The NSA Didn't magically decide to collect data, Congress said they could

I will say that congressional members, including the one who wrote the patriot act, say that THIS is not what they voted for, but that the secret court ruled on the interpretation of what they voted for to expand to this... and it would appear this occurred under Obama. They are responsible for voting in the court... and giving it this perhaps unforeseen consequence.

The Utah Data Center, which is part of the mechanism which facilitates this use of overreaching power wasn't even built till last year.
What they are doing now, at the level they are doing it, has only existed this long.

We didn't even have the resources to DO this under Bush.

But yes... congress gave the power to this secret court, and keep approving the patriot act.

 

You can say that again. Every time you use your discount card at Kroger, they know what you buy and how much you spend. Go on the internet and look at something and a advertisement from another company will pop up and show you a similar product to buy. Donate money to a charity and they will sell your name to a dozen more charities. Get a credit card and the bank will sell your name to other companies. They have cookies that track your web sights. . Hell business knows more about you than the government does. Your worried about the government listening to your phone calls.

 

The answer is clear. Obama must resign or be impeached for his various abuses of power and cover-ups.

The need for a Patriot Act was to allow Muslim to stay in the West after 9/11. Clearly, this was flawed thinking. There has been a multitude of Muslim terror plots broken up by our overgrowing police state (The Boston Bombing was a successful Muslim terror attack). The way to keep out liberty is to lose our fantasy of Muslim immigrants assimilating peacefully. This has not been the case in Europe and we lost the World Trade Center and many lives here in the US. It is time to reject the Left's cultural relativism and deport the Muslim immigrants.

 

Yes I am worried about them listening to anything of mine because this NOT about terrorism, it's about total control of the people. I have said this in another thread, I work in state gov IT and we got a directive to put our electronic communications in the MS cloud. Where did the directive come from? The Obama administration. MS tells us that states all over the country are going to the cloud. Why does the Obama admin want state government communications in the cloud? Think about it...... Does the Fed government think state govs are communicating with terrorists? I seriously doubt that, so why the directive to put communications into the cloud where the NSA and FBI have unfettered access to the servers? Scratching your head yet???? I know I am.

 

Well all I've got to say is

WELL, DUH!

back in 2003 when they were proposing this crap pile and people like me stood up and screamed "WTF, NO EFFIN WAY!" We were called "terrorist sympathizers" and chided with "why worry unless you have something to hide."

But despite our loud protests they went ahead and did it anyway.

and NOW you're surprised that the government went way too far??????

Well we got what we asked for and now we're getting what we deserve.

 

Except you know that when you shop there instead of the farmer's market or mom and pop shop.

 

Not the generic "the gov't", this abuse is the work of the Obama administration.

 

Doesn't it bother you that many of these web sights you go to plant cookies on your computer and know what other sights you go to? How do you think all those pop up come about with things you have looked at before.

Do you really think the government is going to listen to your phone calls? I'd say unless you called a known terrorist, or a known terrorist calls you, there isn't a chance in hell of that happening.

 

The current abuse is the work of our current Congress and Obama administration. The previous abuses still are immoral and should be investigated and charges pressed just like they should be on this one.

 

This abuse is trying to save your ass.

 

I call a pizza place in NY city which has ties to terror. I am now a metamap, and my activities... online, phone, credit card usage, travel... my life that is touched in any way by anything digital or utility is now churned through to analyze patterns, as is everyone in that circle of me. Chains are built to try and do what it was originally designed to do... find cells. Now your data is being torn through because you and I talk every once in a while. Your son has a friend with a name associated with a tribe in Yemen.

Can do that (*)(*)(*)(*) all day long. Then a secret court authorizes a person to look at all of our information to determine that we are not a threat... and there is no real time frame to keep that data open and alive... no reason that shouldn't end up in a file somewhere to be bashed against other algorithms in the future... etc.

This doesn't take more than a few minutes to go completely sideways against the constitution, and I would argue its value is minimal at best at preventing a Boston type situation.

