Eavesdropping Didn't Help Uncover Terrorist Plot 290
crymeph0 writes "Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell asserted that the 'Protect America Act,' which frees the intelligence community from pesky things like judicial oversight while they eavesdrop on international conversations, was used to good effect in exposing the recently foiled terrorist plot to bomb US military facilities in Germany. Not so, according to other, anonymous, intelligence community officials. McConnell was forced to admit his errors in a phone call to Sen. Joe Lieberman. Turns out the military got wise to the bad guys months before the law was passed, simply due to alert military guards noticing odd behavior by some passers-by, a.k.a. good old fashioned police work."
Forced to admit his error? You mean his lie... (Score:4, Insightful)
Did anyone really believe him in the first place? (Score:2, Insightful)
Doesn't Matter. (Score:1, Insightful)
Mission accomplished: Americans are more likely to believe that the Bill of Rights is helping the terrorists win.
Re:So what are you trying to say? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd actually rather have them watching the bad guys' every move.
politics (Score:0, Insightful)
One guy who works for the intelligence agency stated something that was false (either being an idiot by too quick to want to state something or possible boldly lying about it)and 4 people from the intelligence agency corrected him. So by that standard the "Bush Administration" is more truthful on the order of 4 to 1.
I'm just waiting for folks at MoveOn.org to take out a full size political add in a major American newspaper, subsidized mostly by said newspaper, claiming that Bush himself told this guy to claim it was the "Protect America Act".
When will there be politicians worth voting for?
Basic justification for Patriot act is misreported (Score:3, Insightful)
The core of the Patriot act is not intelligence gathering but sharing. This was prompted because different agencies had information about 9/11 which, had they been able to share that information, they would have been far more likely to prevent the attack. There were situations where one person down the corridor from another couldn't share their notes.
Lacking hard evidence to go by, let's give privacy advocates the benefit of the doubt and say that in principle Patriot overreaches. The fact remains that the core of it is reform of our intelligence operations that was prompted by a very real attack and any reforms need to preserve the codification of that hard won lesson.
Re:Forced to admit his error? You mean his lie... (Score:3, Insightful)
They'll say anything to try to garner the support of Congress and the American people to have unwarranted spying going on this country. Pay attention people, this is your Constitional rights that they are messing with here. Write your Congresscritter. Write the newspapers. E-mail Robin Meade. Do whatever it takes to let them know that you don't want your Constitutionally-protected rights taken away from you.
Re:Ok (Score:4, Insightful)
That question is irrelevant. The question should be, "However why is it assumed that when I use someone else's network that my conversation isn't monitored by the government without a warrent?". And the answer to that question is: the Constitution.
Re:Another deceptive political operative (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Cue leftist nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called "behavioural profiling". (Score:5, Insightful)
In your scenario, what happens when the bad guy isn't doing anything bad during the time that he is being monitored?
We have over 300 million people here. The number of false positives in your plan would mean that we couldn't track any of the bad guys. We'd have spent all the money on following innocent people.
Re:So what are you trying to say? (Score:4, Insightful)
So let me get this straight.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Did anyone really believe him in the first plac (Score:4, Insightful)
The German response (Score:5, Insightful)
One reporter dared to be so indiscreet to ask the question whether the fact that that attack was avoided isn't proof that the current ways of dealing with the threat are adequate.
And there was silence. Next question please?
It's funny that this avoided terrorist attack proves both, that the (questionable) systems implemented are good for us, and that the (questionable) systems they want to implement are critical because current systems are just not enough. Now, which one is it?
Re: silent eavesdroppers or armed soldiers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why Benjamin Frankin's statement about those who value security over freedom end will end up having neither is so prescient.
Re:Basic justification for Patriot act is misrepor (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's the case, then I agree with you in principle. Information sharing in this case is most likely a good thing, provided that the information was gathered ethically and legally in the first place. Sadly, while the current gang of idiots is running things, that cannot be assured, and therefore IMHO the whole thing should be scrapped in favor of a new act that explicitly defines what kinds of information can be shared and how said information should be acquired.
What needs to be remembered here is that with every erosion of our civil rights, those who would seek to destroy our way of life through acts of terror realize a victory without ever 'firing a shot', so to speak. Privacy, while perhaps not explicitly laid out in the Constitution (and that's debatable under some interpretations of the Fourth Amendment) should be protected in the name of Americans who have fought, bled, and died to ensure our rights (not to mention the civilians caught in the crossfire, both domestically and abroad).
Re:Forced to admit his error? You mean his lie... (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the dictionary "A lie is a statement made by someone who believes or suspects it to be false, in the expectation that the hearers may believe it." This is not the progessive definition where a lie is saying something and then later it proves to be wrong.
