Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic
Public Says Investigate Terrorism, Even If It Intrudes on Privacy
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Why didn't you post the Gallup Poll that totally disagrees with the Pew Poll, shopping around again Box.
I seen that to, that is why you can't go by polls, you can find one to fit any agenda. But browsing around sites even left wing sites like the daily kos they are very much against it.
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
Why didn't you post the Gallup Poll that totally disagrees with the Pew Poll, shopping around again Box.
I read the Pew Report in an email. I posted it. I didn't read the Gallup poll but if you did and if you were so concerned... WHY DIDN'T YOU POST IT??? DUHHHHH!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
I don't put much faith in polls as they are all over the map on how people feel about this subject. I believe most polls are created by asking people they think will support their point of view.
Who says Ron Paul was a "fringe" Republican? He was certainly portrayed as such by the media, but they are controlled by large corporations so they don't necessarily practice fair and balanced journalism. The Republican party is no more a fringe party than the Democrat party. We have a Constitution, Bill of Rights, and separation of powers in order to prevent tyranny of the majority. I'm well aware that a majority of Americans when asked will side against the Bill of Rights, that is nothing surprising, but since when are our rights as free Americans up for popular vote on a case by case basis? The president has violated the Constitution he has sworn to uphold, time and time again. So did Bush. That doesn't make it right. Obama should be impeached, but he knows that will never happen.
. Obama should be impeached, but he knows that will never happen.
If justice was truly blind, Obama should be jailed for eavesdropping and Bush should be hanged for war crime. But there is a two tier justice system, one for us(tyranny) and one for them(above the law)
A 'fringe candidate"... Ron Paul is a fairly successful candidate when it comes to raising funds... but when it comes to votes???
Is Paul a Fringe candidate? look at the results: Ron Paul Election Year: 2008 Percent of the Popular Vote: 0.03
Strom Thurmond Election Year: 1948 Percent of Popular Vote: 2.4
Ralph Nader Election Year: 2000 Percent of the Popular Vote: 2.74
George Wallace Election Year: 1968 Percent of the Popular Vote: 13.5
Ross Perot Election Year: 1992 Percent of the Popular Vote: 18.6
For a candidate with big name recognition and financial backing... PAUL CAN'T EVEN MANAGE 1% OF THE VOTE. Saying he's a 'fringe candidate' gives him too much credit!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
For a candidate with big name recognition and financial backing... PAUL CAN'T EVEN MANAGE 1% OF THE VOTE. Saying he's a 'fringe candidate' gives him too much credit!
Yup-FRINGE!hahahahaha
Several ‘Ron Paul Republicans’ win closely contested House races 2:43 AM 11/07/12
Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul will retire from Congress next year after serving for 12 terms, but several Republicans influenced by the iconic libertarian-leaning lawmaker will be arriving to take his place.
Thomas Massie won the race to replace retiring Kentucky Republican Rep. Geoff Davis, beating Democrat Bill Adkins by 20 percentage points. Massie, an ally of Paul’s son, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, raised nearly 10 times as much money as Adkins, according to the Lexington-Herald Leader.
Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash, who was already vying to be the House’s next “Dr. No” in his first term, was re-elected with 58 percent of the vote. Democrat Steve Pestka had hoped to win the votes of independents and moderate Republicans who might regard Amash as too extreme, but failed to gain traction against the 31-year-old congressman.
In a neighboring Michigan district, Ron Paul Republican Kerry Bentivolio was elected to the House seat formerly held by GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter. McCotter, who had failed to gather enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot, resigned from the House amid a petition scandal. Bentivolio beat Democrat Syed Taj.
Bentivolio spent four decades in the U.S. Army, but was painted by opponents as an eccentric. He raised reindeer and was an occasional Santa Claus. He was elected to Congress by a 7-point margin.
Many other candidates endorsed by Ron and Rand Paul, as well as Paul-influenced organizations like Campaign for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty, were on the ballot Tuesday, including Texas Sen.-elect Ted Cruz. But these three Republicans most self-consciously identified with the Pauls’ calls for deep spending cuts, auditing the Federal Reserve, and a more restrained foreign policy.
They all raised money from Paul’s vast national network of donors, which helped them remain competitive in their primaries and the general election.
Amash endorsed Ron Paul for president and was one of three Republican legislators — including the Texas congressman and fellow Paul endorser North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones — who did not formally back Mitt Romney for president.
No, and not in 2012 either. I think he finished last in the primary... Republicans rejected him as a candidate.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Lawmakers: Terrorists change tactics after leaks Published - Jun 13 2013 05:57PM EST KIMBERLY DOZIER, AP Intelligence Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two senior Republican lawmakers said Thursday that terrorists are already changing their behavior after leaks about classified U.S. data gathering programs, but they offered no details.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said it's part of the damage from disclosures by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden of two NSA programs, which collect millions of telephone records and track foreign Internet activity on U.S. networks. Snowden fled to Hong Kong in May and has granted some interviews since then, saying he hopes to stay there and fight any charges that may yet be filed against him.