Go on and grab all the international world. We knew and expected you to limit yourself to that... with full knowledge that this nightmare COULD result.

It has.

Let heads roll. I give a (*)(*)(*)(*) if they are donkeys or elephants.

 

I protect myself.

I think you're wrong.

 

Again it was said already. If your lord and savior hated this law. He could have used his god like powers of executive order. Y'all remember when he preformed those miracles before?

 

I can totally see elected politicians starting to use the stuff they collect to embarrass or blackmail people from running against them or helping people run against them. Heck the IRS started doing it, DOJ has been going after reporters and whistleblowers like crazy.... Too much power in the hands of greedy people.

 

I have all kinds of protection on my computer but I still get cookies tracking me that I constantly haave to have wiped clean.

With the thousands of phone calls coming into this country every day and the hundreds of know terrorist and terrorist countries there are. They aren't enough people to check on those and also have time to want to know who your talking to. They aren't going to care who your talking to. But I'm sure your not even going to try and understand the immensity of the situation the government faces trying to protect this country from attack.

 

If they wanted to do that, they would do it with or without this law. Either way,it's against the law.

 

With the thousands of people who also would call a pizza place in NY, I am sure if it were tied to a terror organization, people would be checked out for awhile to see what kind of calls came into it and then move on if nothing showed up. They couldn't possibly keep constant track of everyone who orders a pizza there. They wouldn't have time to check out other terrorist calls.

 

Sigh.
It is algorithms playing over mutli-dimensional data cubes.

Did you see Watson on Jeopardy? It was really good... but it also got confused. It didn't understand the framework of some of the questions, so the replies were nonsensical. Those nonsensical patterns are our lives... and it is a violation of our rights.

 

No I don't watch Jeopardy but I also think many of the replies I get here don't make to much sense either. People must think we have thousands of people doing nothing but listening into everybody's phone calls.Instead of trying to catch those people out to do our country harm. I mean there is only about 350 million to choose from. I think we have a lot of paranoid people on this board that really aren't looking at things realistically. Have no idea of the plots people are planning against us. All they can think of is the government wants to know if your cheating on your wife.

 

Please. Passed by an all republican Congress. Reauthorized by a Democratic congress. All this begun under Bush and continued under Obama.

Where were you in 2003 when the crap passed the Senate by 80 votes?

Want to get rid of it? I'm with you.
Want to march on the capital to protest, I'll hold hands with you.

But spare me your false indignation.

 

You aren't getting it.

The data set sits all raw in a big data universe. The data is then modeled, ad hoc, on any criteria. If you are looking for a "thing" associated with a web of "target" or "targets"... it is complicated. The point is, at the end of the day, YOUR information can be delivered to anyone who is searching for patterns among everyone in the worlds communications... and it is not international. They are trying to find patterns, and in order to do so, they have to analyze innocent peoples lives to dismiss them, and perhaps to tweak, abandon or rework... and THAT is unconstitutional.

 

The mechanism was put into place by the Bush admin to acquire international data as per FISA which has existed since Echelon, in the 70s. The powers were expanded in 2008 to include modern communications... and this was "interpreted" by THIS ADMINISTRATIONS SECRET COURT to apply to spying domestically. It is a violation of the law which it claims to be operating under, and more importantly the 4th amendment.
http://www.businessinsider.com/fisa-amendments-act-how-prism-nsa-phone-collection-is-it-legal-2013-6

 

The NSA has been tapping the phone lines of everybody since it's inception... that's the NSA's function.

 

I defend no one.

I opposed all of this back in 2003.

I still oppose it.

But, to sit there and say you weren't aware? A group of people whose mistrust of the government is in their soles?

Please.

Take your faux indignation elsewhere.

I will stand by you to oppose this stuff but if you look to place blame then remember four fingers point back at you.

 

To strenghten the TP?

Impossible, this 'data collection' is propaganda to cause people to resist this.

They want you to believe you lost freedom and your data is collected and stored in a giant data bank, because when people hear this (propaganda) they start to resist that, and when people resist and fight in large numbers they can organize them via politics.