American citizens and officials without legal authorization!? Where is the evidence of that?
OK so what is Obama? An apologist for tyranny? A tool of the New World Order?
Can't you just ask it again in a more pointed a way or explain why there should be evidence if my claim or opinion is true?
If I'm sidestepping, what the **** is this? Should be extremely simple to show me that citizens are being spied on, or explain why you think that a given piece of evidence shows that. They could, but they aren't. I suppose if you believe that their ability to means that they are, I guess we can end the conversation on this disagreement.
So if no one is reading your email or listening to your phone calls without a warrant and they are only accessing bulk metadata with justification that can be audited than how is your freedom and privacy being restricted and abused, please explain in detail.
I'm 100% sure they meant for a better outcome. You said devastating countries isn't the way to prevent terrorism. We can chalk that up to useless hyperbole.I'm pretty sure the USA didn't stumble into Iraq by accident.
Actually I have been following this closely the entire time. Perhaps you don't realize we are working with different definitions, mine come from the dictionary and others come from fantasyland. The abuse of the word "lie" is quite egregious, as is "spying".
If should have taken you as long as it took you to type that sentence, and then you could have actually demonstrated that I handwaved away the evidence, and walked away from the debate having won. Why wouldn't you do that?
Handwaving? Perhaps you can tell me how the programs weren't really useful with the Headly case for starters...
LOL they aren't going to give up classified information that would jeopardize their operations to appease conspiracy theorists any more than they are going to release the pictures of bin Laden's corpse, if you can recall, they showed those pictures to elected representatives instead. Do you think they didn't really kill bin Laden that day?
Hysterical hyperbole fit for the Alex Jones show.
I have three things. One, the reasoning that capabilities and techniques and methods and services under watch were leaked to the press and you'd have to be an idiot to not modify your behavior as a terrorist, the premise is sound. Two, the reports from the intelligence community which I have no reason to distrust. Three the fact that elected representitives have seen this information and concurred. Even if you were given the information yourself, I see no reason to expect you to believe it, it could have been fabricated by the intelligence community just as much as their statements are! You after all don't trust the multiplicity of reports coming from both the British and the Americans from different officials, so I see no reason to take your dismissals seriously.
Conspiracy theories aren't the answer to your paranoia, attacking authority isn't the answer to your sense of isolation.
LOL WUT? Obama supports the NSA because it's good for business?
There are lots of flavors of 911 truth conspiracy theorists. You know, LIHOP, MIHOP, thermite, space beams. Which kind of "The government conspired to illegal spy on its citizens" truthers are you?
The Iraq War Resolution had a long list of reasons. You can disagree with them, but "no reason" wasn't one of them. And if you honestly think that the country is worse off today than it was before Saddam, well that's clearly stupid, and many Iraqis will disagree with you. http://www.theatlantic.com/internat...am-how-do-iraqis-look-back-on-the-war/277362/ Anyway, why are we talking about Iraq again? Is it part of the argument? Are people that confident in their anti-Iraq arguments that the US is evil that they can apply it to any national security debate in existence?
To you... did the NSA lie about David Headly or why is that not useful?
They can show it is useful, and they do, to the elected representatives. It is your job to vote for person or group of people you feel you can trust to do this job on your behalf. Are you saying that if an operation or information cannot me made public to every citizen the operation should not exist? Wow good luck with that!
How are you saying that the government is treating the citizens like the enemy and expect to be taken seriously?
It is my opinion on the source of these claims, not a personal attack, although, I could see how one could take offense if their beliefs are being challenged in this way.
Not true. Let's take the phone call metadata for example (which does not include location data despite many CTs). The reason they collected that data is because the companies were not collecting it reliably, in a compatible format, holding it for very long, or with an ability to respond to requests in a suitable amount of time. The only thing that is changing now is that the companies are being forced to play the role, making sure the data will be there, in a compatible format, and they have to respond to requests quickly, a long list of things... "NO REASON" BAHAHA in your dreams! You have taken no time at all to even put together a coherent argument let alone investigate your own beliefs and "claims"
Because many people believe that the government is lying about the legality, history and intent of the programs, and these powers are meant to use the threat of terrorism to justify spying on the people without a warrant for reasons that have nothing to do with terrorism. This is indeed paranoid since nothing of the sort is happening, and it is indeed a conspiracy theory since it would require criminal conduct on the behalf of many people in the government.