Actually reading the full report, requires multiple source since the MSNBC does not contain it, shows he said it, he was then corrected, he then informed Congress and the press(since the comment was made in a public forum) that he had made a mistake and what the correct response should of been. All in a timly manner without any method of tring to hide it.
Re:So what are you trying to say? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't know who the bad guys are when it comes to potential terrorists, any more than you know who is a wife-beater, a tax cheat, a rapist, or any other malfeasant character. When I walk down the street, how do I know the next person I meet isn't going to pull out a knife and stab me? Either you have to be paranoid, assume that everyone is guilty, then start exonerating/condemning people, or you have to assume everyone is decent, and start looking for overt signs that they are not. I say overt, because the 9/11 hijackers did a pretty good job blending in to their surroundings, and only certain aspects of their behavior (e.g. riding in a jumbo jet flight simulator and telling an instructor they only wanted to learn how to fly it, not land it) marked them as suspect. Whould surveillance have tipped anyone off? Sure... if anyone had actually known where they were.
Look, you have to pick your poison. I don't want to live in a police state. I don't like the idea that people I do not know and have no idea if I can trust are watching me, listening to me, judging me. I'm not the world's best person -- I do bad things. Does that make me a potential terrorist? No. But while someone in the government is busy wasting time watching me, the guy five cities away with a bomb-making factory in his garage is getting busy. The Oklahoma City Bombing should have taught us that ultimately it's futile to think you can see things like this coming. If someone is determined enough, fanatical enough, and smart enough, they will get past any kind of spying/surveillance you can think of.
Re:Is ti confirmed? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forced to admit his error? You mean his lie... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forced to admit his error? You mean his lie... (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't write to your congresscritter Put down that pen! Close that word processing program! Forget all that happy crap you learned in civics class about sharing your views with your "representative." You don't have a representative any more. You merely have someone who thinks he or she is your "leader," unfettered by either your opinions or the Constitution.
Marx was wrong: religion isn't the opiate of the masses, in modern America, the drug that keeps us numb, dumb and well-behaved is a belief that we can still make a difference by politely voicing our views to our would-be rulers and owners.
Other quotes from the book, here [freerepublic.com].
Re:So what are you trying to say? (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming he wasn't lying about being the 20th hijacker because he was feeding his own ego. I have never seen or read anything that indicates the Government had phone records indicating that the 9/11 group communicated with each other by phone on a regular basis. If they did, they might have done it through pay phones. Even if you know who the bad guys are, it doesn't mean you're going to learn anything by listening to them.
Re: Cue leftist nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
IOW it was a standard campaign promise.
In my honest opinion, it'll come to killing, probably a civil war, before we see a smaller government, and that would depend on which side wins.
Re:It's called "behavioural profiling". (Score:2, Insightful)
And you are suggesting: 1) assume the position, 2) bite down on something, 3) etc..
If you want the long penii of the law probing your nether regions, that's your choice. I suggest shoving a firecracker up your butt and farting on a police dog. But to decide that for 300 million freedom loving Americans strikes me as arrogant.
I hope you see the circular reasoning in step 3. Likewise, I hope you understand that bad people also interact with good people, especially with the knowledge spelled out in 1.
Ideally, since step 1 includes monitoring, there is (or should be) an implied warrant involved, which means there has been some groundwork established to decide that the person is worth monitoring. The only people you're likely to miss are individuals who decide to become terrorists completely independent of outside influence and networking, which I would tend to suspect is a minuscule minority.
How can you behaviorally profile everyone without first monitoring everyone?
This usually takes place in person at public places like airports or in front of embassies, and in those cases, a human really does just scan the crowd, but that's completely OT since TFA is about eavesdropping. You don't need a warrant to stand in the street and read faces.
The answer is that you either make selections based on non-behavioral traits or you randomly pick someone to monitor until they do something bad (aha! a bad guy) or you give up any chance of catching them do something bad (bummer! probably a good guy). Do you think that the random harassment of a few citizens is better than constant monitoring of all the citizens?
Nice false dichotomy there.. The answer is (at least in the US) to 1) use the FISA courts, 2) follow the bad guys and money to find more bad guys and money, 3) make arrests, 4) prosecute, preferably using the UNTAINTED EVIDENCE gathered in 1 and 2. A few random citizens will be bothered due to accidentally associating with bad guys. But they will not be harassed, and under no circumstances is monitoring of ALL citizens either 1) allowed, 2) useful, 3) necessary, 4) warranted, 5) legal, 6) etc..
Our system of checks and balances and courts and warrants and whatnot was developed and matured under people much wiser than Bush. Every now and then some special case will come along, and the ground pounders will think to themselves "you know, if we were only able to monitor everybody in the country, we could have stopped this".. that guy should go back to flipping burgers. Tragedies will happen, but in this case a perfectly efficient system would be too ripe for abuse. We need inefficiency and oversight.