Rogers said there are "changes we can already see being made by the folks who wish to do us harm, and our allies harm" and that the revelations might also "make it harder to track bad guys trying to harm U.S. citizens in the United States."
Later Thursday, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, used similar language in criticizing Snowden.
"The bad guys are now changing their methods of operation," Chambliss said. "His disclosures are ultimately going to lead to us being less safe in America because bad guys will be able to figure out a way around some of the methods we use, and it's likely to cost lives down the road."
Rogers and Chambliss spoke after closed briefings with top administration officials on the matter.
The ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, said he's concerned that Snowden fled to Hong Kong, a part of China, "a country that's cyberattacking us every single day."
"It seems unusual that he would be in China and asking for the protection of the Chinese government ... but we're going to investigate," Ruppersberger said.
"He's obviously now decided that he wants to relay information about foreign-type (intelligence) collection," Rogers said. "Clearly, we're going to make a thorough scrub of what his China connections are," or whether he has a connection to any other foreign government, the congressman added.
The NSA's director, Gen. Keith Alexander, who was part of the closed briefings to Senate and House members, said he hopes to declassify details of dozens of attacks disrupted by the programs. Alexander said officials don't want to "cause another terror attack by giving out too much information."
Officials have thrown out widely varying numbers of the attacks they say the broad surveillance of Americans' phone and online usage has thwarted. On Wednesday, Alexander said dozens have been stopped. Ruppersberger said the surveillance "has thwarted 10 possible terrorist attacks," then amended that number to be in line with Alexander's statement. In the initial days after the disclosures of the programs, officials cited one case.
Two senators and longtime critics of the program challenged Alexander's claim Thursday.
"We have not yet seen any evidence showing that the NSA's dragnet collection of Americans' phone records has produced any uniquely valuable intelligence," Sens. Mark Udall, D-Colo. and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., both members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. "All of the plots that he mentioned appear to have been identified using other collection methods."
The disclosures raised privacy concerns as Americans — some of them members of Congress — learned for the first time the extent of surveillance powers granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to help U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies track terrorists.
Investigators have been trying to determine which facilities the 29-year-old Snowden visited during his intelligence career to decide how much classified data he had access to as a computer systems analyst for the NSA and earlier for the CIA, according to two congressional staffers. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to describe the investigation publicly.
"It's clear he attempted to go places he was not authorized to go," within the classified systems, Rogers said. He called Snowden "a fairly low-level individual, but because of his position in the IT system had access to certain pieces of information that, candidly, he did not understand, or had the full scope of what these programs where, who decided on his own he was going to release this information."
Snowden's access to secret programs is spurring lawmakers to consider imposing new limits on contractors who work in the intelligence field. The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Thursday that her committee would draft legislation to limit or prevent contractors from handling highly classified technical data.
Feinstein spoke after a closed-door briefing Thursday on the NSA leaks open to all senators, by officials including Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce. Feinstein said 47 attended — almost half the Senate.
FBI Director Robert Mueller defended the programs in testimony to Congress on Thursday. In what is likely his final appearance as FBI director before the House Judiciary Committee, Mueller said that terrorists track leaked information "very, very closely" and that because of leaks "we lose our ability to get their communications" and "we are exceptionally vulnerable."
Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, said, "It's my fear that we are on the verge of becoming a surveillance state."
In defending the programs, Mueller called attention to the run-up to the 2001 terrorist attacks, saying that if the controversial surveillance efforts had been in place back then, they might have uncovered the hijackers' plot. The 9/11 Commission found that among the major U.S. failures before the attack was that agencies didn't share information they already had about suspected terrorists with the FBI.
"If we had had this program, that opportunity would have been there," Mueller said.
"I am not persuaded that that makes it OK to collect every call," Conyers replied.
JUST BECAUSE SISSY SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO...BUT HE THINKS IT DOES!!!!! JUST BECAUSE MC1 SAYS SO DOESN'T MAKE IT SO!!!!!
Hahaha! That's a great article. They couldn't prevent the Boston Marathon bombing with 5 years of surveillance, but after 6 days since this story broke, and they already know "terrorists" changed their tactics. These are the same people that said WMD's in Iraq was a "slam dunk".
HEY TERRORIST, DO WHATEVER THE CHECHENS ALLEGEDLY DID IN BOSTON! That was before Americans knew their communications were being stored by the government.
Outsourced Intelligence: How the FBI and CIA Use Private Contractors to Monitor Social Media Thursday, 13 June 2013 09:49 By Stephen Benavides, Truthout | News Analysis
Right now, companies like Palantir Technologies Inc, Booz Allen Hamilton, and i2 are mining your Facebook and Twitter data in an effort to discern whether you're a terrorist, have ties to terrorists or maybe just have the potential to someday become one. They also want to know if you have links to the Boston bombers, Kim Jong-un or Darth Vader, and they've been paid millions upon millions of dollars to do this on behalf of the US Special Operations Command, FBI, CIA, DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), the Army, Marines and the Air Force. Initially a small start-up conveniently funded in part the CIA's nonprofit venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, Palantir Technologies is now the leading embodiment of online Big Brother. http://truth-out.org/news/item.....monitor-social-media
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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