Real Estate Consultant · Crete, IL · Member since 2008 · 85 posts · 1 vote
To many people the idea of being constantly watched and monitored may not seem like anything new. Minorities, in general, have never been so trusting of the powers that be to think that they wont abuse said power in their quest for more. They have had cointelpro and other programs against black leaders and have spied on and conspired against innocent and peaceful movements for years even Martin Luther King. Now, it has been revealed that not only are they wiretapping many Americans at random, they are checking and no doubt cross-checking the phone records of as many people as they can. Why? To stop Al Qaeda? Guess Again. Why would they tap the records of many millions to find the actions of a few? Is it all of a sudden possible that every American is a terror suspect? It would be goood to know what some of our best minds think about this, I for one am angry but not surprised because I think that they are using it to to track the thinking of the people and asociations of people in a BIg Brother sort of way. This is a deep issue especially when they are always talking about some other country having a "state-run" tv and radio etc. Did Sadaam in all his evil listen to and track phone calls of his citizens, does Bin Laden do it? Does the Presdent of Iran or China or Russia do this? How are we better than anyone else? If the war against Iraq made us safer, why do we need more intrusions to make us safer yet?
Loveland, CO · Member since 2008 · 1k+ posts · 123 votes
20y
I've ALWAYS distrusted my government, and would gladly take up arms against it to protect my COUNTRY. This is just more of the same old Bush lies and BS that he's always done. Why anyone ever voted for this moron, KNOWING he was a liar going back to his days running for Governor of TX, is beyond me! I always thought that the only people who would vote for this jockoss are those that think the earth is only six thousand years old! There can't be that many of those, can there?
Yeah, yeah, I know, Republicans are all about SMALLER, LESS INTRUSIVE government. I'm going to have to take the next 5 months off to go help Democrats get elected in some competitive districts so that we can get some HONEST investigations of this bunch of crooks and liars.
Please don't flame me as being a "big government, leftie liberal. I'm a lifelong CONSERVATIVE that actually knows what it means to be one.
Real Estate Consultant · Crete, IL · Member since 2008 · 85 posts · 1 vote
20y
All Cash, this is the biggest government yet and is led by conservatives and just think, with a military man heading the CIA, the system of checks and balance will erode once the departments and agencies are all headed by people of the same mentality. Someone will post and say that we are being made safer by all of this, but I will challenge them forward to explain how, in real, tangible terms, are we safer becaue of this. Even those of us who are law abiding citizens will be lumped into a demograpic that is illegal and unconstitutional to be even be genated. The strength of this nation has always been our adherence to our own laws on all gov't levels and here we see them being breached one by one. Our futures are in serious jeopardy.
I don't think we really need to resort to name-calling...we should be a little above that...and yeah, President Bush has made mistakes, just like every other President has...but as to why people would vote him in, look at his competition the last two elections. Al Gore and John Kerry from the Democrats, and John McCain probably was the biggest threat from the Republican side...With that competition, it's no wonder why President Bush got elected...and then re-elected. If the majority of the country really didn't want Bush, then they should have found some better competition for him.
I voted for Bush, but that doesn't put the Conservative label on me....I really hope Sen. Barack Obama puts his name on the Presidential ballot for the next election...I think he could do this great country a lot of good being in the White House.
All cash, I respect your opinions and always enjoy reading your posts, as they are always informative...but I can't help but feel that for some reason President Bush can only do wrong in your eyes...that with you being from Texas, you have some long-standing issues against him. As a curiosity question, with you being a resident of Texas, how was his leadership of Texas while he was Governor?
I think that they would find most calls pretty boring.. hows your mom....is it raining there too.... need to go to the store... stuff like that. I think that they'll get tired of it pretty soon, and leave us alone again.
...I think that they'll get tired of it pretty soon, and leave us alone again.
I disagree with you there. Governments never give up a power once they've gotten the ability to exercise it. If the monitoring (and any other erosion of civil liberties) is allowed to continue it'll quickly become a fact of life to all and accepted as "normal". Historically, government does not shrink unless the citizens "take up arms" and change it, left to their own devices politicians will only maintain status quo or change things incrementally. Just like seat belts (who's had a ticket this week?), helment laws, speed limits, and all the other things you can think of one government or another has instituted to "protect" us from ourselves - and others - electronic eavesdropping will be here to stay.
Somewhere George Orwell is pumping his fist and saying "I told you so!"
Real Estate Consultant · Somerville, MA · Member since 2008 · 339 posts · 52 votes
20y
First, just to set the record straight, you are all crazy. :D
I want to respond to just a bit of the silliness:
You're kidding, right? Yes, they do it. China censors about 85% of the Internet from its population so that it's not even accessible. Actually, many (perhaps most) of the other countries in the world censor the internet for their citizens. Sometiems just porn; sometimes also politics or other topics. Review the Harvard Berkman Institute's studies on Internet censorship for Iran and China and open your eyes. Though your point about it being bad government and an oppressive environment to have everything being watched is correct, your examples and citations are not.
