Intelligence Boss Claims The Real Villain Here Is The Press For Revealing His Secret Spying Program
from the nice-try,-clapper dept
So we already wrote a bit about how Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was using weasel words or outright lying, in trying to insist that the NSA wasn't actually gathering up data on pretty much every American. However, his statements go even further into the ridiculous. In his initial statement, even the title is combative:DNI Statement on Recent Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified InformationNotice the focus is not on the unauthorized disclosure of widespread NSA surveillance, but rather "disclosure of classified information." So he's already priming the pump for the "real" villain: the press who are reporting on this.
The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation.We've heard that before, and it's ridiculous on multiple levels. First, most would-be terrorists are likely to assume that the government is monitoring all of this stuff anyway, because there have been plenty of hints in the past. So, it's not really that likely that this sudden "revelation" is going to lead some massive change in how bad people communicate. But, more importantly, even if monitoring certain terrorists was so key to dealing with threats, that still doesn't matter. The DNI's job is not "stop threats by any means necessary." Because that's crazy. While it might help government respond to illegal activity, that doesn't mean that we give up our 4th Amendment rights, nor does it mean we need such broad, all-encompassing orders. Such things could easily have been done using a specific, targeted warrant, seeking information on a specific individual. That is, they could have done targeting which would have been useful, but they chose not to, and instead demanded all data.
But, of course, he doubles down at the end on how awful it is that people are talking about this (not that the NSA has access to so much data on everybody):
Discussing programs like this publicly will have an impact on the behavior of our adversaries and make it more difficult for us to understand their intentions.Basically "hey everybody, shut up and stop confirming what everyone knew already: that the US spied on lots and lots of stuff." Also, this appears to be a government official telling everyone to not exercise their 1st Amendment rights to complain about the NSA violating their 4th Amendment rights. The Constitution is crying in the corner.
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Filed Under: blame, james clapper, national security, press, surveillance
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Makes sense if you swap in two words
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Re: Makes sense if you swap in two words
Seriously, what are all these mysterious "threats" our nation is facing? It's no secret that we send spies into countries we considered a threat, such as Russia. If the NSA is spying on the American people (and they are), that clearly implies that the government considers the public to be a threat.
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Re: Re: Makes sense if you swap in two words
Have a nice day!
-NSA
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Re: Re: Makes sense if you swap in two words
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Re: Makes sense if you swap in two words
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Re: Re: Makes sense if you swap in two words
Obama was not in office in 2007.
Obama's great fault here really is being too much like Bush.
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Re: Re: Re: Makes sense if you swap in two words
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Re: Re: Re: Makes sense if you swap in two words
That being said, all those political cartoons I keep seeing portraying Obama as "Nixon 2.0" are beginning to feel more and more accurate. If he says that he "learned about this the way everyone else did (aka through news reports)" this time, the US news media should really start holding his proverbial feet to the fire over this. I mean, if you've got the fake news show (The Daily Show), calling out his bullshit before the actual news networks (excluding FOX), they really need to step up their game.
As the Zen Master says, "We'll see."
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Re: Re: Makes sense if you swap in two words
The Tea Party is no better than anyone else. They just have a different set of issues that they want authoritarian control over.
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PRISM
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Re: PRISM
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Re: PRISM
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Exercise of Power
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You. boy?
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120818/01171420087/funniestmost-insightful-comments-wee k-techdirt.shtml#c1210
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Here, have a tissue.
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I would fire the entire NSA staff for relying on security through obscurity. That is completely unacceptable.
...what? Oh, right, the whole spying deal. Er, yeah that's bad too, but let's focus on the important bits first.
/bad joke
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One can only hope the NSA has a bulging file on OotB.
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I hope that none of my taxpayer dollars are being used to investigate a content-free joke account on an obscure tech blog.
But I guess it's nice to know that anytime he calls 911 to complain that water is dry, they will make a note of it.
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blah blah techdirt tour same place blah Mikey is a shill blah my blog would be better f I had one.
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This is her. Again.
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For those new to the internet a "link" is a URL ...
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Of course that would only matter if I believed this was the 'real' blue, as I'm betting it's just a poe instead.
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Out_of_his_mind just said that stopping piracy is MORE IMPORTANT than upholding the US Constitution???!!!
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J. Edgar Hoover would be proud.
