I'm really not surprised, just disgusted.Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.[...]Kinne says the success stories underscored for her the waste of time spent listening to innocent Americans, instead of looking for the terrorist needle in the haystack."By casting the net so wide and continuing to collect on Americans and aid organizations, it's almost like they're making the haystack bigger and it's harder to find that piece of information that might actually be useful to somebody," she said. "You're actually hurting our ability to effectively protect our national security."
TinSoldier posted on Oct 18, 2008
| views: 132
http://abcnews.go.com/story?id=5987804
Comments
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bloc said on Oct 18, 2008....
thanks for posting this, I meant to but it's been a long week for me. What makes this even more obscene is that many of the people they were listening in on were soldiers calling home to their families.
I wonder if we'll see alien or d6 on here telling us how we should all trust the government with secret and unchecked powers.
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kelly said on Oct 19, 2008....
I don't know how, but I think we need to "tack back" our country at some point. I'm interested in getting the very basic things back in place, such as not spying on our own citizens, restoration of habeas corpus and protection from unreasonable search and seizure.We also need a justice system that applies the law evenly. Without all these things we can't have a free market.By the way, I thought that when you signed up for the military you gave up any expectation of privacy in your communications. I thought the government censors were always allowed to go through your personal letters, etc? Correct me if I'm wrong about this. -
TinSoldier said on Oct 19, 2008....
I think while you give up some privacy when you join the military, you don't necessarily give up all expectations of it. These guys are still American citizens and outside of extraordinary circumstances the Constitution still applies to them."Government censors" were more from the WWII and Viet Nam eras I believe -- I'm not aware of them being used now. Well, at least not until reading this article. If nothing else, the soldiers should be warned of the possibility that their calls may be monitored by the government.Plus if you read the article, you can see that not all of the people who were eavesdropped on were military personnel. -
bloc said on Oct 19, 2008....
i'm not sure of the legal specifics, but when you make calls it doesn't always go through the military telco system. I don't think they could legally treat you differently on a private phone system, but I could be wrong. -
TinSoldier said on Oct 19, 2008....
The phone banks we had in Kuwait were set up by commercial telcos like AT&T and Sprint. -
kelly said on Oct 19, 2008....
"The phone banks we had in Kuwait were set up by commercial telcos like AT&T and Sprint."Ah, so then the calls ARE being monitored by the government. ;-)Thanks for the clarification. I think I've seen too many old war movies where they expect their mail to be censored.
Comment on "Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans"
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