Thanks Tom Carper (you a-hole)
FISA: Loss #1 
by mcjoan
Thu Jan 24, 2008 at 12:30:12 PM PST
Thanks to the following Democratic Senators (my count, roll call not yet available, but it will eventually be here)
Rockefeller, Bayh, Mikulski, Pryor, Salazar, McCaskill, Nelson (FL), Carper, Nelson (NE), Landrieu, Inouye, Johnson
the first attempt to protect your civil liberties and hold telcos accountable for spying on us without warrants has been defeated, 60-34.
sadness . . . regret . . . remorse
I wrote Carper to support this and got back the usual weaselly response from him. “I will take your views into consideration…” yadayada.
Anyone reading this on Carper’s fundraising lists? Next time he asks you for funds, send it back and tell him he can have a contribution in exchange for all of his phone records. Home, office and cellphone. It is the deal he’s offered to the Telcos, after all.
Torturin’ Tom again! I get these emails from groups asking Delawarean’s to call Carper on a number of issues to protect the citizens. The man is a total failure to protect the liberty and civil rights of ordinary american citizens.
His contributors are abymssal! Torturin’ Tom will give the Telecom companies a pass on spying on us!
When will the democrats realize they have a real neo con, consitution hater in this fraud of a man!
Hear that terrible cry, that is the sound of the Bill of Rights being slaughtered in a men’s restroom at the Senate…
Questions I would like to ask….
Do you support the bill before the Senate called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act which allows the government to spy on all Americans Internet and email communications?
Do you support the Military Commission Act that empowers the president at his discretion to declare any U.S. citizen as an enemy combatant and be subjected to detention without charge or due process, which could include anti-war protesters?
Do you support the John Warner Defense Authorization Act which allows the president to declare a public emergency and station US military troops anywhere in America including inside our homes as well as take control of state based National Guard units without the consent of the governor in order to detain disorderly American citizens?
Do you support National Security Presidential Directive 51 which establishes a new post-disaster plan allowing the President to be charge of all three branches of government for as long the President determines the duration of a national emergency, instead of the Congress making that determination?
Now that Habeas Corpus has been suspended, a right everyone in the English speaking world has enjoyed since the year 1215, how can we ever feel secure in our persons, papers or effects?
If you support these please tell me how is this different from a dictatorship?
(guess it is not so different huh?)
Not so different at all.
I called Carper’s office yesterday and was told that he only responds in writing. I told the staffer that I didn’t want to waste the paper. If my own senator refuses to put his positions out in the public eye and allow his staff to reveal them to his constituents when asked nor to have his positions on his website or his crappy blog then, well, he is lower than the snake we know him to be and that this vote attests.
Cassandra offers a nice exercize – to demand Carper’s phone correspondences.
Is it paranoia or sympathy for terrorism that prompts some to worry about the common sense aspect of FISA.
Back when we had conventional enemies, it was rather simple to listen to radio communications, evaluate their command and control structure, and decrypt a lot of messages.Before and during World War II, first-class mail was intercepted and read (at offshore facilities) to gain some interesting information. Mail from military personnel was censored.
In dealing with conventional criminals, wiretaps were used. These were a simple affair. A tap would be installed at the line card that terminated some suspect’s local loop at the associated central office. A court order would be granted for the tap on that particular line.
Now we have an amorphous enemy that uses public networks for their command and control structure. Routing of calls takes varied paths, paths that may alter during the course of a conversation (as with a cellular phone in a moving vehicle). When long disance links are used, multiplexing schemes may combine thousands of calls on a single path.
So how are the few calls of critical interest to be monitored?
We could take the ‘law enforcement’ approach and wait to investigate a crime after the fact. We could also be pro-active and use what technology is available.
Then again, we could do nothin.
I ask a simple question: how does one listen for communications that can warn of mass murder over multiplexed communications paths?
how does one listen for communications that can warn of mass murder over multiplexed communications paths?
Restated, how does one identify and listen to one conversation within multiplexed communications paths without violating the Fourth Amendment?
Art, FISA is fine, but not following FISA is not. That is the issue here. FISA allows you to monitor for 48 hours BEFORE you get a warrant to address the issues you raised here. Are you purposely being ignorant?
What the Bush admin was doing was NEVER getting approval for this. Surely, you see issues with no judicial review of this activity? Under what conditions can you justify NOT going to a secure FISA court for review?
How does one ask permission to monitor a network?
Any telecomm geeks out their in ACLU-land?
How does one ask permission to monitor a network?
