DOJ Report On NSA Wiretaps Finally Released 174
oliphaunt writes "As regular readers will recall, after the 2004 elections the New York Times revealed that the NSA had been conducting illegal wiretaps of American citizens since early 2001. Over the course of the next four years, more information about the illegal program trickled out, leading to several lawsuits against the government and various officials involved in its implementation. This week several of these matters are coming to a head: Yesterday, the lawyers for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation filed a motion for summary judgment in their lawsuit against the Obama DOJ. The motion begins by quoting a statement made by Candidate Obama in 2007, acknowledging that the warrantless wiretap program was illegal. US District Judge Vaughn Walker has given indications that he is increasingly skeptical of the government's arguments in this case. In what might just be a coincidence of timing, today the long-awaited report from the DOJ inspector general to the US Congress about the wiretapping program was declassified and released. Emptywheel has the beginnings of a working thread going here."
From the old mathematics joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
"NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced legal analysis including legislation, lobbying, and litigation. If you'd like a circular describing these research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your lawyer, and ask for one!"
- With apologies to any crypto geeks who got hired by talking to their grandmothers about mathematics on an open line :)
Seems like nothing now... (Score:0, Insightful)
Compared to nationalizing the auto industry, confiscating the retirement savings of GM bond holders and giving it to the UAW, taking over the banking sector, eventually passing the economy killing cap and trade bill, planning to ration health care.
Barry is worse than the most ridicules hyperbole dreamed up about Bush.
Re:Campaign promises? (Score:5, Insightful)
And this would be a bad thing?
We told our lawyers to tell us it was legal... (Score:2, Insightful)
Comes down to the same BS of: "We told our lawyers to tell us it was legal, and so it was." Will the Bush administration EVER answer for their crimes? I think not at this point.
Re:Seems like nothing now... (Score:5, Insightful)
confiscating the retirement savings of GM bond holders and giving it to the UAW
There were no savings of GM bond holders. GM went bankrupt, and its liabilities far outweighed any conceivable future profits. The bonds were already worthless, and the retirement savings were already lost.
The government may have wrongly given a bunch of taxpayer bailout money to the UAW, but that still doesn't mean that GM bond holders deserved any of the taxpayers' money either.
taking over the banking sector
Likewise, the entire banking sector was insolvent. Flat B-R-O-K-E. Either the US government, the Chinese government, or Middle Eastern investors were going to end up owning all of the pieces of that entire industry. The American people opted for the US government.
planning to ration health care.
Heads up: your health care is *already* rationed, by your PHB.
Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
American lawyers.... based in America, and protected by the Constitution no matter how fast the Republicans spin the word "People".
The lawyers are the aggrieved party here, having received a copy of their own wiretap in the mail and therefore being the only people outside of the government able to prove that these wiretaps occurred. That they just happen to be lawyers for an Islamic foundation that gives all its money to a bunch of murderers would be a good reason to put in a request for a warrant from the secret FISA court that rubber-stamped almost every single request ever, shame Bush's administration just couldn't be bothered to obey the law.
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
But hey, anything goes, right?
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
See my other post in this thread. Not all of al-Haramain's money went to al-Qaida. A lot of it went to very poor people for food, education, or health care. Only a small minority of it was skimmed by a few sympathizers.
That's the problem with the guilt-by-association game. If you're a large charity and any one of your employees helps al-Qaida, your whole charity's image is permanently tarnished, even if your employee was acting outside of official capacity.
Re:Campaign promises? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because the president is supposed to lead the country, not waste taxpayer money every time somebody has a real or imagined beef with the federal government. If you want to change the government, the Constitution has these things called "elections", not "lawsuits". I don't even agree with Obama on most topics, and I'm 100% convinced that his expansions of the federal government that Slashdot seems to completely approve of will have a vastly higher negative impact on my individual rights than the hypothetical outrage that people here feel that somebody in Al Queda might have had his "right to privacy" intruded upon. However, the proper way for me to affect change in the government is not by suing every time they adopt a policy I don't agree with.
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
The preception by the administration was that it was a legal manner.
Your sort of arm chair quarterbacking here and using the later presumption of not being legal to invalidate the entire idea of thinking it was legal at the time it was done. Let's see if I can put this in a car analogy, if you checked your blindspot and thought it was safe to change lanes only to find later the you missed a car and hit it when changing lanes, did you act maliciously and intentionally to hit the car or did you think you were being legal and safe but erred?
Re:Campaign promises? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because the president is supposed to lead the country
Does anyone remember when we elected people to represent us, not to lead us?
Re:Ah yes (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter whether you were malicious or merely erred, you were still at fault and should be held accountable for your actions.
Re:Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation (Score:3, Insightful)
And the Crusades were (if not started, at least kept alive) by people legitimately believing they were doing God's work by liberating the Holy City from heathens.
That's the scary part of life, villians aren't the handle-bar mustache twirling evil-doers that we see on TV. They, for the most part, aren't acting out of pure self interest and a desire simply to cause misery. Most 'villians' are people who quite clearly seem themselves in the role of the Hero (with the capital H required) in the story, doing what must be done to save the rest of us from our folly.
Whether they are heros or not depends more on if you see the world the same way as them than it does on their actual actions. I know people who still think Bush was the greatest president since Washington. I know people who spit whenever they hear Lincoln's name. And, sadly, I know people who fit both statements.
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
For the car analogy, if you pasted a picture of a nice, clear road onto your rearview mirror, and, after carefully checking that, hit another vehicle, it'd be all kinds of your fault.
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Yes, I expect the government to go before a judge and ask if they can wiretap a foreign target, because that's how we make sure they aren't wiretapping domestic targets. Remember, once they have the warrant, they don't need to ask a judge anymore.
2) Even if they're so lazy that they can't bother to get warrants for wiretapping known terrorists, there's still the emergency retroactive warrants.
3) Even Pentagon officials admit that the "charity" spent the majority of its money feeding hungry people, teaching poor people, and helping sick people. Only a small portion of it was skimmed by a few terrorist sympathizers who infiltrated the charity.
4) Actually, we don't let them continue to campaign. We had many of their branches in foreign countries shut down.
5) Do you seriously think that a handful of fools wearing sandals and turbans who hide in caves are going to take down 300 million people? Can you imagine the size of the force that would be needed to invade American soil? It's moot, anyway, because you're more likely to die of colon cancer in Wisconsin than you are to die from a terrorist attack.
6) ...it's lose, not loose.
Re:Ah yes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ah yes (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
"Don't throw the Constitution in my face anymore. The Constitution is just a Goddamn piece of paper."
::facepalm::
Long story short: It's the fake quote that just won't die.
According to Google, the last time I bothered to rebut it was March 2008:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=496572&no_d2=1&cid=22832270 [slashdot.org]
And in that post, I reference an earlier post I made in Oct 2006.
Nothing has changed since then.
While I realize that quote has taken on the mantle of Truthiness in its condemnation of Bush Era policies,
and it now represents the general spirit of lawlessness, it'd be better to find something true to use as a cudgel.
"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best" would be a good place to start.
My heart bleeds (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA tapping American phones? I would feel really bad about that, if I did not just recall that I'm European and that the NSA requires no warrant or reason to invade my privacy. It was expressly created for that. Do not expect me to feel sympathy when a Chinese agency snoops on your communications. You never gave it a thought whether indiscriminate spying on 'them danged furriners', i.e. me, was ethically justified.