White House says spying broader than known: report

[Koolblue13]

I can respect that. My only thing is . . . imagine 3,000 or more citizens being killed and our government would have been able to stop the attack beforehand if it were allowed to listen into the calls. Imagine if one of your family members or friends were killed in the attack. Would you views change?

And I agree with helptheSKINS. I think the government is listening to phone calls from suspicious individuals, not Joe Schmo.

You havn't read many of my posts around here, have you?

My answer is the same, being that I understood the question the first time. You can ask me over and over, with whatever worst case senerio you want to come up with and my stance won't change.

If we could develop the RFID chip a little faster, we wouldn't have any worries, would we?

[cjcdaman]

That's an over simplification, but if you actually read the last post you know that. Maybe that's all you can and handle and that's fine.

Try not to start throwing insults. I was simply asking you a question.

[PeterMP]

Try not to start throwing insults. I was simply asking you a question.

Well, it wasn't really an insult; it was one possibility. You asked your question, I answered, and then you decided to come back and simplify my response even though I gave you a pretty good run down of my answer and my thinking (no major typos). Your reasons for doing so can be most likely explained by one of a couple of things:

1. My was unclear and therefore left some sort of ambiguity in your mind.

2. For some reason, you are trying to misrepresent my position.

3. That you really don't care about a dialouge and are only trying to get your point of view out there, and therefore asked a question you have no real interest in seeing the answer to, but think it will help you make your points.

4. That you didn't really take the time to read my whole post and therefore didn't really understand my position.

5. You like things simple (i.e. black and white). This is a characteristic that I've seen applied to President Bush in a positive light not as an insult.

""There's no question this is the most polarizing President in our history," says a veteran of his White House. "But that's his world. He sees things in black and white, and, well, guess what? Now people see him that way too. He made them that way."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040906-689400,00.html

The last two seemed the most likely so those are the two I mentioned. If your reasoning was other, I'd be happy to hear it, and certainly, I didn't mean to offend so if you took it that way I apologize.

[Burgold]

The fact is that the gov't is not listening to your phone calls, they are listening to people whom they find suspicious (for example: many trips and calls to certain areas of the middle east).

If there is suspiscious activity, than you have grounds for a warrant. No need for acting outside of the law.

I'm a little different in that I have friends and family living in Israel and so I've been living under the threat of terrorism and hearing of its impact since I was old enough to understand death. No government or military or intelligence agency can bat 1.000 forever no matter how draconian you choose to be. So, you have to choose a balance between liberty, lawfulness, and security.

When the DC Sniper was terrorizing this area, I refused to change my life or cower under the blankets. We can't submit. We will be hit again and unfortunately people will die again. In the meantime, we have to ask ourselves what is worth giving up for the sake of security or the illusion of security, because frankly, even if the government screened every email, read every letter, monitered every phone call made by every human alive in the world every day, something would still get missed.

I believe Larry and Peter are right. We (including the government) need to follow the law. If the laws are not practical or functional, we need to ammend them. You can't surrender to fear.

[ACW]

We (including the government) need to follow the law.

Replace including w/ especially.

[Larry]

I can respect that. My only thing is . . . imagine 3,000 or more citizens being killed and our government would have been able to stop the attack beforehand if it were allowed to listen into the calls. Imagine if one of your family members or friends were killed in the attack. Would you views change?

And I agree with helptheSKINS. I think the government is listening to phone calls from suspicious individuals, not Joe Schmo.

1) Your artificial scenario which you've created because you don't like debating in the real world can't happen.

When a terrorist attack next occurs, it will be impossible to say whether measure so-and-so would have prevented it. (Which won't prevent a bunch of political opportunists, of both parties, from claiming that if only the world had done what he'd said . . . )

So to start with there is no real scenario in which there are only two choices, and those choices are known in advance.

2) As much as the pro-Dictatorship lobbyists would like to re-define reality into one in which the only choices are an absolute Dictatorship or everybody dies, there is no such choice in reality.

This isn't a discussion of "ignore the Constitution" or "thousands die". This is a discussion of "change the law" or "ignore the law".

There may have been legitimate reasons why George Bush absolutely needed, for the sake of the nation, to break the law temporarily, while working with Congress and the people to get a new one passed. (See? Unlike the majority on The Right, I'm willing to admit that I don't know what goes on in the secret world.)

However, I assert that the is no reason why the needed laws couldn't have been passed by now. The only reason they haven't is political.

