Topic: War On Terror
Why America should accept the President's wiretapping program The American people should accept the domestic wiretapping program and embrace it because it makes us safer.by Locke
(Conservative)
Friday, May 9, 2008
President Bush's wiretapping program has been touted by the Bush adminstration has been touted as a vital tool in the war on terror and it is helping to keep us safe.
There is now a large amount of people who say domestic spying does not make us safer, only intrudes on our privacy. I would beg to differ. Most people will never have their calls listened to by the federal government. So long as you are a patriotic, law abiding American you should not have to fear that your calls are being listened to. There is most likely a computer program who is screening calls of suspected individuals and pick out certain keywords. As long as you are not talking about harming the interests of the United States, you will not be in dager of being intruded upon.
This wiretapping program is only trying to keep us safe and happy, not listen to your conversations with relatives around the world. There has been a great overreaction to this program, mostly fueled by media hype. Wiretapping of suspected individuals is a vital tool in the war on terror and is essential in keeping us safe.
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2008 Locke, all rights reserved.
Published: Friday, May 9, 2008
Last modified: Friday, May 9, 2008
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I don't understand how the government breaking the law and infringing upon our rights makes us safer. Why didn't the trillion dollar defense system and the FISA laws already in place keep us safe on 9/11? And how do we know if this is true since this adminstration has lied about everything else (wmd's anyone?), where are the facts? Give me evidence. Why would you believe a man that has allowed torture and has advocated pre-emptive war? We are now one of the most spied on populations on earth, equal to China. Conservatives used to believe in small government, does tapping the phones and reading the email of innocent civilians sound like small government? Watch who you talk to, who you email, you are now guilty until proven innocent. You have the right to no longer have rights!
i beg to differ with you locke. u are so far off the mark it's amazing. this is an news/article site, not just a 'post our opinion in the form of one sentance with no support or sources to back up your claim' hole.
jess has it right! in my opinion wiretapping, internet regulating police states are something for the communists, and not for free peoples with basic rights like privacy and constitutional freedom. bush has done enough damage already, he's effectively ended the right for habeas corpus!
Giving up our rights makes us far less safe. Our constitution is vitally important because it limits the power of the federal government and protects our rights. Without it, America could be as awful a tyranny as any that ever existed. We should not allow government to encroach on those rights at all, not even a little bit.
Q: Do you know why the Bush Administration had a sunset period on the Patriot Act? A: Because they knew better than to allow the next administration (probobly a Democratic one) to abuse it.
While Bush's FISA program's focus is on potential terrorism and has not had any documented abuses, it could be argued that being transparent about it was the best and the worst things about the program. Unlike the Democrats who have wiretapped thier political enemies like Martin Luther King Jr., the Bush Administration needed to show the public that they were taking steps that the public demanded in order to stop post 9/11 terrorism. (remember the families of the victims of downed UA flight 11 holding up signs saying that the highjackers names were in the San Diego phone book?)
This practice has lead to a safer United States, but if annother Administration were to abuse it, the American public would lose freedom. Bush has walked a very tight wire with this, and has done his best to ensure that the program was not abused. For the record let me say this. I would rather live in a United States where the military and police were able to stop heinus crimes before they happen, than to live in one where obtaining information about potential terrorists acts could occur without any warning.
As far as I am concerned if the information that they obtain is kept secrit and can not be used to prosecute minor crimes, then I don't care if the government finds out that I am bisexual and put up swinger ads so that my wife and I can have sex with other couples. That does not scare me. What scares me is the ability for political prisoners to be taken in who are no threat to society. This is and always has been the responsibility of government to keep us safe while making the upmost effort to try and not restrict our freedom.
Unfortunately the stupid drug, prostitution, and speach laws are not a result that can be blamed soley on the government. You also have to blame the people who have elected the government and have demanded that they take action to solve the drug problem. Thank you religion!
Have you ever heard of Bayes Theorem of Conditional Probabilities? Well, the Wire Tapping fiasco is a perfect example of the Theorem, for the simple reason that so much information is passed through these wiretapping that the probability of actually intercepting a transmission of a terrorist who is dumb enough to either send an email or make a phone call without taking extraordinary precautions is virtually nil.