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This just pisses me off
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2013/06/06/2423915/nsa-whistleblowers-say-agency.html
I live in southern Utah.
That the Obama administration is mired in one scandal after another makes me wonder if anyone is paying attention to all the bullshit that is being blown onto the American public. I guess the sheeple don't mind the manure. Sorry for the rant, but like the title says. I'm a bit pissed off and more than a little frustrated that Big Brother has gotten so much control in my lifetime.
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Re: This just pisses me off
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Re: Re: This just pisses me off
I would only add that all political office should be limited to two terms. Holding a political office is supposed to be a SERVICE TO YOUR COUNTRY, not a career path.
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Re: Re: This just pisses me off
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Re: Re: Re: This just pisses me off
> but I don't really think a different President would
> make any difference.
That's why I enjoy the frowny-faces of the idealistic young Obama supporters who have watched their man’s descent from Harvey Dent into Two-Face, if only because, as Poor Richard said, “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”
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Re: Re: This just pisses me off
I also agree with you that our current political process (all of it) is broken.
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Re: Re: This just pisses me off
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Re: This just pisses me off
The question is what's going to be done about it, if anything can be done.
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Re: This just pisses me off
Just think, a facility built on US soil to be used AGAINST the people, to amass a tremendous amount of data in violation of Constitutional law.
The war on drugs, terror, guns... in actuality are fabricated threats created to villanize us, necessary in order for the government to justify its expansion of power at the greater expense of our Constitutional rights.
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We already do, to a certain loose extent, and have for years. Get pulled over by a cop at 3 AM and you'll be questioned about why you're out in the middle of the night.
Buddy of mine used to be a cop and worked rotating shifts, and when on the graveyard shift, anyone who was pulled over was asked that question. They assume you're up to no good.
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That is sick, I didn't think it was that bad.
I'm not sure how it looks from the inside, but from an European point of view, the US have very little difference from Russia or China in terms of freedom of speech.
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Reads to me like a non-sequitor. It doesn't follow. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.
So maybe I'm mis-reading? You want to amplify why a European p.o.v. would lump the U.S. into the Russian/Chinese bloc on freedom-of-speech? Please.
And I presume you're speaking Western European? Or maybe I'm mis-reading that too. Southern European? Baltic? Or all Euro?
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Maybe freedom of speech wasn't the correct approach, what I want to pass is that much of the things I've been reading in the news as well as in this website, about laws that diminish individual liberties, are very similar to the ones my parents and grandparents had to live with when we had a dictatorship here in Portugal.
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> have very little difference from Russia or China
> in terms of freedom of speech
Oh please. At least you can't be jailed in the US merely for offending someone and telling an off-color joke, like you can in most European countries.
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Stupid Eurotrash
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Re: Stupid Eurotrash
Chezh republic is not as free as they like to believe and Denmark has an openness in administration (FOIA-type) on level with the Vatican State. Germany has been good at keeping bad stories out of the media. There are plenty of problems lurking barely below the surface afaik (on the hush-hush).
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UK is surveillance paradise, nordic countries have massive surveillance too from police and army secret services and France is France...
Most of the rest have basic problems in their democratic process (maybe except Germany, Austria, Luxembourgh and Holland. Even those are pretty problematic in certain areas - especially Germany and Luxembourgh.)
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“The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.”
( Volokh's discussion of the source for this quote is puzzling: Did the words originate with Tom Wolf? or with Jean-François Revel? )
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^^^Ah, Techdirt... Blind Mike, ankle-biters, and frauds.
So, Mike, do you now admit that Google is a SPY AGENCY as the real out_of_the_blue has MANY times mentioned? -- Of course you have their weasel-worded denial to hide behind, but we know that spooks are liars too.
Take a loopy tour of Techdirt.com! You always end up same place!
http://techdirt.com/
Techdirt Axiom #1: Mike once quipped "Streisand Effect" = he's the authority on every topic.
02:32:54[c-025-0]
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Re: ^^^Ah, Techdirt... Blind Mike, ankle-biters, and frauds.
