**Obama Speaks with Forked Tongue on Surveillance

[Doubletap]

Does he think we're stupid enough to believe ever-changing official claims about the NSA?

The government’s response to Edward Snowden’s leaks about the National Security Agency’s secret monitoring of the Internet and collection of our telephone logs is a mass of contradictions. Officials have said the disclosures are (1) old news, (2) grossly inaccurate, and (3) a blow to national security. It’s hard to see how any two of these can be true, much less all three.

Can’t they at least get their story straight? If they can’t do better than that, why should we have confidence in anything else that they do?

Snowden exposed the government’s indiscriminate snooping because, among other things, it violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and he had no other recourse.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says Snowden should have used established channels to raise his concerns, but there are no effective channels. Members of the congressional intelligence committees are prohibited from telling the public what they learn from their briefings. Two members of the Senate committee, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, for years have warned — without disclosing secrets — that the Obama administration is interpreting the Patriot Act and related laws far more broadly than was ever intended by those who voted for those pieces of legislation. Their warnings have made no difference.

A court challenge wasn’t open to Snowden either. Glenn Greenwald, who published Snowden’s leaks in the Guardian, notes that for years the ACLU has tried to challenge the surveillance programs in court on Fourth Amendment grounds, but the Obama administration has blocked the effort by arguing that the ACLU has no standing to bring the suit. It’s a classic Catch-22. Since the surveillance is secret, no one can know if he has been spied on. But if no one knows, no one can go into court claiming to be a victim, and the government will argue that therefore the plaintiff has no standing to challenge the surveillance. Well played, Obama administration.

The administration should not be allowed to get away with the specious claim that telling its secrets to a few privileged members of Congress is equivalent to informing the people. It is not. It’s merely one branch of government telling some people in another branch. Calling those politicians “our representatives” is highly misleading. In what sense do they actually represent us?

Equally specious is the assertion that the NSA can’t monitor particular people without court authorization. The secret FISA court is a rubber stamp.

When Obama ran for president in 2008, he said Americans shouldn’t have to choose between privacy and security. Now he says that “one of the things that we’re going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy? Because there are some tradeoffs involved.”

What do you take us for, Mr. President? Do you say whatever serves your momentary interest?

It’s outrageous for Obama to say he welcomes this debate — when his regime is plotting to capture and prosecute the heroic whistleblower who made it possible.

The debate would be bogus anyway. No one has a right to make a security/privacy tradeoff for you. Our rights should not be subject to vote, particularly when a ruling elite ultimately will make the decision — out of public view!

Americans have learned nothing from the last 40 years if they have not learned that the executive branch — regardless of party — will interpret any power as broadly as it wishes. Congressional oversight is worse than useless; it’s a myth, especially when one chamber is controlled by the president’s party and the other chamber’s majority embraces big government as long as it carries a “national security” label.

Obama says, “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”

That’s wrong. If the politicians’ only response to revelations that they’re violating our privacy is to ask for trust, then we already have problems.

This column originally appeared at The Future of Freedom Foundation.

 

[tyroneweaver]

forked tongue???? HOW ABOUT THEM EARS

 

[The Rabbi]

Obama is showing his incompetence in dealing with this. Even the press is laughing at him. As here:

"It is transparent," Obama told PBS's Charlie Rose in an interview to be broadcast Monday. "That's why we set up the FISA court," he added, referring to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes two recently disclosed programs: one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that is designed to track the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links to terrorism.

The location of FISA courts is secret. The sessions are closed. The orders that result from hearings in which only government lawyers are present are classified.

The process is transparent. Depending on your definition of "transparent."

 

[waltky]

Granny got her Mossburg 12ga. out, gonna shoot `em down like skeet...

Russia begins observation flyovers of United States
Monday 29th July, 2013 -- Russia began observational flights over the United States Sunday under the international Open Skies Treaty, officials said.

The monitoring missions are being carried out by a Tupolev Tu-154M/LK-1 aircraft through Aug. 12, RIA Novosti reported.

"The missions will be carried out from the Travis Air Force Base [in California] and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base [in Ohio]," said Sergei Ryzhkov, head of Russia's National Nuclear Risk Reduction Center. "These will be Russia's 23rd and 24th monitoring flights in 2013 over the territories of the Open Skies Treaty member states."

Russian military inspectors, along with U.S. specialists, will monitor surveillance equipment aboard the aircraft.

The Open Skies Treaty allows participants to conduct unarmed aerial observation flights over the territories of its 34 member states to promote openness of military forces and activities. The treaty went into effect Jan. 1, 2002.

Source

 

[waltky]

FISA endorsed NSA surveillance in July...

Secret court endorsed NSA surveillance in July
September 17th, 2013 ~ A new legal opinion from the secret court that oversees the National Security Agency's surveillance program endorsed the government's collection of data on nearly every phone call made to and from the United States.

The July legal opinion, after disclosures about the program by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, extended the government's collection of records for another 90 days, as has been done repeatedly since 2006. The opinion by U.S. District Judge Claire Eagan, a 2001 appointee of President George W. Bush, was declassified on Tuesday, in part to respond to controversy over the Snowden disclosures.

The Obama administration has declassified other opinions, in addition to those provided by Snowden to news organizations, that describe the program in past years. This is the first declassification of a current order.

Eagan made reference to the recent controversy over surveillance but her ruling says "because there is no cognizable Fourth Amendment interest in a telephone company's metadata that it holds in the course of its business, the court finds that there is no constitutional impediment to the requested" data.

She also ruled that the government's data collection is also lawful under statutes that limit such collection to "authorized investigations."

Secret court endorsed NSA surveillance in July ? CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs