For comparisons sake, I’m flabbergasted you are concerned about data mining of transmissions out of the middleast, yet are 100 % supportive of local governments denying the rights of property owners and business owners with a law against a perfectly legal product (cigarettes) on private property.

It illustrates an underlying liberal bias that ALWAYS says basically, “It’s only trashing somebodies civil liberties if I don’t agree with it”.

In response to the inevitable “health issue” rebuttal you are sure to raise, 2nd hand smoke might irritate you, but an Al Queda missile will just flat out frickin’ kill ya.

Again, please tell me what this datamining info will be used for that scares you? This type of surveillance is very specific and has NOTHING to do with our current domestic “eavesdropping” or “wiretap” regulations whatsoever.
They are not even remotely connected or related.

Let’s listen in on calls limitied to, major threats to National
Security using the telecommunications network called Phones.

Last I checked, the telecommunications are getting their pants
sued off for providing Intel. Pretty soon they will be put out of business.

It’s all done by routing all the traffic to massive servers where the info is datamined for specific content. The government spies are leveraging technology – they don’t have thousands of people sitting around listening to phone calls…

When our intelligence agencies perform this surveillance, is the motive (in your opinion) to catch foriegn jihadis and thwart attacks on us and our interests, or is it really just a vast right wing conspiracy to suppress and control the true freedoms of liberal Americans? Do you actually believe these agencies have the electronic capability available, much less the man power, to monitor the phone calls of even a fraction of U.S. citizens? Try to wrap your head around this, say they want to target and monitor the phone conversations of only 10% of the American population.

10% of roughly 300 million people is 30 million phone calls, how many employees would it take to monitor, identify, listen to and record 30 MILLION phone calls a day every Day??

How about if big brother only wants to “eavesdrop” on 1% of the population?
How many employees will it take to monitor 3 million phone calls a freakin’ day???? How in the F&^k could they ever hire enough people, assemble a call center large enough and EVER keep it under wraps with that many employees?

My point is, with most ridiculous assumptions, fears or conspiracy theories, if you take the time to think it through and apply common sense (and sometimes basic math) it illustrates how ridiculous and unfounded those fears are.

Every single person has the potential to be a terrorist threat. Does that mean we should use this as a pretext for trashing everyone’s civil liberties?

If any one individual actually did pose a credible threat, I really doubt that President Bush would have any trouble finding a Federal Judge to sign off on surveillance. He just doesn’t want to be bothered with it though. That is something to be scared of.

The Bill of Rights transcends technology…

The violation of the constitution argument is pretty far-fetched. The framers of the constituition could never have dreamed of the technological advances we’ve made, and I’m certain they roll over in their graves at the shear silliness of your arguments about rights to privacy when intercepting communications from Kandahar to Dearborn (exchanging recipes for goats balls I’m sure, nothing nefarious) .

I reject the premise that my life must somehow be knowingly affected in order for the government to have violated the constitution.

Having said that one only needs to look back at Richard Nixon’s illegal spying activity to see how this could be abused. Citizens could be illegally targeted for their political views, economic or social status, etc.

If you don’t think these companies are re-routing all the traffic for storage and data mining it then you are naive. By all definition that is a wiretap even if there isn’t a white van parked down the road. And if you violate the US Constitution then there should be repercussions. Just because the President asked you to do so is not an excuse.

Gadfly,

I remember 9/11 but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to trade essential liberty for the guise of “government protection”. This isn’t political – I don’t care if it’s a Republican or a Democratic President – this is WRONG.

I simply refuse to trade in my liberty to help support the first steps to the US Enabling Act…

The NSA has been around since 1952. It was created to monitor foreign signal intelligence. That is what it did then …that is what it does now.

What was OK for Democratic administrations during wartime and peace is suddenly not ok in the midst of our war against radical Islamists? This is not about the Bush administration. The Bush Derangement Syndrome obviously overcomes even seemingly intelligent leftists.

Uh yeah, a lot of us do.

I find it humorous you and others would think the Federal Government has the time, resources and inclination to “wiretap” important people such as yourself. You’ve seen too many movies.

Using 1978 surveillance technology for land line phones in 2007 is absurd and dangerous and allowing the telecom companies to be sued by every hippie with an agenda is ridiculous as well.

You are being paranoid of the wrong people, you should worry about the ones that want to blow the shit out buildings, not the ones that want to stop them.

You know there was a day when Republicans believed in civil liberties – in freedom. That day is long gone – hell the Bush administration doesn’t even support the 2nd amendment anymore.

The party has become one of big government control and rule – even at the cost of liberty. It’s about damn time the House held the line on FISA expansion and good for Donnelly for finally seeing the light. A government can never fully protect it’s citizens without fully removing their liberty. I know which way Puckett and the Republicans want to go and I’m not interested.

Protect America Act? Does anybody really believe that crap…