Re Telecom Spying ... why the sham of routing calls out of the country?

[Stinky The Clown]

The Bushies were bound and determined to spy on Americans .... most likely so they could do shit like beat John Kerry and legions of other, lesser candidates. And so they can keep tabs on what's coming out of the tube right at them. There are myriad reasons for doing it.

But why the sham of routing calls outside the US, tapping them, and then return them to the US? Why not just do what they wanted to do? After all, they know the Democrats in Congress will only do silly shit like look into baseball juicers and keep important stuff off the table.

Even routing calls outside then back is really, at its core, illegal. So why the sham? Why the bother?

I don't get it.

[EFerrari]

1. Maybe it was some lawyer's way to avoid a future subpeona?

Sort of like torturing people in Cuba instead of in New York (although, they did that, too).

[Stinky The Clown]

8. I should think any competent lawyer would already know that even if they .....

..... routed calls outside and technically avoid the law, they would be VERY vulnerable on intent.

[EFerrari]

11. But in practice, Gitmo is still open.

The propaganda is so thick over this country, I haven't seen any national figure even raise the question.

[DS1]

2. fear factor

and the fact that they probably considered it so crafty and clever, they just had to do it. ego.

[Stinky The Clown]

9. In other words ...... they're sociopaths ......

..... that makes sense.

[Forrest Greene]

3. It's A Sort Of Mental / Emotional

...sleight of hand so that some ...like my eighty year-old, rabid RW in-laws, for example... can say to themselves "See? The Government is obeying the law."

(Maybe "...is obeying _a_ law...")

Or even something like "Well, the Government _had_ to route those calls out of the country & back in again just to satisfy the ridiculous restrictions placed on them by those rotten liberals."

I know it doesn't make sense. It doesn't have to.

[Stinky The Clown]

10. Man .... you've got that ......

..... right wing group think pegged! :thumbsup:

[Forrest Greene]

14. Makes Me Feel Like

...I've got moths in my head, eating my wooly brain.

[Kokonoe]

4. R's love to reinforce their lies with the truth

Remember bu$h saying we only monitor calls from outside the U.S.
Or Condi saying something like "there are no secret prisons on European soil" when it was shut down just for her to say it.
Its all about Bu$h telling the truth, when he is lying.

[L. Coyote]

5. Splitting an optic cable yields two identical data streams, no routing back involved

if the duplicate stream is routed to its own destination, where ever that undisclosed location is.

[catnhatnh]

6. It's a fallback to the old "limited hangout"....

Just remember part of the early defense that they were ONLY targeting calls where part of the conversation was "outside" the country...thereby obscuring the fact I was calling my Mom 16 miles away about potato cake recipes....Is it THEIR fault my conversation was routed through the Bahamas???

[wtmusic]

7. Because most Americans are stupid enough to fall for it.

"They can spy on foreign calls, can't they? That's what the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act says."

Or something like that.

[madokie]

12. I'm sure someone can explain it better than me but here is my try anyway

the way I understand it is, the fact that electricity travels at the speed of light is what makes our present day telephone system work. when you talk into the mouthpiece those words you speak are broken up, chopped is the word they used to use, and parts of it goes on it merry way via one channel and other parts via other channels, all put back together before it comes out of the earpiece of who ever you call even if its your next door neighbor parts of it might have traveled to china and back before getting there. remember when you are on the fringes of your cell phone and you're listening to some one and it sound all goobly gooky, the reason for that is some of the parts of the words were lost, didn't make it back in time. It used to be a real problem early on in the cell phones early stages. So in that, pieces of your next call may and probably does go through many exchanges in many different countries. the machine that makes it all possible was called simply a chopper, I don't know as it still is called that now though.

[malaise]

13. How else could they listen to all Democrats

of importance.