Senator Bob Corker Says NSA Should Be Spying On More Americans, Not Fewer
from the say-what-now? dept
Senator Bob Corker, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appears to now be calling for the NSA to spy on more Americans, rather than fewer, arguing that the metadata collection program that is currently being debated in Congress is so small that he considers it negligent."It's almost malpractice," Corker said at a breakfast for reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. "That's the best word I can use to describe the amount of data that is being collected."Now, this is the same Senator Corker who originally was quite disturbed when he first heard about the very same program after it was leaked by Ed Snowden (suggesting he was completely unaware of it prior to it leaking, despite being a Senator). Back in June of 2013, he sent an angry letter to the President about how such "broad collection" raised "extremely serious concerns."
Corker, who said the NSA's data collection needs to be "ramped up hugely", was reacting to a closed-door briefing that national security officials held Tuesday to brief senators on federal surveillance programs....
[....]
"I think there was an aha moment (Tuesday) for people on both sides of the aisle when we realized how little data is being collected.... It's beyond belief how little data is part of this program, especially if the goal is to uncover terrorists."
But now he thinks the NSA should actually be spying on more Americans? It sounds like the NSA briefing that was just given to Senators was designed to really ramp up the fear-mongering.
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Filed Under: bob corker, metadata, nsa, section 215, surveillance
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Almost makes you wonder...
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Re: Almost makes you wonder...
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Re: Almost makes you wonder...
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Well, he's sure got the right name....
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Re: Well, he's sure got the right name....
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Re: Re: Well, he's sure got the right name....
Around here, we use the Irish definition: an odd, unique, peculiar, special, etc. person. Not necessarily bad, though not good either.
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Guess we're both gonna be disappointed.
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Right words, wrong implications.
From the NSA dictionary:
"collected" - data which has been seized from the internet and subsequently reviewed by an agent.
See also emptywheel.net.
So in the NSA's terms, "we need more people to watch you all".
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Maybe he was persuaded to come around.
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Re:
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I'm not nearly as confident as you about this. I find it interesting that when they say they aren't doing these things, they never say they aren't doing these things at all, they only say that they aren't doing them under "this program".
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Either that, or a certain Senator just received a big fat check from the military industrial complex.
Take your pick.
These members of our government are vile. That have nothing but absolute contempt for all of us.
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What truly amazes me is that political insiders have been telling us about this fact for much longer than I've even been alive, and yet so few people really seem to believe it.
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It's cognitive dissonance at enormous scale.
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Gallup's most recent (April) poll on Congressional Job Approval is only 15% approval. However reelection rates are apparently well over 80%.
At some point citizens are going to have to realize that they are part of the problem too.
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Wait, what?
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Re: Wait, what?
It's about going after potential terrorists. Which can be easily defined as "Everyone on the planet who doesn't work for the NSA
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Perhaps the NSA "impressed" him ..
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"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States..."
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Don't worry about this data-collection, it's not even enough.
Saying they collect so little that it's not even enough, so little that you shouldn't worry about it.
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Idiots
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Only the slaves and serfs need to be spied on to be kept in their place by their betters.
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Tennessee
Sen. Bob Corker (TN)
Give blame where it's due. People of Tennessee, have you lost your minds when you elected this guy?
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Re: Tennessee
It's not that hard to highlight any word, right click, and select search. Most browsers are capable of this.
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Re: Re: Tennessee
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This statement seems naive to me. Are not domestic calls & e-mail carried via the very photons hurtling through the backbone that the NSA is so fond of siphoning out & forwarding to Bluffdale for archiving? What they're "recording" is raw bits along with some "metadata" to categorize it. They "collect it all." They don't need to differentiate right now. They like to think they can somehow sift through it later & find nuggets if there's a perceived need.
Not enough data? Mr. Corker probably doesn't understand what a fatpipe is, an ignorance he shares with a vast majority of the citizenry. Doesn't grok the basic concept of umpty-nine zillion modulated photons flowing down a toob. The populace at large certainly doesn't know––-& they don't want to know.
Hoovering photons ("legal" under 702) is probably the most egregiously treasonous of all the treasonous activities NSA engages in. But we don't talk about that. That discussion doesn't come up until 2017, I gather.
The only thing that saves us from tyranny at the moment is that they have accumulated more pure noise than they know what to do with & can't find ANYTHING. Must be like drowning in a grain bin.
& they're so preoccupied with blackmail, intimidation & corporate chicanery, they don't have time to deal with "terr'rism."
Tho I bet they have followed all the threads back to who hacked Sony. But they can't say anything because the party line involving NK is a big LIE.
Thanks, I had fun with this. I'll put my tinfoil gimp-mask back on now.
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Let's start with him...
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Saying they should gather more domestic data then is a terrible idea for two reasons in that case, as it's acting as though they should be collecting domestic communications, as well as telling them to do so on an even greater scale than they already do.
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Bob Corker
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