posted April 19, 2006 06:16 PM              

"A former AT&T employee has come forward with documents suggesting that there may be a lot more domestic spying going on than President Bush has admitted. The AT&T documents suggest that telephone companies may be helping the government engage in wholesale interception of telephone calls, e-mail messages and Web surfing. If AT&T is violating its customers' privacy rights, it should come clean, and stop immediately.

"According to Mark Klein, a longtime AT&T technician who is now retired, AT&T has maintained a secret room at its San Francisco Internet and telephone hub where its customers' data could be mined by keywords, e-mail addresses and other attributes. Mr. Klein says the National Security Agency was given access to the room and the data. He says other technicians have reported to him that similar rooms exist at other AT&T sites."

Carl Bernstein Compares Bush to Nixon

In a recent article in Vanity Fair, Carl Bernstein, famous for breaking the Watergate story, writes:

"Worse than Watergate? High crimes and misdemeanors justifying the impeachment of George W. Bush, as increasing numbers of Democrats in Washington hope, and, sotto voce, increasing numbers of Republicans - including some of the president's top lieutenants - now fear? Leaders of both parties are acutely aware of the vehemence of anti-Bush sentiment in the country, expressed especially in the increasing number of Americans - nearing fifty percent in some polls - who say they would favor impeachment if the president were proved to have deliberately lied to justify going to war in Iraq.

"John Dean, the Watergate conspirator who ultimately shattered the Watergate conspiracy, rendered his precipitous (or perhaps prescient) impeachment verdict on Bush two years ago in the affirmative, without so much as a question mark in choosing the title of his book Worse than Watergate. On March 31, some three decades after he testified at the seminal hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee, Dean reiterated his dark view of Bush's presidency in a congressional hearing that shed more noise than light, and more partisan rancor than genuine inquiry. The ostensible subject: whether Bush should be censured for unconstitutional conduct in ordering electronic surveillance of Americans without a warrant.

"Raising the worse-than-Watergate question and demanding unequivocally that Congress seek to answer it is, in fact, overdue and more than justified by ample evidence stacked up from Baghdad back to New Orleans and, of increasing relevance, inside a special prosecutor's office in downtown Washington."

posted April 19, 2006 07:21 PM            

So, your article is BS Mirandee. Wiretapping terrorists and those who are talking to terrorists is an issue on which the public agrees with Bush.

posted April 19, 2006 09:18 PM            

I have no intention of 'splainin it all to you but I've covered it here before.

Even the FISA Court panel of judges agree the President has the "inherent" Constitutional authority to order wiretaps without a court order in the pursuit of national security.

Now, where were you and where were you protesting when Clinton was running ECHELON and CARNIVORE, which WERE domestic spy program directed at Americans.

You really need to answer that question or be seen as the blind naked partisan I think you really are.

posted April 19, 2006 09:24 PM              

No he doesn't. He has that authority in wartime. The "war on terror" isn't a real war, it's an excuse to expand presidential power. Obviously.

If the "war on terror" were a real war there would be distinct objectives and a time when we can perceive the war as being ended.

posted April 19, 2006 09:58 PM              

"Echelon - This is a secret network rumored to be under development by the National Security Agency (NSA), supposedly designed to detect and capture packets crossing international borders that contain certain keywords, such as "bomb" or "assassination."

There is no solid evidence to support the existence of Echelon. Many people confused this rumored system with the Carnivore system."

Quote:

Perhaps you could give me a paragraph or two on where you were and how you were protesting when Commander Corruption was running "ECHELON" and "CARNIVORE".

I assume that you are referring to Bill Clinton here and not Bush Sr. or Ronald Reagan.

Dragging Clinton into this and attempting to discredit me is not getting you anywhere in your argument, Jwhop because it is far from the point. The point is that Bush broke the law of the ECPA.

The FBI may have employed spying devices such as carnivore under Clinton's leadership but there is no evidence or any charges against Clinton stating that those devices were not used within the guidelines of the ECPA which states that there has to be a court order and evidence of probable cause that the indivdual(s) are crimnals or in this case terrorists. They cannot be used at random. Those are the charges against Bush and he stated publically that he did not get a court order. He did not show probable cause.

I realize that in the headlines today Bush came out and stated, " I will decide what is right." But he is full of it. He can kiss my big toe. This is still a democracy and though he is trying to be dictator he will be thrown out of office for blatantly ignoring the constitution and making his own rules and laws. He is not above the law for any reason. No president is. A president is a servant of the people and answerable to the people under the consitution and it will be the people who decide Bush's fate. Right now things don't look too good for his future in office and with statements like that in the press the moron is not helping his case with the people.

Earthlink has made this statement regarding Carnivore [1] that corresponds to the position of many in the opposition:

"We do not allow the installation of Carnivore on our network because it has the potential to compromise the privacy of our legitimate users and the performance of our network. We have an internal solution which allows us to comply with court orders without the presence of government personnel or equipment in our buildings."

Privacy - Many folks viewed Carnivore as a severe violation of privacy.
While the potential for abuse is certainly there, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) provides legal protection of privacy for all types of electronic communication. Any type of electronics surveillance requires a court order and must show probable cause that the suspect is engaged in criminal activities. Therefore, use of Carnivore in any way that did not adhere to ECPA was illegal and could be considered unconstitutional.

All of these concerns made the implementation of Carnivore an uphill battle for the FBI. The FBI refused to disclose the source code and certain other pieces of technical information about Carnivore, which only added to people's concerns. But, as long as it was used within the constraints and guidelines of ECPA, Carnivore had the potential to be a useful weapon in the war on crime.

Most Internet Providers do not allow carnivore to be used on their networks. If you want to know if your provider does just call and ask them.

posted April 20, 2006 12:39 AM            

"The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that "we take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007703

Now Mirandee, where were you and where were you protesting when Commander Corruption repeatedly and deliberately violated the 4th Amendment rights of every American when he authorized, funded, bought new equipment for and oversaw ECHELON and CARNIVORE?

Further Mirandee, where were you and where were you protesting when Commander Corruption...and Jimmy Carter BOTH signed Exectuive Orders authorizing wiretaps/searches, without warrants?

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release February 9, 1995

EXECUTIVE ORDER 12949

- - - - - - -
FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE PHYSICAL SEARCHES

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution
and the laws of the United States, including sections 302 and 303 of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 ("Act") (50 U.S.C. 1801,
et seq.), as amended by Public Law 103- 359, and in order to provide for
the authorization of physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes
as set forth in the Act, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) of the Act, the
Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a
court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of
up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications
required by that section............

WILLIAM J. CLINTON
THE WHITE HOUSE,
February 9, 1995.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-12949.htm

EXERCISE OF CERTAIN AUTHORITY RESPECTING ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE
EO 12139
23 May 1979

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By the authority vested in me as President by Sections 102 and
104 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C.
1802 and 1804), in order to provide as set forth in that Act (this
chapter) for the authorization of electronic surveillance for
foreign intelligence purposes, it is hereby ordered as follows:

1-101. Pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(a)), the Attorney General
is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign
intelligence information without a court order, but only if the
Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section...........