Sorry about the novel, but I'm just astounded at the growing support for the growing authoritarianism in the country that should be the gold standard for freedom and liberty.
Re:Forced to admit his error? You mean his lie... (Score:5, Insightful)
he either:
1. lied about knowing the operation specifics
2. lied knowing the operation specifics
3. thought he knew the specifics but misinterpreted the report (which in his job may be the worst)
4. didnt lie, but the wiretaps are illegal in germany and would be
Re:So what are you trying to say? (Score:3, Insightful)
Duh, they have middle-eastern names. Hasn't Fox News managed to convince us all by now that middle-eastern Muslims are the ones who we should be scared of because they blow things up? Like the Oklahoma federal building?
Re:So what are you trying to say? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but we shut down all subsequent threats from those groups by arresting and holding without trial at Gitmo all of those ex-military Christian guys with crewcuts. Remember?
Re:So what are you trying to say? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that, ultimately, is what our wealthy, coddled society has produced; a couple of generations of people with no sense of proportion, who love to watch vicarously through entertainment and the weekly news the real and imagined sufferings of others, but are utterly incapable of accepting that the world can be a dangerous place, and no amount of supposed government protection or vigilance will ever produce the results that they want.
Previous generations, spanning thousands of years, lived a life much closer to the edge. Diseases, famines and wars were ever present. Life was frequently short and happiness was largely measured in getting some of your offspring beyond childhood. I'm not saying that's the way we should live, but we are a spoiled, detached civilization that has expectations beyond all reality. There are always going to be enemies inside and outside the gates, there are always going to be self-righteous lunatics ready to sacrifice innocent lives in the name of whatever cause strokes their egos and madness.
That's not to say that government and society as a whole doesn't have a role to play in trying to catch bad guys, and if possible, prior to some attack. But the failures of 9-11 and other terrorist attacks appear to be more about failures and ineffeciencies in the intelligence community rather than because previous legislation was to weak. But I think it is beholden on all politicians and bureaucrats to tell the truth; we cannot absolutely guarantee your safety from killers, toxic toys, storms and just plain old bad luck.
Re:politics (Score:4, Insightful)
Howzat? Are you seriously dismissing the Director of National Intelligence as "one guy who works for the intelligence agency?" That's not even understatement. It's plain misrepresentation of the person who (according to IRTPA 2004 which created the position) is "the principal adviser to the President, to the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to the national security" and "serve[s] as head of the intelligence community."
I mean, did you not RTFA, or did you just decide to comment on it without knowing such as basic piece of information as the position of DNI Mike McConnell?
Really? Really? McConnell is a political appointee of the Bush administration, while the individuals who flagged his factually incorrect statement are career intelligence personnel. McConnell is the only person in this affair who falls under the "Bush Administration."
Did you just copy/paste your post from FreeRepublic, or did you come up with such an obtuse and uninformed comment on your own?
Re:Ok (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the converse of your question? If even one person is arrested, shipped to some secret CIA prison, where he/she is waterboarded over and over again, but is ultimately determined to be totally completely freaking innocent, and you were the one that allowed the government to tap the phone call that lead to their arrest, could you live with that? I couldn't.
"It is better that a hundred guilty men should go free than that even one righteous man should suffer unjustly." --Plato (and yes, I do truly believe that).
I love you, Doc Ruby. I really do. (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue at hand, which is commonly misunderstood, is that:
- Monitoring for foreign communications does not require, should not require, and will never require, a warrant, which brings us to:
- Monitoring of foreign communications where both ends are outside of the United States, but where the passage of the traffic through equipment within the United States is incidental should not require a warrant;
- Monitoring of communications where the target of said monitoring is (reasonably* believed to be) outside of the United States should not require a warrant, regardless of where the other end of the communication is (even if within the United States);
- Monitoring of US citizens as targets within the United States requires a warrant, and always has.
These capabilities should absolutely exist under the next administration as well. The United States has always had the ability to collect foreign intelligence without a warrant, and that should always be so. Whether one end of the conversation is within the United States, or neither end is but the traffic incidentally travels through equipment physically within the United States, is - and should be - irrelevant.
That is not to say that the so-called Protect America Act of 2007, the six-month temporary legislation which allows this, is perfect, or isn't overly broad. But the capability to continue collecting foreign intelligence without being encumbered by FISA is crucial. Then you might ask, "Well, where are the checks and balances, then?!" Indeed, where are the checks and balances for any foreign signals intelligence collection? Should all foreign SIGINT now go through a court and warrant process, just to "make sure" it's "really" foreign SIGINT? If you believe so, you're woefully misguided.
For a very brief and overly simple overview of the issues this addresses, see this Newsweek article [msn.com].
