George W. Bush’s Disposable Constitution

[Skeptic Ginger]

Some people just cast all their skepticism to the winds when it comes to the Bush Administration's evil deeds.

Russell Tice? The Russell Tice who acknowledges he was diagnosed with psychotic paranoia?



The Russell Tice who's a member of Sibel Edmonds' group of "whistleblowers"?

I'll look into those links. He was fired. However, there is a lot more evidence than just his testimony. In fact, he only came forward very recently and confirmed what was already in evidence. If he turns out to be unreliable, then he would have likely been repeating what was already known.

It appears you misread the first link.

Tice later wrote that [Defense Department psychologist] "did this even though he admitted that I did not show any of the normal indications of someone suffering from paranoia." (There have been documented cases where government whistleblowers or troublemakers have been intimidated or persecuted through forced psychological testing.)

(emphasis mine)


You'll have to give me more to go on about the Sibel Edmond's group. Coleen Rawley had similar things to say about incompetence prior to 911 regarding not looking into the Arabs in flight schools who wanted to fly planes but didn't care about take offs and landings. And she was treated poorly afterward while her incompetent boss was promoted. If Edmond's has become a 911 conspiracy nut or something it may not mean any whistle blower on record is a flake.

I'm not a believer in any big conspiracy of evil all powerful world leaders. But it is not a stretch to think Bush people who would out a CIA agent in order to discredit her husband would try to make a guy like Tice look mentally ill.

 

[Pardalis]

Yes. That is what the testimony and evidence shows. See post #76 above. Bush was using a data mining computer program to search through all communications. That is why they could not go to the FISA court for warrants. Mass searching of all communications was clearly illegal.

I don't understand that, how could this be even be done?

Surely they would be wiretaping people of interest, not all Americans.

 

[gumboot]

The laugh's on you, gumboot. Apparently you underestimate the capability of computer data mining programs.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/nsa-whistleblow.html(emphasis mine)

I have been following this matter for a couple years. There is information about the program from this NSA whistleblower, from communications workers who witnessed the installation of the equipment, from the court cases against the communications companies, from affidavits, from Congressional hearings, and from the memoranda discussed here.

The problem is people like you woefully lacking in critical thinking skills and reading comprehension.

It's simply not technically possible for the NSA to monitor every single phone call in the USA. Even if, for some bizarre reason they decided it was a good idea, it cannot be done. Expanding it to "all communication" simply defies logic even further. There's a thread on this in the CT subforum, and the sheer volume of activity makes it an impossibility, let alone the fact that it would be impossible to hide this level of surveillance.

Fortunately that's not what any of the reports or claims actually say, much as people like yourself like to misrepresent the information that way.

What the actions did was to open up criteria so that anyone could be targeted, and that all communication involving the targeted person could be monitored.

This is distinctly separate to everyone has all communication monitored.

Previously there were limits on who could be targeted, and limits on which of their communications could be monitored.

The changes made anyone fair game, but the NSA were still targeting individual people not conducting wholesale monitoring of the entire population.

 

[gumboot]

Bush was using a data mining computer program to search through all communications.

Comments like this really give away the fact that you don't know what you're talking about. You cannot data mine until you actually have data, and you can't "search through" something that's streaming real time. If you want to data mine and "search through" communications, you first have to convert all of that communication into some sort of permanent storage format.

Do you have any idea how much space would be required to store audio files of every single phone call conducted each day in the USA, and how much processing power would be required to search those audio files?

No. You don't. Because if you did you wouldn't even suggest it.

There's between 2 and 3 billion phone calls made in the US every day, averaging 2 minutes per call. Using compression codecs, telephone audio has a bitrate of 8kbps, or 480kB/min.

That means the NSA would require between 1.9 and 2.8 Petabytes of data storage per day to record every phone call in the USA.

To appreciate the scale, this would amount to filling over half of Google's estimated total storage capacity every day. Google's storage capacity is maintained in an estimated half a million server farms located across the globe.

