The Observation Deck

I waited a couple days just to see if anyone even noticed the stories in most news sources.

Whistleblower: NSA spied on everyone, targeted journalists

Updates: Sen. Rockefeller believes NSA may have spied on him; Ex-NSA analyst believes program a remnant of 'Total Information Awareness'

Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists.

"The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications -- faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications," Tice claimed. "It didn't matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications."

Tice further explained that "even for the NSA it's impossible to literally collect all communications. ... What was done was sort of an ability to look at the metadata ... and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected."

According to Tice, in addition to this "low-tech, dragnet" approach, the NSA also had the ability to hone in on specific groups, and that was the aspect he himself was involved with. However, even within the NSA there was a cover story meant to prevent people like Tice from realizing what they were doing.

"In one of the operations that I was in, we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them," Tice told Olbermann. "What I was finding out, though, is that the collection on those organizations was 24/7 and 365 days a year -- and it made no sense. ... I started to investigate that. That's about the time when they came after me to fire me."

read more here
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Whistleblower_Bushs_NSA_targeted_reporters_0121.html

If this does not upset you are not an American.




.

Jim O'Bryan wrote:If this does not upset you are not an American.

I guess I must not be an American.

I’d rather see a few liberties fall by the wayside than any more 911 like attacks, but that’s just me. I understand we’re in a new world here. I’m okay with the feds tuning their big ear into 100% of everyone’s conversations. I’ve got nothing to hide. How about you?

The only people who seem to have their panties in a bunch over this are the liberals and the terrorists.

Charlie Page wrote:

Jim O'Bryan wrote:If this does not upset you are not an American.

I guess I must not be an American.

I’d rather see a few liberties fall by the wayside than any more 911 like attacks, but that’s just me. I understand we’re in a new world here. I’m okay with the feds tuning their big ear into 100% of everyone’s conversations. I’ve got nothing to hide. How about you?

The only people who seem to have their panties in a bunch over this are the liberals and the terrorists.

Charlie

Well, at least you take ownership of it.

Me, nothing left to hide, got married, started a paper, and knew most of the fun days of excesses and abuse were over. I would never do anything to harm this country or another person. I would like to believe I am an American.

However I always forget how young you are.

You have not seen first hand how this sort of security and oversight
has been abused in the past again and again and again.

This is not a liberal thing, it is an American thing.

To date ZERO terrorist have been caught with this. Do not believe the hype.

But why let the facts get in the way of a good liberal/conservative game!

FWIW, most of the whistle blowers claim to be conservative, and/or Republican.

And than that leads us to Geirge Bush lying to the American people repeatedly about this.

You do not strike me as a person that would want a special prosecutor just for personal political reasons. I do not. But I have no problem seeing that Bill Clinton lied, and broke the law and in doing that needed to be prosecuted. So I am sure you can agreed that if(!) GWB lied, it needs to be examined as well. Right?


.

[b]“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.â€

phone calls: "Hello... I'd like to order a pizza". "did you feed the cats"

how would benjamin franklin react to his phones being tapped? Suppose british loyalists wanted to sail their boats right into the side of a dock?

This season of 24 is the most realistic season. the villains are Washington insiders who get paid to help some African government leaders with the banking of their nations' mineral wealth. It reminded me of all the lengths Mr.Drysdale would go to on Beverly Hillbillies to keep Jed's oil money at the bank.

Not sure what the point of 9/11 was. as far as the terrorists motivation was. all it did was make us mad enough to do whatever the president told us to. it was not demoralizing. why didn't they attack structures that would have been demoralizing?

And for that he should go to prison. I am sure there was a law broken some ware. Isn't that why we had FISA in the first place. So our power hungry nut bag of a president could not go shooting from the hip to tap americans phones. Terrorists are pretty dumb and wacky but I doubt many of them in the US pick up their home phone on a Sunday afternoon and talk about doing terror. Anyway at this point is is safe to assume that all communication is being listened on, or at the very least recorded/stored/piped to the NSA via secret data lines with no access logging. Privacy - Just one more civil liberty taken away but the wack job of a leader. It will take some time and hard work to restore it if ever.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
A quotation from Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887


"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins."
Acton was preceded by William Pitt the Elder, who voiced a similar thought in a House of Lords speech in 1770.


.

Keith Olbermann covers 8 years of Bush in 8 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vTFesgMkzk

[quote="Jim O'Bryan"]
If this does not upset you are not an American.
.[/quote]

I feel so much safer knowing that we have someone right here in Lakewood who can tell us who is or isn't an American.

Will Brown wrote:

Jim O'Bryan wrote:If this does not upset you are not an American.
.

I feel so much safer knowing that we have someone right here in Lakewood who can tell us who is or isn't an American.

Just consider it value added.




.

Jim O'Bryan wrote:

Will Brown wrote:

Jim O'Bryan wrote:If this does not upset you are not an American.
.

I feel so much safer knowing that we have someone right here in Lakewood who can tell us who is or isn't an American.

Just consider it value added.




.

Is there a tax on that...

I prefer to believe none of us are important enough to phone tap.

Does everyone really think illegal wiretapping by the CIA, NSA, etc started with the Bush administration? Wake up! It’s been going on since that technology became available, for decades.

That does not make it right. bush is just the sucker that got caught. We should punish those who break the law. It is just a shame that we do not catch more people in the act.

Charlie Page wrote:Does everyone really think illegal wiretapping by the CIA, NSA, etc started with the Bush administration? Wake up! It’s been going on since that technology became available, for decades.

Charlie

If you are correct, then they should be prosecuted. Do not change the subject. We caught one, and that person the president LIED to the American people. That cannot be explained away with partisanship, or smoke and mirrors, and it certainly does not make it right.

As for the internet, we know there is no hiding, it has been a government programs since its conception. Recently "faux names" have been brought to trial on facebook, myspace and others as the libel laws get honed. On the net nearly everywhere you go leaves footprints. It is up to the operator of the site to save or flush. To retain or let fall away. From the first day we have taken on Ken Warren and the Lakewood Library's belief that we will not retain nor turn over anything.

However phones are something completely different. There are very set laws in place, and if we let anyone rise above the law we are setting up a monarchy, not a democracy.

There should be no excuse, and no one should rise above the law.

FWIW


.