Under the Constitution, you don’t. Warrants are for searches, not for monitoring.
I am a telecom geek. Anon is correct. You have a lead, you monitor the people that are indicated by that lead. Under FISA, you can do what you need to do to follow them (monitor the cell net, track their Internet usage, tap their phone) and then you get it approved in 48 hours.
What I cannot fathom is why this is unreasonable.
72 hours, Geek, a 72 hour window is in FISA now after domestic spying, IIRC.
I see, thanks Nancy.
Confirmed. 72 hours.
Damn, I bet they could have me wearing orange in Gitmo less than twelve hours after I hit Submit…
Dear Democriminals,
Hero Art Downs has the right attitude for winning the Great Conservative Cultural Revolution. All of your filth is going to bring you to Hero Mukasey’s enhanced re-education chambers. After we listen to you with our central party organs and discover what you are doing over there in “geek” land, you can be sure that we know you. I for one, agree with Hero Art about the evil amorphous enemy code you use on your site. Traitors.
You democriminals ruin all you touch with your terrorist sympathsizing. Always remember our Glorious Leader and his new Hero Art Downs! It is not too late for you democriminals to become Heroes too.
Just how does one monitor conversations that are domestically initiated or received on a cellular telephone that is not identified with the user?
There is no practical approach other than to monitor the mass volume of traffic on a network. There are tons of chaff that may contain a few grains of wheat. No one is interested in some private, perhaps even salacious, conversation between individuals who are not involved in terrorist activity.
Who really cares what you are saying?
Hero Art Downs,
Do not back down to the Democriminals, give them hell- those 4th amendment loving goose-steppers are doubleungood. Your assumption that we all need to be surveyed and monitored to catch a little group of Islamofasiguts is perfect groupgoodthink, if I could improve on your assement I would try, but it is almost so perfect; I am not sure I can Glorious Hero.
My suggestion: How about we target people who are from the middle east who wear turbins, middle eastern business travellers, students and all the Saudis together; while we are at it why not anyone salacious? Or to find deviations in their political ideology? And of course to make sure that Hero Huckabee’s jihadis are monitored too? We could verichip them and track every movement they ever make, ever. Y0u can see our Partner Heroes have already developed the technology here- http://www.verichipcorp.com/
Then we catch the anarcho-demo-nazi-islamo-fasiguts and get rid of them all, and we get rid of anyone who does not see it our way. We save their DNA and make cloned replicas to work in our factories. It is part of our progam called the Ark of the Conservative Cultural Revolution. It would be a glorious symbol of our Thousand year party.
You amaze me Hero of the Conservative Cultural Revolution. Keep up the good work.
Shit, if one of you Demonazis is out there give the man a medal! He’s earned it.
Don’t cha just love the repukes! Everyone is a terrorist, the bogeyman has now entered the democrat party! The party of dirty tricks, and true fascism want to paint everyone with the same broad brush! Only problem…it ain’t stickin.
The biggest and truest fascists in american society were all together last night in Boca Raton. My grandson who lives 4 blks from FAU, said the streets were filled with protestors….of all ages, color and culture.
The fascists that want the New World Order, who gave up the Consitution and rule of law, call those true patriots standing solidly behind our consitution….demo nazis! They must be listening to the biggest fascist of all…rush and those like him…got some of em right here in Wilmo, Delmo!
Back in the 1920s, when isolationism and disarmamaent was in vogue,there was an international conference in Washington on limting naval strength in according with a fixed tonnage ration for capital ships.
Some crypto types in the State Department ‘Black Chamber’ broke the Japanese Diplomatic Code and knew how far their representatives could be pushed and they were pushed to the limit. It was an intelligence success.
When international ‘golden boy’ Herbert Hoover tookover, Secretary of State Stimson was shocked when he learned of these code-breaking successes and shut down the Black Chamber on the high-minded theory that ‘Gentlemen did not read other gentlemen’s mail.’
Stimson had less reluctiance to tolerate such activity as FDRs Secretary of War.
Given the structure of the modern public telecommunicaions network, it is impossible to monitor communications on a line by line basis unless a known telephone instrument or computer terminal is regularly used. Given the sheer volume of traffic, there is not enough manpower to monitor more than a tiny fraction of the messages generated each day.
“Given the structure of the modern public telecommunications network, it is impossible to monitor communications on a line by line basis unless a known telephone instrument or computer terminal is regularly used. Given the sheer volume of traffic, there is not enough manpower to monitor more than a tiny fraction of the messages generated each day.”
Hi Art-
It is not impossible the technology exists to do it.