In addition, if the NSA are monitoring all communication, they have to also capture and store the 392 gigabytes of text messages sent every day in the USA, and lastly there's the 5,000 petabits of internet traffic every day (which includes 100 billion emails).

And if you look at media articles like this one you'll see that the large scale warrantless wiretapping was targeting thousands of Americans, not millions, and certainly not 300 million. One source in that article states 5,000, which amounts to about 0.0017% of all Americans.

 

[BPSCG]

That means the NSA would require between 1.9 and 2.8 Petabytes of data storage per day to record every phone call in the USA.

To appreciate the scale, this would amount to filling over half of Google's estimated total storage capacity every day. Google's storage capacity is maintained in an estimated half a million server farms located across the globe.

This is where skeptigirl retorts that everyone knows the CIA's and NSA's budgets are kept secret and who knows how many servers they have in the sooper sekrit locations...?

 

[Cylinder]

I take it you prefer to discredit the messenger rather than actually look at the evidence?

The memoranda and the actions of the Justice Department speak very clearly for themselves.

Putting aside the emotional argument, what objection are you asserting here? I can quote the litany of precedent for First Amendment rights being curtailed by the military when operational tempos escalate. Having a TS/SCI during my tours of service, I never really enjoyed that right during times of relative peace.

Do you think Capt. BS is asserting the same standards? I mean - he actually does have a track record as CINC at this point, right? Where's that outrage?

 

[Brainster]

I'll look into those links. He was fired. However, there is a lot more evidence than just his testimony. In fact, he only came forward very recently and confirmed what was already in evidence. If he turns out to be unreliable, then he would have likely been repeating what was already known.

It appears you misread the first link.(emphasis mine)

He SAYS that the psychiatrist told him he didn't have any of the symptoms but diagnosed him anyway. Put on your skeptical cap for a moment. Suppose you meet somebody who tells you that he was diagnosed as a nut, but that the psychiatrist admitted that he didn't show any symptoms. Would there be little alarm bells ringing in your head?

Do you even know why the NSA had him go to a psychiatrist? Hint: It wasn't because he was telling people that the government was listening in on all their phone conversations.

You'll have to give me more to go on about the Sibel Edmond's group. Coleen Rawley had similar things to say about incompetence prior to 911 regarding not looking into the Arabs in flight schools who wanted to fly planes but didn't care about take offs and landings. And she was treated poorly afterward while her incompetent boss was promoted. If Edmond's has become a 911 conspiracy nut or something it may not mean any whistle blower on record is a flake.

Edmonds is a liar, plain and simple. Her story has stretched and stretched with each new retelling. And one of the aspects of Tice's story that should be troubling to you is the stretching that has gone on. Tice was fired from the NSA in 2005, and yet he's still going on Olbermann four years later with new revelations?

I'm not a believer in any big conspiracy of evil all powerful world leaders.

No, of course you're not. You're a believer in a smallish conspiracy of one evil all-powerful (former) world leader.

But it is not a stretch to think Bush people who would out a CIA agent in order to discredit her husband would try to make a guy like Tice look mentally ill.

Yes, and now all you have to do is establish that the Bush people outed a CIA agent to discredit her husband in order to have the first part of your intellectually lazy argument, If Bush would do X, why shouldn't we believe that he did Y, a formulation which allows you to assert anything. Hence its popularity among 9-11 Troofers.

In short, you need to start applying the same skepticism towards "evidence" provided on Keith Olbermann's show that you would towards that provided on, say, Rush Limbaugh.

 

[Pardalis]

And if you look at media articles like this one you'll see that the large scale warrantless wiretapping was targeting thousands of Americans, not millions, and certainly not 300 million. One source in that article states 5,000, which amounts to about 0.0017% of all Americans.

And I'm sure these 5 000 were already on their radar.

 

[INRM]

Could he be suffering from psychotic paranoia? I suppose...

Could the government be trying to lable him as nuts so as to assasinate his character in order to discredit him? Also, possible.

Truthfully I honestly think the latter is the case. There is already ample evidence to suggest that massive electronic eavesdropping was going on. Since they can't deny the eavesdropping they decide to lable him a kook.


