Feel Safer Now (NSA Stuff)?

From our pal, the Earth Bound Misfit (on 2 Aug, link here), a quantification of the terror-disrupting benefits of all that illegal NSA spying:

So, How Many Terrorist Plots Been Disrupted Because the NSA has Been Collecting the Phone Records of All Americans For the Past Dozen Years?

You might recall that the NSA has claimed to have disrupted 54 terrorist plots or "dozens."

.

 

Well, NSA deputy director John Inglis revised that number at a Senate hearing two days ago all the way down to one plot, maybe.

Really. Thousands of NSA analysts, Lord knows how many contractors are sucking at that particular teat, they are building a new server farm the size of Rhode Island and all they can show for that effort is that they uncovered one plot?

Feel safer now?

 

Another Reason to Like President Jimmy Carter

I keep finding reasons to really like the worldview and actions of our former president: (via Firedoglake)

Former President Jimmy Carter announced support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden this week, saying that his uncovering of the agency’s massive surveillance programs had proven “beneficial.”

Speaking at a closed-door event in Atlanta covered by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Carter also criticized the NSA’s domestic spying as damaging to the core of the nation’s principles. “America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time,” Carter said, according to a translation by Inquisitr.

“He’s obviously violated the laws of America, for which he’s responsible, but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far,” he told CNN, saying that nations were within their right to offer asylum to Snowden. “I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial.” 

Guess Jimmy and I should expect a visit from the feds sometime soon.

I Am Not Reassured

When in doubt, I never go wrong in referring to a post from the Earth-Bound Misfit.  Especially when it deals with government overreach--in this case, warrantless surveillance:

"You Can Trust Us to Do the Right Thing." When you drill down through the bullshit, rationales and rhetoric defending the NSA's hoovering of essentially everything that goes across the telecommunications networks, that's what they are saying: That we can trust them not to overstep the boundaries between what is legal and what is not.

First, I question the premise for that. The NSA may be adhering to what is legal, but only because the Congress expanded the definition of what was legal for them to do. The NSA gets wiretapping authorization from a court which has turned down less than a dozen requests out of 30,000. You're eight times more likely to catch a ball during a major league baseball game than the government is to get a warrant request denied by the FISA court. Congressional oversight, at least until the current brouhaha erupted, has apparently been about as effectual as scolding a clowder of feral cats.

Second, the "trust us" advocates are, in my view, deliberately ignoring the bedrock principle of the Constitution and our entire system of government, which is this: Government cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

The Founders were some of the smartest and well-educated men and women[1] in the American Colonies. They had a far deeper understanding of human history and abuse of power than 98% of the people in Congress today. They understood the truth that power corrupts. Hell, they lived through it. They were well aware that Prime Minister Pitt said as much in 1770. They were aware that politicians, in particular, grow to regard their perquisites of power as their just due. They were well aware that powerful people tend to conflate their wants and desires with what is proper for their office.

So when it came time for them to design a government, they did not choose the "trust us" form. They wrote a Constitution of limited powers. After pushback from the states, they immediately passed the Bill of Rights to protect citizens from an intrusive government.

Our government has been pushing to limit the rights and liberties of Americans ever since.

But hey, if you don't have anything to hide, right?

 

"I Didn't See No Line"...and Surveillance

This post goes back to my post of yesterday.  I suppose the theme could be thought of as the blurring of lines.

Many of my generation loved Seinfeld (the first time through, and now through multiple generations of syndication), finding that in almost any episode one could uncover uncanny parallels between real life and the show.

The same notion--that a TV representation could have parallels with real life (more about that at the bottom, but first I must set the stage) is true of the 1989 TV miniseries Lonesome Dove, which won some 7 Emmys.  The screen adaptation in turn had evolved from the 1985 Larry McMurtry novel, which captured a Pulitzer Prize.  The miniseries ran in four 2-hour parts.

The main characters were Robert Duvall as Augustus McCrae, Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow F. Call, Rick Schroder as Newt, Diane Lane as Lorena Wood, Danny Glover as Joshua Deets, Robert Urich as Jake Spoon, Anjelica Huston as Clara Allen, Frederic Forrest as Blue Duck, Chris Cooper as July Johnson, and Barry Corbin as Roscoe Brown.

All of these characters seem as real to me as real life--just as was true of the recent Lincoln movie, I never once thought "That's not really xxxx--it's an actor."

Anyway, I keep circling back to any number of popular new stories, or what we all see in our personal lives, about how you need to listen to that little voice inside of you:  Just Do. The. Right. Thing.

In the clip below, quote below, since YouTube has removed the clip, the morally lazy Jake Spoon (Robert Urich) fell in with some bad guy horse thieves and was caught by his former Texas Ranger buddies, Captain Call (Tommy Lee Jones) and Gus (Robert Duvall).  Spoon tries to explain his deeds:

Jake Spoon: I didn't see no line Gus. I was just trying to get through the territory without getting scalped, that's all.

Gus McCrae: [Call is about to hang Jake] You know how it goes, Jake. You ride with an outlaw, you die with an outlaw. Sorry you crossed the line.

Jake Spoon: I never seen no line, Gus. I was just trying to get through the territory without gettin' scalped.

Gus McCrae: I don't doubt that's true, Jake.


To Jake Spoon I say, Bullsh*t!!  You know, you know, right from wrong.  Then as the noose is around Jake's neck and he's kinda saying goodbye to his buddies:

"Well, hell, boys, damn sight rather be hung by my friends than by a bunch of damn strangers." 

Then he kicked his own horse to initiate the hanging rather than have one of his buddies have to do it.

As I wrote yesterday, the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is pretty unequivocal.  The line has indeed been mightily crossed, and the powers that be are OK with that.  I guess they didn't see no line:

 “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

 

If You Don't Have Anyhting To Hide...and Ultrarunning

In all the furor--entirely justified, in my mind--over the just-revealed secret surveillance of U.S. citizens, it is well to hearken back to what the Constitution of the United States of America actually says.  It's the 4th Amendment, to wit:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Seems pretty clear to me: probable cause = specific suspicion = specific warrant.  No sniffing around just in case somebody might be a bad guy.

And definitely no thoughts along the lines of those expressed by the professional d-bag and U.S. Senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham (If you don’t have anything to hide, you don’t have anything to worry about):

“I think we should be concerned about terrorists trying to infiltrate our country and attack us and trying to coordinate activities from overseas within inside the country… 

…I’m a Verizon customer. I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government’s going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to terrorists. I know you’re not. I know I’m not. So, we don’t have anything to worry about.”

What seems crystal clear to me seems somehow murky to those in power.  Well, I guess I just figured it out, didn't I? (hint: P-O-W-E-R).

And the link to Ultrarunning?  What if--and stranger things have happened--the super-duper government trolling apparatus happened to flag a suspected terrorist who also was a long distance runner?  And that somehow the term "Ultrarunning" or "Ultrarunner" inadvertently got associated with the "bad guys'?

Then ALL your emails or Internet searches would be fair game for the spooks (just like this post undoubtedly now is being read by the NSA).

Don't think it can't happen.  It can.  I am a retired career Federal employee who has seen the bureaucracy in action for nearly 4 decades.  It has an inertial power of its own that keeps rolling long after reason should have prevailed.