I'm sorry ootb but being legally coerced by a spy agency doesn't make you a spy agency. I can see how you might see it that way, given that you think there's a never ending link for liability whenever something happens a la secondary, tertiary, quaternary, quinary ect ect ect liability for infringement, why wouldn't the same apply to spying. Hey, I'm a "SPY AGENCY" because I used the internet which the ISPs, who are SPY AGENCIES, gave to the NSA, who is obviously SPY AGENCY, and so are you!
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Re: Re: ^^^Ah, Techdirt... Blind Mike, ankle-biters, and frauds.
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Re: ^^^Ah, Techdirt... Blind Mike, ankle-biters, and frauds.
But holy shit Google.
Google? Google google. Google google the Google google google.
Google.
Google google? Google google google.
google.
Motherfucking Google.
Blue, you're a joke. You're not even a good joke. You're that bad joke that's always told too soon. You're the poster child for abortion.
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Re: Re: ^^^Ah, Techdirt... Blind Mike, ankle-biters, and frauds.
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Re: ^^^Ah, Techdirt... Blind Mike, ankle-biters, and frauds.
That would be the NSA.
Google is a search engine that has been forced to hand over user data by a corrupt government.
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Re: Re: ^^^Ah, Techdirt... Blind Mike, ankle-biters, and frauds.
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This just pisses me off continued
...Bamford's assumption was that the uproar over a separate, post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping program and the departure of the Bush administration meant that the NSA had been reined in.
"Here we are, under the Obama administration, doing it sort of like the Bush administration on steroids," he said in an interview with the Associated Press. "This order here is about as broad as it can possibly get, when it comes to focusing on personal communications. There's no warrant, there's no suspicion, there's no probable cause ... it sounds like something from East Germany."
Source: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2013/06/06/2423915/nsa-whistleblowers-say-agency.html
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Hee hee
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Makes you wonder how far they would go (or have already gone) to justify themselves. Including the event which started the whole ball rolling.
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Interesting idea, but it requires data to be filtered after it is collected. Would such filtering only apply to the congress critters private numbers, or does it include their office numbers. What about members of their family, staffers and other associates? What about calls from the public to their phone?
Looks to me like it is much easier to gather their data along with everybody else's.
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Right now, based on all available information, I'm presuming that the call I made yesterday to my Congressman's D.C. office, via Verizon, wound up in the NSA database. In that call to my U.S. representative, I urged the impeachment of the N.S.A. director. Why is the N.S.A. monitoring a call like that?
I do not believe that can be justified.
Btw, what do your elected representatives' offices have to say to you on this issue? You did call, didn't you?
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What happens when your government is the enemy an becomes the real threat?
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Boston
If this type of spying is necessary to stop terrorism why didn't it stop the Boston Bombers?
They had been under surveillance, they were foreigners in contact with other foreigners and yet...
So as an American they feel they need my personal info to do what?
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Re: Boston
Well, Virginia used to care whether you were a member of the NAACP. I mean Virginia used to really care about that. Took it all the way to the Supreme Court level of caring. (See NAACP v Button, (1963) for some history on that.)
Maybe the NSA wants to know whether you belong to the NAACP?
Hey! Does Barack Obama belong to the NAACP?
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And then pretended they had no evidence.
But, if you download music that's played on the radio for free ---- THAT justifies a SWAT attack on your house!
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Lies and spies
They've got the most exotic and technologically advanced stuff in the universe to spy on everyone with..and nevermind that they're breaking the law doing it.
How many facilities do they have? Can't find out, because it's classified. Who did they spy on? Can't tell you, because it's classified. Did they gather more than data on anyone? Can't tell you, blah, blah blah.
From the time the NSA was created, its' mission has been spying. Not just on the foreigners. Don't be naive-of course it's on Americans. It always has been, always will be.
They intend to keep it that way, unless someone gets upset, like the committee that controls their funding..but even that isn't a given, since most of their budget is hidden very, very deep inside the military budget under "Miscellaneous expenses."
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It is sad when you start to feel that way.
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Little grey scare.
My own death doesn't even seem as scary as the whole world and everyone I've ever known all dying at once.
People need some perspective.
We've survived much bigger bogeymen.
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Re: Little grey scare.
Exactly. And our national reaction to it is so extreme and ludicrous that it makes us look like a nation of cowards.
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Twitter
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***Intelligence Boss Claims The Real Villain Here Is The Press For Revealing His Secret illegal Spying Program (Say That Again)***
Fixed the title for you ;-)
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