INRM

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I don't understand that, how could this be even be done?

Surely they would be wiretaping people of interest, not all Americans.

They are data mining whole sections of communications in order to wiretap a smaller but still less than specific percent of the communications.

This is going to take some explaining plus providing documentation. I can see a few people are far more interested in maintaining their view of the world than investigating how far this goes.

It needs a new thread. This one and MattusMax's are more about the memoranda and Bush exceeding his Constitutional authority. I'll put a link here when I'm done.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Here is my response to the questions about spying on every call:

The extent of government data mining of communications

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Putting aside the emotional argument, what objection are you asserting here? I can quote the litany of precedent for First Amendment rights being curtailed by the military when operational tempos escalate. Having a TS/SCI during my tours of service, I never really enjoyed that right during times of relative peace.

Do you think Capt. BS is asserting the same standards? I mean - he actually does have a track record as CINC at this point, right? Where's that outrage?

There are many legal scholars who view the memoranda as rationalizing actions, not advising Bush as to the action's legal implications. There are a handful of legal scholars claiming the memoranda are correct interpretations.

They base that opinion on the premise, if the President does it, it's not illegal.

Wiki: NSA warrantless surveillance controversy

Third-party legal analytical arguments

Program is legal or probably legal

* John Eastman, Chapman Law professor and Director of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, wrote in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner on January 27, 2006, that the Congressional Research Service's assessment was institutionally biased against the President, ignored key constitutional text and Supreme Court precedent, and that the case made by the Department of Justice in support of the President's authority to conduct surveillance of enemy communications in time of war was compelling.[81]
* Robert Turner, Associate Director of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, testified before Congress on March 31, 2006, that "I believe the President has this authority by virtue of his “executive Power” vested in him by Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution. And if he needed any additional authority, the AUMF statute—enacted with but a single dissenting vote in the entire Congress—clearly empowers him to exercise the intelligence-gathering component of his Commander in Chief power as well."[5]
* Michael Stokes Paulsen, Associate Dean, University of Minnesota Law School, in a debate with Professors Heidi Cross and Dale Carpenter entitled Presidential Powers in Time of War

The president’s power as military commander in chief, in time of constitutionally authorized war, of course includes the power to intercept enemy communications, including enemy communications with persons here in the United States who may be in league with the enemy, and to follow the chain of such communications where it leads, in order to wage the war against the enemy and, of vital importance, to protect the nation against further attacks.

* Letter from Senator Pat Roberts to Senator Arlen Specter Senator defending NSA program legality, February 3, 2006

Arguing that the program is illegal or probably illegal

The arguments against the legality of the NSA fall into two broad categories, those who argue that FISA raises no Constitutional issues and therefore the NSA program is illegal on its face[52] and those who argue that FISA (perhaps purposefully) raises a Constitutional conflict which should be resolved in Congress' favor.[53]...[go to the link, the argument against Bush is substantial.]

The arguments this is OK presume no circumstance where the actions are not OK. If that's what you think is meant by the separation of powers in the Constitution, all the Pres has to do is claim national security for a blank check. I think not.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

He SAYS that the psychiatrist told him he didn't have any of the symptoms but diagnosed him anyway. Put on your skeptical cap for a moment. Suppose you meet somebody who tells you that he was diagnosed as a nut, but that the psychiatrist admitted that he didn't show any symptoms. Would there be little alarm bells ringing in your head?

Do you even know why the NSA had him go to a psychiatrist? Hint: It wasn't because he was telling people that the government was listening in on all their phone conversations.

It's an outright denial of the diagnosis. There is no hidden meaning in the whistle blower's words. Is there any evidence outside the government's psychologist here? It isn't even a psychiatrist making the supposed diagnosis.

I heard the man in the interview. He sounded knowledgeable and credible. There is corroborating evidence . You are the one who needs a bit more skepticism.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Comments like this really give away the fact that you don't know what you're talking about. You cannot data mine until you actually have data, and you can't "search through" something that's streaming real time. If you want to data mine and "search through" communications, you first have to convert all of that communication into some sort of permanent storage format.

