General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCrazy traitor leaker got Congress to notice vast surveillance state By Alex Pareene
Pols from both parties are all of a sudden demanding more transparency and pushing reforms. Thanks, leaks!(Credit: Reuters/Bobby Yip)
There is a guy, a famous guy, who lives now in a Russian airport or something, no one is really sure, but everyone in the media (and lots of people not in the media) cannot stop fighting and arguing about this guy. Some people say he is a jerk and crazy and bad and others say he is a hero and super cool. Either way, mean jerk or cool hero, this guy that everyone wont shut up about is actually responsible for the first major public displays of Congressional opposition to the unchecked surveillance state in 35 years or so.
Congress has always had a handful of privacy advocates and true civil libertarians. But for many years in political Washington it has been considered foolish and perhaps a bit treasonous to suggest that our intelligence agencies are even slightly overzealous in their collection of all information possible about everything on the globe. That is still the general consensus, but as McClatchys Washington Bureau wrote on Friday, there are suddenly a bunch of members of Congress who actually want to rein in the NSA.
The last time a significant number of Washington politicians favored additional restrictions on intelligence-gathering and surveillance powers was in the immediate aftermath of the Church Committee reports, in the mid-1970s. Since then, Congress has practically abandoned its oversight power over the intelligence communities, and its only gotten worse since 9/11. Fighting terrorism trumped privacy every time Congress was asked to expand government spying powers. For much of the last dozen years, civil libertarians werent just ignored by the political establishment, they were vilified. When Democrats took full control of Congress, they still rubber-stamped Bushs surveillance programs.
So what happened, exactly? Well, the American people learned a bunch of scary sounding stuff about how much data the NSA is collecting, on everyone. They learned this because of illegal leaks of classified information, to reporters, from the guy everyone is fighting about. Everyone can keep fighting about the guy, I guess, but no one can now say that the guys leaks were entirely gratuitous. Because before the leaks, people who were alarmed at what the intelligence agencies could be up to were ignored and politicians who had pretty good notions of what they could be up to (or who couldve learned what they were up to if they cared to) werent concerned.
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/crazy_traitor_leaker_got_congress_to_notice_vast_surveillance_state/?source=newsletter
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)when we find out there is. Like Connie Rice asking " Do you know the seats on the plane the terrorists are seated ? " when asked why she didn't act on warnings of 9/11 .
RC
(25,592 posts)He, Snowden, single handily did what scores of people trying for 30+ years could not do. Bring to light the out of control Shadow government.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)happen - an open discussion of the surveillance state - something that would not be happening now if he had not executed the leaks and done so in a flamboyant style.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)was a direct response to the Church Commission.
Ironic.
Overall a good article.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Bush and his war criminal friends were caught violating the law, and instead of holding them accountable, our Congress decided to, INCREDIBLY, add an Amendment that would be, again, INCREDIBLY, retroactive to cover the period of Bush's crimes and thus save him and his telecom co-conspirators from what should have happened to them, for him, Impeachment would have been too good and the rest of them, the normal consequences for anyone who violates the law.
Instead we now have a revision of the Church Committee's FISA BIll which allows, again INCREDIBLY the NSA and worse, their Private Security Contractors to do their spying without getting a warrant until AFTER the fact, which pretty much gives them free reign now and the FISA Bill's previous protections have been eviscerated.
To put it simply, Congress made Bush's illegal activities LEGAL with one of the worst most blatant protections of a criminal ever.
How nice it must be to have Congress CHANGE THE LAW when you break it, and legalize your crimes.
Another law that needs to be fixed .... so many, so little time and so few elected officials with the will to restore the rule of law.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)We can always count on you. Now, I wonder if Joe will fess up to his ignorance? Or will he, like a guerrilla fighter, fade away so he can come back and attack again?
The crux of the current spying ops was designed and built by the republicans.
Like the op says, until now even questioning the nsa was tantamount to being unpatriotic. I'd say being ignorant, today, about the nsa is being unpatriotic.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"To put it simply, Congress made Bush's illegal activities LEGAL with one of the worst most blatant protections of a criminal ever."
...nonsense. Bush's activities are not legal today.
Republicans passed a bill to do that, and tried to extend it. That law expired in 2008.
http://web.archive.org/web/20081216011008/http://www.newsweek.com/id/174601/output/print
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023032225
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_America_Act_of_2007#Legislative_history
Another misleading media report implies that warrantless wiretapping is legal.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023026724
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Its a complex topic, where the details matter ... and where the complexity provides ample opportunity for some to mislead people.
That's how "mining meta data", incorrectly became "wiretapping", which has now became "spying".
More ambiguous and scary terms used to muddy details.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)That has to end. It is a total waste of money. If we don't want terrorists in the country, we should not let people from countries that have terrorists into ours, and we should not let people who allow those people into their countries in either. Just countries that do nothing to rid themselves of terrorism. And if that means end diplomatic relations with the UK or Germany, so be it.
I don't let thieves into my house. If they want in, they will have to come in without my permission. We allowed the 9/11 terrorists into the country. Why? Because they came in on passports from countries that we trusted. We should have retaliated against the countries they came from by ending diplomatic relations with those countries until they cleaned up their terrorism problems.
If we can't bring ourselves to do that, we should not complain about terrorism and terrorize Americans and destroy our democracy because we can't break our relationships with countries that harbor terrorists. We have to make that choice.
I have trouble with raccoons. It's my job to put out traps for them. I don't have to put up cameras and place every squirrel, every bird, every worm under surveillance to persuade the raccoons to stay out. I just put out moth balls near my plants. The raccoons don't like the moth balls and pretty much keep away. The terrorist threat is an excuse to control Americans. And the rest of the world while we are at it.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Bush was caught breaking it, where Congress rushed to save him from prosecution?
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)were living under a rock, you know that Bush was bypassing the FISA court completely.
The omission in the article of how the FISA court came into being is relevant particularly because there are so many who seem to be surprised that it exists at all. Just reexamine some of the threads on DU over the last month or so.
Many seem to be unaware that the FISA court was created in direct response to an over reach in domestic surveillance. As I said, ironic.
And if we want to fix the law, we'll need to replace lots of Rs with Ds. As the article notes, the Rs tend to be pretty lock step on this.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Congress made it LEGAL to protect him. So what is going on now could NOT have gone on under the old FISA Bill.
There was outrage when that Amendment passed to protect Bush and his telecoms accomplicies, Dick Cheney et al.
I wonder why this sudden amnesia has occurred since then?
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)... when its already mentioned IN THE ARTICLE?
The re-authorization of the Patriot Act in 2006 is mentioned in the article, the origins of the FISA court were not, which is why I brought it up.
The BIG issue with Bush was his bypassing of FISA.
Much of the hyperventilating going on now, is by people who either did not pay attention, or who think some of these things just occurred ... and GASP ... they are outraged.
We've had many threads in which people are SHOCKED to learn that we have a secret court, as if it was created last week.
Well said.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)lark
(23,155 posts)Snowden isn't a traitor in my books.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)they cannot deny the reality that he has forced a discussion about an issue that was not being publicly and would not be publicly discussed now to any serious level if he had not done what he did with the flamboyance that he did it.