* "Reasonable" has a standard here - it's not just someone making an arbitrary assertion. Since in today's electronic world it is virtually impossible to guarantee beyond a shadow of any doubt that a particular target may be outside of the United States, it must be reasonable to believe that they are. I know people like to think that the attorney general can just "declare" someone as being outside of the US, and commence monitoring. No. They must, by all appearances, actually appear and be believed to be outside of the United States by any reasonable assessment. And again, let me guess: "But where are the checks and balances?" To repeat, where are any such "checks" any any other foreign intelligence gathering? The difference here is that sometimes, traffic may be increasingly traveling through the United States. Instead of choosing to be hamstrung in foreign SIGINT collection just because major communication trunks happen to pass through the US, I'd choose the option of using that to our advantage. It's flat out foolish not to.
Disclaimer: much of this is culled from a previous post of mine in a previous article, but this is precisely on-point. Foreign SIGINT should not require a warrant if the target of the monitoring is already outside the United States, and especially if both endpoints of the communication are outside of the United States, regardless of the path the traffic takes. I guess I can keep going in circles with the inevitable, "Yes, but how do we really know that the situation is as you described it without the oversight of a court?" How do we know that for ANY intelligence gathering? Should all intelligence gathering of all types now go through a warrant process? Ridiculous. And on top of all of this, if you just think that administration officials are going to lie and ignore any and all laws anyway, then what difference does any wording of any law really make?
Try to at least imagine the opposing viewpoint to your own.
Re:So "If we don't fight them in Iraq... (Score:3, Insightful)
If somebody had invaded the US and overthrown its government and installed an even more repressive regime, wouldn't you expect more terrorism as a result?
Or were the Iraqis just supposed to smile and say, "Thank you for bringing more torture, death and paranoia to my front door. Why, yes, you can have all this oil for free"?
I love considered thought... (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's humorous that you seem to.
One is indeed whether the government can wiretap people.
Replace "people" with "American citizens, permanent residents, and/or persons with a legal status within the United States", because they're two very, very different things, and you seem to conflate the two.
There is a very clear law, that has been regularly updated to keep pace with both technology and threats, the FISA. It is already an exception to the Constitutional requirement for any wiretap to be allowed by a warrant after evaluation by a judge under Congress' laws, to ensure the Executive doesn't just wiretap whoever it wants. Any wiretap without a warrant is by definition not reasonable. The FISA makes an exception to the usual requirement that the evidence on which the warrant is based be subject to argument, making the court hearing it and the proceedings secret.Then it makes another exception, a really extraordinary one, that allows warrants to be obtained even after the wiretap, for 72 hours. In other words, legalizing warrantless wiretaps to accommodate emergencies, after which the wiretappers can get a warrant on evidence they already had, or, if they really took a gamble without evidence but on a "hunch" that proved correct, with the contents of the 72 hours of the tap. The Executive even gets to assign the secret members of the FISA court, and its chief judge.
The main purpose of FISA is to govern the collection of foreign intelligence within the United States, and explicitly restrict and control application of surveillance of US citizens within the United States.
Foreign intelligence collection where the target, and sometimes indeed both endpoints of a communication, are outside of the United States should not require a warrant.
Of course, there's a bigger issue: these rights are inalienable, not given by the Constitution or any other feature of being American (or just living here). So violating those rights abroad, for US citizens or foreigners, also violates the rights that are America's basic ideology. But we make the exception to protect ourselves more easily, quickly and cheaply, rationalized on the grounds that we create our government here to protect our rights; foreigners can create their own governments to protect their rights if they want. But of course the accumulated rights abuses abroad have made it that much easier for our enemies to recruit allies and attack us. The tradeoff is probably a losing one, when our greatest threats are terrorists, and we're alienating even our allies.
That's a philosophical and ideological issue. If you believe we need court oversight and a warrant process for foreign intelligence collection, that's fine. It just runs counter to the very purposes and functions of intelligence, and would put the United States at a distinct disadvantage with respect to how other nations, including adversaries, collect intelligence. Our Constitution and the beliefs within it applies, by definition, to our own citizens and by extension to other persons with a valid legal status within the United States. To argue that it should apply to everyone on earth flies in the face of the current state of affairs of the world and the very notion of nation-states.
The undeniable issue here is that Bush has ignored even the easy FISA court. So there's no oversight. Instead, there's lawbreaking by the Executive, as has been found even after due process in binding Federal court with proper jurisdiction. Violating the Constitution, and then breaking the FISA. Even the 4th Amendment that's being broken is itself an extra statement of what's already implicit in the Constitution, just like the rest of the Bill of Rights. That's how important our right to privacy is. And how likely is an abusive ruler to violate it.
Foreign signals intelligence collection should, fundamentally, never require a warra
Re:So what are you trying to say? (Score:2, Insightful)