Do you have any idea how much space would be required to store audio files of every single phone call conducted each day in the USA, and how much processing power would be required to search those audio files?

No. You don't. Because if you did you wouldn't even suggest it.

There's between 2 and 3 billion phone calls made in the US every day, averaging 2 minutes per call. Using compression codecs, telephone audio has a bitrate of 8kbps, or 480kB/min.

That means the NSA would require between 1.9 and 2.8 Petabytes of data storage per day to record every phone call in the USA.

To appreciate the scale, this would amount to filling over half of Google's estimated total storage capacity every day. Google's storage capacity is maintained in an estimated half a million server farms located across the globe.

In addition, if the NSA are monitoring all communication, they have to also capture and store the 392 gigabytes of text messages sent every day in the USA, and lastly there's the 5,000 petabits of internet traffic every day (which includes 100 billion emails).

And if you look at media articles like this one you'll see that the large scale warrantless wiretapping was targeting thousands of Americans, not millions, and certainly not 300 million. One source in that article states 5,000, which amounts to about 0.0017% of all Americans.

In my extensive reply to this charge I said, "So let me qualify that, the Bush administration was data mining all communications. That presumes all calls are basically screened, those flagged are further screened, and so on down to those which are actually wiretapped and transcribed by a person."

But I also went on to show the NSA is in all likelihood using voice recognition data mining programs

Algorithmic advances in automatic speech recognition have also been a major, enabling technology behind the growth in data mining. Current state-of-the-art, large-vocabulary, continuous speech recognizers are now trained on a record amount of data—several hundreds of millions of words and thousands of hours of speech. Pioneering research in robust speech processing, large-scale discriminative training, finite state automata, and statistical hidden Markov modeling have resulted in real-time recognizers that are able to transcribe spontaneous speech with a word accuracy exceeding 85%. With this level of accuracy, the technology is now highly attractive for a variety of speech mining applications.

and has access to all telecommunications via a 1996 law requiring telecoms to install remote wiretapping capability on all lines.

CALEA mandated that the telcos aid wiretapping by installing remote wiretap ports onto their digital switches so that the switch traffic would be available for snooping by law enforcement. After CALEA passed, the FBI no longer had to go on-site with wiretapping equipment in order to tap a line—they could monitor and digitally process voice communications from the comfort of the home office. (The FCC has recently ruled that CALEA covers VOIP services, which means that providers like Vonage will have to find a way to comply.)

They are also using NarusInsight:

Carrier-class scalability and reliability with over 2.7 petabytes of IP traffic processed at a single customer, driving 100 billion packet records per day (greater than 7 terabytes) to upstream security applications

I agree with you my claim appeared exaggerated. It's because the extent of the surveillance still accomplishes spying on citizens on a massive scale. And your link provides evidence it's a lot of taxpayer money to stop a few embarrassing political leaks out of the White House.

 

[gumboot]

But I also went on to show the NSA is in all likelihood using voice recognition data mining programs

and has access to all telecommunications via a 1996 law requiring telecoms to install remote wiretapping capability on all lines.

The problem is the mistake you're making is to make an unwarranted jump from "ability to tap every line" to "ability to tap every line simultaneously".

Yes, there probably is wiretapping equipment already set up at every phone exchange. Frankly that would seem sensible to me, because otherwise you have a major delay in sending specialist staff out to set it all up.

It makes the tapping process much quicker - you get your warrant (or not), select the line you want to tap, and go for it.

But surely you can see the phenomenal jump from having the option of tapping any given line at the press of a button to constantly monitoring every single line all the time.

To use an analogy, my computer has dozens of programs already installed on it, and my computer can run any of them at the press of a button. However my computer is simply not capable of running every single program simultaneously.

 

[Brainster]

It's an outright denial of the diagnosis.

Bzzzzt! Wrong! It's a denial of the validity of the diagnosis and an acknowledgment that the diagnosis was made.

There is no hidden meaning in the whistle blower's words. Is there any evidence outside the government's psychologist here? It isn't even a psychiatrist making the supposed diagnosis.