(I'm even willing to say that no, I don't think it's because Cheney wants to rule the world. I think it's more mundane reasons like, "If we ask Congress for permission to do so-and-so, then it'll be like admitting that we knew we didn't have authority when we did it." Which is still, IMO, despicable: It's saying that the White House thinks that CYA is more important than the US Constitution. But it is, to me, an understandable reaction, and I'm not perfect, either.)

[helptheSKINS]

1) Then you would be wrong.

2) Frankly, I suspect that I'm both more informed as to what my opinions are, and am better able to express them, than you are. (I suspect that many others feel the same way about their opinions.)

Therefore, I'd suggest that you stick to expressing your opinions (about the world), rather than expressing your opinions about your opinions about what our opinions would be in a situation that you've invented.

Wow, and here I thought you were just some guy debating a straw man that you'd pulled out of your . . . ignorance. But no, turns out that you're aware of exactly the criteria being used to determine when to ignore the law, and of which cases it has and hasn't been done.

Are you sure you're cleared to release this classified information you've revealed to us? (Dick, is that you?)

After all, now that you've revealed that the only time that calls are monitored is if there are too many calls to one particular area, are you really certain that the terrorists, now that you've revealed the selection criteria being used, won't, say, call somebody in France, and have that person relay the call?

(And let's just skip over the fact that the only way the government can spot people making "too many calls to certain areas", is by monitoring all calls.)

(Yes: stunning news, there: The only way to determine which calls are suspicious, is to monitor all calls, and decide which ones are suspicious later.)

I think I've already covered how much I care about how offended you are because of what you think I will do in the future.

Could you please mention to me exactly which warrantless wiretap it was which foiled this dastardly plot? I thought the government said it was foiled because a drug store clerk called the cops.

(In fact, I was under the impression that every terrorist plot that we've announced was foiled, was foiled because an alert citizen notified law enforcement, who then followed legal, constitutional procedures. Which doesn't seem to prevent the Red Kool-Aid drinkers from believing as Gospel that it's just utterly impossible for law enforcement to fight terrorism, in fact, when they want to slap a label on a leftie, the one they like to use is to declare that "he thinks terrorism is a law enforcement problem". Completely ignoring the fact that so far, law enforcement has been responsible for every single success we've had against terrorism since 9/11.)

Wow Larry, that was a great attempt at mixing my words. I simply used an example of someone who acts suspicious. I also never mentioned anything about being a leftie.

Phone records were used to build that case and helped lead to the arrests. Terrorists need to communicate, intercepting that communication can save many lives. Here's the info you requested......

"Senior US intelligence officials told the Washington Post that some of the alleged plotters had made telephone calls to the US."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1843087,00.html

I'm not justifying the gov't doing anything illegal. The fact is that intelligence is the #1 way to combat terrorism. I've read enough of your posts here Larry to know we do not agree on pretty much everything. I guess we'll have to leave it at that.

I am still waiting for examples of the average Americans rights being violated by the Patriot Act.

[ACW]

I am still waiting for examples of the average Americans rights being violated by the Patriot Act.

Maybe they can't say because it's illegal. I'd read THIS

[helptheSKINS]

Maybe they can't say because it's illegal. I'd read THIS

Interesting article ACW and thanks for posting it. It appears the the NSL recipients are not the people being targeted. My point was I want to see the Americans that are being unfairly targeted because of the Patriot Act. I would hate to see a plot carried out because the intelligence agencies have their hands tied. The Patriot act makes things easier for them and I'm all for it. Everything should be legal obviously, if that means expanding the Patriot Act, I'm all for that as well. They target people for a reason, I'm just tired of hearing how "our" rights are being violated when their are very few actual cases that they are.

[Predicto]

Interesting article ACW and thanks for posting it. It appears the the NSL recipients are not the people being targeted. My point was I want to see the Americans that are being unfairly targeted because of the Patriot Act. I would hate to see a plot carried out because the intelligence agencies have their hands tied. The Patriot act makes things easier for them and I'm all for it. Everything should be legal obviously, if that means expanding the Patriot Act, I'm all for that as well. They target people for a reason, I'm just tired of hearing how "our" rights are being violated when their are very few actual cases that they are.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Fact is, if there are such cases, we will hear about them 20 or 30 years from now, not today. Just like the recent FBI admissions about what they illegally did in the 1960s.