People are afraid of the size and power of the government and do not feel like anyone is looking out for their rights and privacy, this has nothing to do with reality, but rather being disconnected from the history and reality of the programs being run. For instance, people hear about a "secret court" and translate this into the idea that it is secret so that they can't know about how their rights are being abused. Go read some comments on some of the articles being written out there, say from tech sites or vice.com, see what the highest rated comments are, it's... interesting.
So what? I'm speaking in general, obviously. But wait, does your country not have politicians whose job it is to vote and make decisions on classified matters on your behalf at times? What country is that?
It's federal law that the tel coms have to keep the data for 18 months, the nsa was collecting it out of convenience and for their specific needs. Now because of the leaks and to placate people, they are forcing the tel coms to cater to those needs by making it quickly accessible, and in a compatible format, among other things. If makes perfect sense, perhaps you can do a bit of reading on this for yourself and you'll get an in depth understanding of it, if you had any understanding of this at all you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. You clearly have done zero investigation into this.
Only in your mind...
Oh what is it then?
Consulting the dictionary.
Are you just out of the loop here? Do you realize people are calling for Clapper to go to jail and the "criminals" at the NSA to go to jail? There are a group of congresspeople who want Clapper prosecuted for lying to congress. There are many people who believe that the government is using these "loopholes" to spy on citizens under the guise of terrorism. That would be highly criminal of the government to do that. I guess you don't really care about the facts as long as you get to feel morally superior to the brains of the world's military superpower.What, you couldn't look it up ? A conspiracy theory is not just saying that people are doing something that you consider wrong, you know.
Sorry, I missed that. Could you give it a shot maybe pointing to facts in news articles or government documents?
Sorry, I'm not sure where you think I'm wrong here. Could you explain it in plain English with references to the facts?
You just inserted the image of millions of babies being murdered into my mind for no rational reason, then accused me of being indecent and irrational. I'd prefer you not try and converse with me again...
Here's the thing, no one really disagrees with you in principle, not the President, not the NSA, they have moved to force the carriers to play the role of handling the data while retaining the exact same abilities they had before by making the carriers adhere to certain rules about how it is handled and accessed. Why didn't they just do this in the first place? Cause it was easier, cheaper and more secret, and the oversight was already good enough and agreed upon by all three branches of government, they are only moving it now to placate people, just because they can.
Well we should get rid of the entire military and intelligence community then in case they decide to set off a nuke and put us under permanent martial law or something.
Pop "2012 300 times metadata" into google it will be good exercise for you.
You tell me, you're not willing to make any detailed, unambiguous claims are you.
Why do you put a space before every question mark? That's not proper formatting.
If they have these concerns (and they do http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ed-to-congress-about-nsa-and-should-be-fired/), that lends credence to the idea that Clapper lied to congress and we cannot trust the information the NSA is providing to those who are supposed to be providing oversight.
It does appear that our government is doing this sort of thing from spying on political protesters to passing on information to police agencies in order to bust drug dealers. And don't forget LOVEINT - the scandal about people with access to those databases having used it to spy on their love interests.
The problem with that is that A) the president, Feinstein, many other of his colleagues have fully accepted Clapper's side of the story, B) That's only 6 members of congress out of 435.
Government can't function if you fire somebody every time there is a minor disagreement like this... Again, Clapper's version makes more sense to me. "Not wittingly" fits with his story that he was thinking of 702, since they "not wittingly" intercept american communications sometimes under that... it doesn't make sense that he was lying about the metadata, he would have said something else, There is a reasonable explanation, you don't go firing people and assuming the wost whenever there is a minor disagreement like that, it would be hysterical and immature.
I honestly don't see your point, it looks like oversight of an overseer worked. Or how did this actually occur? It's like the oversight worked or something.
It "appears"? Where does it "appear"?
Who were caught and the NSA reported the instances to their overseers. Is this an argument that we shouldn't have these tools to catch terrorists? Insane. Perhaps an argument for stricter auditing and access...
What's your theory on Obama having identical positions as me?