Here you raise a valid argument; I had myself lazily not noted that the articles referenced mentioned he went to a government psychologist, not psychiatrist.

But beyond that point, I again ask you to think hard and critically about this. Let's say you're the government's psychologist, specifically told to diagnose this guy as a nutbar. Would you then also casually inform him that he had none of the symptoms? Why? You have to construct another layer for the conspiracy; this psychologist is in on the plot and yet perhaps he feels tormented at being forced to make this awful diagnosis.

As an aside, the idea that the government is monitoring all communications is a hardy perennial conspiracy. Check out this Washington Post article from 1999 (at the Federation of American Scientists website):

Congress, meanwhile, has added a provision to the fiscal 2000 intelligence budget that requires the NSA to report within 60 days on its legal standards for intercepting communications in the United States and abroad. House and Senate conferees approved the language Nov. 5.

"Echelon gives every appearance of a program that is far broader than it ought to be and poses serious questions about constitutionality," said Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.), who sponsored the reporting requirement.

Barr, a former CIA analyst, said no one in Congress has asked the NSA hard questions about electronic surveillance since 1975, when a committee headed by then-Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) revealed that the government had improperly intercepted Americans' telegrams for 30 years and had unlawfully eavesdropped on domestic dissidents in the 1960s.

For myself, I would almost hope they were doing it. But for reasons expressed by Gumboot, I doubt its practicality.

 

[Klimax]

They are data mining whole sections of communications in order to wiretap a smaller but still less than specific percent of the communications.

This is going to take some explaining plus providing documentation. I can see a few people are far more interested in maintaining their view of the world than investigating how far this goes.

It needs a new thread. This one and MattusMax's are more about the memoranda and Bush exceeding his Constitutional authority. I'll put a link here when I'm done.

In my extensive reply to this charge I said, "So let me qualify that, the Bush administration was data mining all communications. That presumes all calls are basically screened, those flagged are further screened, and so on down to those which are actually wiretapped and transcribed by a person."

But I also went on to show the NSA is in all likelihood using voice recognition data mining programs

and has access to all telecommunications via a 1996 law requiring telecoms to install remote wiretapping capability on all lines.

They are also using NarusInsight:

I agree with you my claim appeared exaggerated. It's because the extent of the surveillance still accomplishes spying on citizens on a massive scale. And your link provides evidence it's a lot of taxpayer money to stop a few embarrassing political leaks out of the White House.

About data mining,capturing please see this thread:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133508

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The problem is the mistake you're making is to make an unwarranted jump from "ability to tap every line" to "ability to tap every line simultaneously".

I said that was incorrect. I think the evidence suggests the basic data mining probably is that broad. The voice recognition data mining, is narrower.

 

[Skeptic]

Some people just lose all common sense when it comes to Bush. If tomorrow someone said he ate their baby as they watched, skeptigirl would probably believe them.

The sad thing is that that would make her less, not more, skeptical. Eating babies is, at least, technically and logically possible -- however unlikely it is that Bush did it -- unlike monitoring all US phone calls (which is a technical impossiblity), or being a "dictator" who stepped down form power exactly when the constitution he "disposed" of said he must (which is a logical impossiblity).

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Yeah, like I'm in the minority believing Bush flaunted the Constitution and arrogantly overstepped his Presidential authority.

American Research Group

November 13, 2007 - A total of 64% of American voters say that President George W. Bush has abused his powers as president...

A total of 70% of American voters say that Vice President Dick Cheney has abused his powers as vice president. ..

(Based on 1,100 completed telephone interviews among a random sample of registered voters nationwide November 9-12, 2007. The theoretical margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points, 95% of the time.)

Unfortunately I cannot vouch for this poll as there is no data on the pollsters.
A problem with American Research Group polling organization


Fortunately, it isn't the only poll.
New Zogby Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

The poll found that 52% agreed with the statement:

"If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

Of course AfterDowningStreet always words their questions with "If he did it". But in this case it is, "If he did it without a judge's approval", and that is not in doubt.