. (Or been disappeared) Now the NSA is saying that they have the “Know how” not to spy on Americans. Here are some of the details from Associated Press:

The supersecret agency with the power and legal authority to gather electronic communications worldwide to hunt U.S. adversaries says it has the technical know-how to ensure it’s not illegally spying on Americans.

But! Are they using it? That is the question of the day.

But mistakes do happen in data-sifting conducted mostly by machines, not humans. Sometimes, former intelligence officials say, that means intelligence agencies destroy material they should not have seen, passed to them by the Fort Meade, Md.-based National Security Agency.

I understand that with the amount of data they have gathered, it has to be sorted by computer. I also understand that the filters aren’t perfect. This isn’t the issue. The issue is gathering this data in the first place.

The eavesdropping, code-breaking agency is fighting back after last week’s revelations in the media of two surveillance programs that have raised privacy concerns.

Privacy concerns? How about Fourth Amendment concerns? Hey, AP, Didn’t you just have a little issue with the Justice Department bugging your phones and stuff?

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has stated repeatedly that the NSA’s programs do not target U.S. citizens and that the agency uses a process known as “minimization” to sift out data from “any U.S. persons whose communications might be incidentally intercepted.”

Why don’t I believe that? Oh I know, it’s because it looks like Clapper committed perjury and lied to congress ((Intelligence chief Clapper: I gave ‘least untruthful’ answer on U.S. Spying)).

While the NSA has deferred any public comment to Clapper, it did offer an internal article written by director of compliance John DeLong, who is in charge of making sure the NSA protects Americans’ privacy.

DeLong writes that privacy protections are being written into the technology that sifts the information, “which allows us to augment – not wholly replace – human safeguards.”

I have another safeguard. Don’t spy on Americans. Now, I mentioned that the NSA and other agencies were collecting metadata. This is different from actually intercepting and listening into calls or reading email. If you want an idea of what this is, look at the detailed bill the phone company sends you. That’s about what they are collecting.

There is a rather big difference between what the phone company collects for billing and what the government is collecting. First, the phone company doesn’t want to hold on to these records any longer then they need to. Second, they don’t use it to track you. Given all that information, the government can tell where you have been, who you have talked to, and what you’ve been doing on the Internet.

Think about that. Do you want the federal government to know where you have been, what you have been eating, who you talked to, how fast you have been driving, what movies and books you are reading or watching?

With metadata, they can build a very detailed map of just what you have been doing for as far back as they have data. The NSA can say they don’t do anything with it until a warrant is issued, but the fact that they have been collecting personal information on you scares the crap out of me. Think about all the people who have been shopping for deals on guns and ammunition online? Their browsing history is also available. (So why were you repeatedly visiting that site, “Gay boys in bondage Mr. Jones?”)

Hayden said the Obama administration had expanded the scope of the surveillance, but that oversight by lawmakers and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court also had grown because of changes in the law.

Bull. We have just learned that the FISA court rubber stamped a warrant that allowed the FBI to gather all the data on ALL the customers of Verizon for several months. That isn’t a targeted search, that’s a fishing expedition and a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

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 ((Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution)).

One of the reasons we kicked King George the Turd out of the colonies was his proclivity to send troops in to ransack people’s houses for no good reason. This is the electronic version of King Putt sending his forces in to ransack your virtual house.

The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California, told ABC’s “This Week” that the phone program had helped disrupt a 2009 plot to bomb New York City’s subways and played a role in the case against an American who scouted targets in Mumbai, India, before a deadly terrorist attack there in 2008.

No one believes Diane Feinstein. She is a proven liar and totalitarian of the Progressive Left. As to Mumbai, they appear to have done that one by the book. They had a name, some information and were able to get a warrant. They didn’t troll the New York phone book looking for information that might be interesting.

Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he was not “convinced that the collection of this vast trove of data has led to disruption of plots” against the U.S. He also said he expects “the government to protect my privacy, and it feels like that isn’t what’s been happening.”

It hasn’t any more then the TSA has stopped Islamic terrorists from setting their shoes and underware on fire trying to blow up planes.

“NSA is the elephant of the U.S. intelligence community, the biggest organization by far with the most capability and (literally) the most memory,” said former senior CIA official Bruce Riedel, who now runs the Brookings Intelligence Project.

The NSA has datacenters all over the place with a new one being built in Utah right now. Back in the 70’s, Congress held hearings on abuses by the CIA and the FBI. This was called the Church Committee ((United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities)). The Church Committee actually did a lot of damage to our foreign intelligence gathering operations, but they also did reign in some real abuses. The NSA was not well known outside of the Government and so escaped the reaming the CIA and other agencies received.

We are now seeing the results of the Patriot Act tied into a president and his administration who believe they are above the law and that the constitution is a transience to be ignored. The upshot is the NSA data mining, the Justice Departments going after reporters and the IRS suppressing political groups that oppose Obama. The drip, drip, drip of revelations continues and it’s only going to get worse.

Political Opinion pollster has been saying that the United States is entering a pre-revolutionary phase. People are starting to wake up to the abuses of the Federal Government and are starting to take action. The Federal Government is taking counter-action to basically crush any group that opposes them. This is why we are seeing the abuses now coming into the sunshine. This phase can end in one of two ways. A political sea change where the old guard is thrown out, and the balance between the people and government is restored via the election process, or outright civil war. I think Caddell believes that the latter is more likely then the former. I’m afraid I do to.

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~