As for the comment about a military person being in charge of the CIA being dangerous because you'd have "like minded people", that's just off base. I don't know too many people right now in the military that, just b/c they're in the military, love Rumsfeld or the war or what we're doing. That's like suggesting all the people who worked at Enron LOVED their CEO. Nor is there any basis for suggesting that the CIA has always been an honest broker, the beacon of reason, whereas the military has been cavalier. Vice versa, history suggests. Now, if the point is about putting a White House lackie in as Director, hey that's a real threat. Porter Goss was clearly not one. In my mind, Gen. Hayden is clearly better than Fran Townshend in any case. And now a word about intelligence analysis...
With the advent of computers, we can process tasks a lot faster than with good old shoe leather. That's why when someone gets their head chopped off and the cops take fingerprints, they don't just check them against a single person's for a match. They run them through the 25 million Americans and xxx million foreigners to see if there are matches. It isn't oppressive; it's efficient. Similar for signal intelligence, aka phone tapping. While ideally you would know every person involved in planning 9/11 and only tap their phones, in the real world of course you don't. So you cast the net wider and screen through those calls. So that's why they're doing it, not because they're trying to plant alien nanobots inside your ear drum. We have two congressional committees for oversight and a more or less free and open press to keep things on balance. Clearly, we have a free and open Internet too!
That said, we're very touchy about our civil liberties and even if ours are still LEAGUES better than China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and dozens of other countries, as Americans we want not just to be better, but to be the best. City on a Hill. That's a good thing. I'm certainly not defending Bush. I'm not saying there aren't dangers to what they're doing and I'm not saying there aren't violations, but at least do some due diligence before calling people liars, cheats, and bad naughty names. 8)
Real Estate Consultant · Crete, IL · Member since 2008 · 85 posts · 1 vote
20y
The founding fathers of this country set up our current system of government in such an amzing way because they had the foresight of external threats as well as the internal threat of the abuse of power by members of the American government. Checks and balances was born from this understanding. Other countrys do not have that system and therefore the citizens of those nations know what they get from their government and they live and prosper, or not prosper by working within the system of government they live in. Every nation has the haves and have nots, every nation has those who live according to the law and those that dont. My Problem is that some of the things that our President has done have been under the same veil of secrecy, even if for different reasons, that other nations use such as circumventing the FISA court and Congress (voted by the people) to forward its agenda. It was never the intent of the forefathers nor those who came behind them to have this drastic circumvention of laws that are in place to deal with these extremes, including terrorism. The administration that implemented the FISA court did so out of foresight of the threat of terror and the need to deal with it based on the historic principals of checks and balances. When we go around these safeguards then we essentially become what we hate about other nations. For instance, China and other nations have intrusive policies like censorship and such because, as they would say, they are trying to protect the base of thier governmental power and diffuse threats that may come from within the people of that nation and outside. Likewise, some Chinese are satisfied and agree with the policy there and would never leave China because it is home and they are patriotic citizens.
The problem with the military man running CIA has nothing to do with a corporate structure. The fathers of these intelligence arms set it up to be civilian controlled to prevent the notion that someday if a military state were pushed here, these organizations could work to protect our civilian population. The posse commitatus law says that the military cannot police the streets of the US and this was made because they knew that the possiblity may exist someday that the military may abuse its power. This is not about whats going on now, its more for later times and if for "security" reasons martial law was ever imposed, in my view a Military man in the CIA may not be as likely to work to protect the citizenry from abuses of military power. This is why all these groups of intelligence etc. were created separate from the military to begin with.
Bush doesnt do everything wrong, but I do think that he is overstepping his powerline a bit. The Newsweek article about the phone tap controversy said that there is a lawsuit in court right now because a phone company employee saw that the NSA had an office in the phone company in San Fran and they had all day access to survey the internet transmissions of every customer of that companys internet division.
If they want all the info, fine. I am a law abiding citizen like I am sure that you guys are, but I am bothered by the secrecy and the lies and I dont trust the pure intentions of government especially not when a system created over 200 years ago was designed to limit the scope of its power.
Real Estate Consultant · Somerville, MA · Member since 2008 · 339 posts · 52 votes
20y
Good points. I would add though the military intelligence apparatus has pretty much since the inception of the Department of Army intelligence branches and the OSS, etc. held about 80% of the intelligence assets of the US. The CIA is the largest, but not the only, Human Intelligence (HUMINT) government agency--but the DoD also has the Defense HUMINT Service (old DHS) and each branch has its own human intelligence arm.
The traditional rub between CIA and the military rested largely on the condition where the military owned 80% of the assets and 80% of the intelligence budget but the CIA was put administratively in charge of them. Try being in charge of a strong willed child with no ability to reward or punish...it's a tough situation. That's one of the primary reasons for the Nat'l Director of Intelligence position, to oversee both taskings and budget. The concept is that finally, the person in charge has both the mandate AND the budget to execute.
I'm not sure how putting a military person in charge of the CIA (which owns <20% of the assets, albeit the "remaining" 20%...) will change the situation much, especially since both elements (CIA and DOD) report now to the NDI for budget and mission. The NDI, of course, is a political appointee (ah, yes!) and a civilian that should be subject to Senate confirmation.
Anyhow, I've had somewhat of a change of heart on this topic. While I do NOT believe that the Administration started tapping these phones, Internet, etc. for nefarious reasons, I whole-heartedly distrust putting that cookie jar in front of anybody in Washington. Senators, congressmen and women, the President, or the Supreme Court. It's a bad idea. Politicians have a stigma for being creepy and self serving because that's what history has repeatedly demonstrated for the past 10,000 years. I want my cookie jar back.
Residential Lender · GA · Member since 2008 · 92 posts · 3 votes
20y
Nice little discussion going here. I'm a little late finding it, but let's see what we have.
For the ones asking about how anyone could have voted for Bush, I'll say this. The man has screwed up on more than a few things (he's also done quite a few right in my opinion), but being that has it may, if I had to vote the last two elections over again, I'll still vote Bush into office. I mean come on, if Al Gore and John Kerry are the best that the Democrats can come up with, then I don't see any hope for them in the near future. I've been paying attention to politics for about 10 years now and I have yet to hear any good ideas from the Democratic side of the aisle. That is not to say that the Republicians have it all right either, but at least I can see an idea that makes a little sense from time to time.
Now for the whole civil liberties phone tapping BS. I'll be honest, I lost interest in this story almost as soon as I heard it for one reason. It's war-time and it's the government. Big Brother been looking over your shoulder for years. Anything from your credit card purchases to the liberty books you check out to the groceries you buy at the store are all easliy trackable. They need warrents for this information you say? You think that has always stopped them, most likely not. But unless you are ready to take up arms and force the government to shrink back down to where it should be, then there is not a whole lot of reason to get worked up about it. Does it make you leery of growing government power? Sure it does, but there are other things that down right scare me...IE. the government controlled monopoly of our children's education, the prospect of putting a socialist in the White House in 2008 (Clinton), and our government's eager support of the current Mexican invasion just to name a few.
With all that said I'll leave you with this thought:
"Get rid of the polticians and turn the government over the Mafia. The family makes their 10% and the country runs like a clock."
Real Estate Consultant · Crete, IL · Member since 2008 · 85 posts · 1 vote
20y
Interesting perpective and it makes perfect sense. The only thing that I would say to everyone regardless to who you voted for or will vote for is this; the elctions are always like voting for Lucifer or Satan, its the same BS by a different name or party. Big Brother will be big brother and there may be nothing we can do about it, but the big question is where is this all going to lead us? Where will we sit in history's eyes 100-200 years from now as we are compared to other historical societies that were the most advanced and best equipped of their days? Today and tomorrow we are ok but where will all the BS lead us in the future. I think both parties are full of it and we have a system where every takes lines of policy that fit with party philosophy and not always moral or social truth and right. What nation has ever overcome the clandestine control of its government to hold eternal or lasting power on this planet? If anyone knows one please mention.
Anyone living in the USA with a computer to read this and is still registering any complaints of anykind is just like the person complaining of having no shoes. That all hushed when he met the man with no feet.
Nothing is perfect but we got it about the best it gets and one thing for sure if it gets too bad then some one will stand up and do something about it and until then I think most of us can do about anything we wish as long as we are allowed to complain about it.
I am very happy to live in a place that allows the complaints instead of one that does not.
I have traveled to many other countries in this world, and trust me, there is no place that I feel safer and more comfortable stating my opinion and not have to worry about being put in prison or executed than the USA.
For those of you that haven't been out of the country try it and see how you feel when you return to US soil. It feels great!
I hear a lot of people complaing about wire taping, but keep in mind they are only listening to international calls. I could care less if they listen to my calls because they are very boring and I am not doing anything illegal to worry about the FBI showing up on my door step. If the government had not been doing many of the things they are doing now, including listening to calls and we were hit again, then we would want to know why our government isn't protecting us. Bush can't win for losing and he certainly can't make everyone happy. I am not a huge fan of Bush but I would rather have someone like him in office that is not scared to go after the people who have been trying to change the way we live today and detroy our freedoms.