Do you have any idea just how much information is passing through the “airwaves” every single mille-second? As I said, any “terrorist” worth his or her salt would not be dumb enough to use the usual means of communications if they were actually planning to attack this country. Even if they did, the simplest thing for a potential terrorist to do is to send massive waves of decoy messages through the system, clogging the entire SOP of the government and its ability to respond in any meaningful way. Even now, because of the fear that our own government has intentionally contributed to, any part of our country could be effectively shut down by a simple threat of attack; this gives any potential terrorist the upper hand in both strategy and tactics.
The most effective measures to combat terrorism is to realize the causes and make adjustments to our own foreign policies that induce such radical outrages of terror against us.
If you actually think that the illegal and un-American Bush wire taps make you and your family safer then all I can say is make sure the smooth feel-good satin around your security blanket remains intact and clean because that feel-good feeling is the only thing such a policy is really giving you or this country.
Do you think that it is better that they just shut up about what they do like when JFK was in office?
My worry is that the Democrats would try to enact this so that they could take on people that smoke in thier own homes.
I know that the program has made Americans safer because of all of the Terrorists who have been caught. This is also a message to the terrorists that they have to try even harder to coordinate an attack against us because we are listening and watching them. Espionage of telephone calls in order stop terrorism is a good thing. The minute that they go after swingers, drug users, or gun owners is the day that I give up my support. Until then keep doing it.
So now that you know my secrit, what is yours that you are afraid of someone knowing?
How do you know if the government is wiretapping you or not? Its all done in secret. If you are critical of the administration in private communications perhaps you might find yourself subject to IRS audits or other methods of harassment. If you have skeletons in your closet maybe the government might use those against you to force you to play ball with them.
Posted By: Gary R. Carter
Date: 2008-05-09 23:12:10
So, what department do Lloyd and you work for? I can't imagine such delusional concepts would survive outside of the grid. Yesterday, as I was privy to the state going through everything I owned, including my laptop files, I realized how efficient our propaganda system is and just what kind of psychological profile it takes to serve our glorious Department of Homeland Security.
1) I'd rather be dead in a free country than enslaved in a safe country.
2) I declare those who defend unconstitutional measures for the false sense of security as people who hates America for its freedoms far more than the terrorists supposedly do. For the terrorists has not removed any rights from this country. The Bush administration (with help from liberals - let's not forget this is a bi-partisan attack) has. And you expect me to fear the non-threat?
3) Now that I've said the above two, you will consider me a threat based on what YOU preceive the rules should be on being an American. Thereby, you will feel it's justified that my rights be removed for the "safety" of this country. If the belief that wanting liberty back in this country is seen as "harming the interests of the United States", then naturally you'd want me eradicated.
4) Your blind faith in the government doesn't make you patriotic, it makes you a liberal.
This is almost as absurd as GW's oft used excuse for wiretapping: The "Qaida Calling" rationale.
"I know you're familiar with the program of the National Security Agency called the Terrorism Surveillance Program that I installed. I did so to protect you. The philosophy behind the program is pretty clear, pretty simple to understand: If al Qaeda or an al Qaeda associate is calling into the United States, we want to know why. We want to know their intentions. We want to be able to prevent an attack." - GW Bush October 3, 2006
Hey, wrong-way Mr. President! If you know it's al Qaida, you should be working to shut-down the call side. It is absurd to believe that the government is not monitoring all long-distance calls, using voice recognition software. There are going to be numerous false-positives, as well as false negatives. If someone mentions in a phone call how bad the cicada infestation is this season, the call is bound to be tagged and bagged by this software. There are countless other examples. False negatives are a different kind of animal, because no one can be sure to what extent they occur, and a total monitoring system will lull bureaucrats into a false sense of security, unprepared to defend the nation, just as the President was on September 11, 2001.
There are already rules in place under FISA that allow for emergency wiretapping. The only restriction is that the government go in front of a secret court and secure its assent within 72hrs of starting the wiretap, This is one of the things the Bush Administration is seeking to eliminate. They claim that the president exists without the control of the only document that confers legitimacy to his every act. This is false, the president must obey the rule of law, or he is a tyrant. Do you stand for liberty or not?
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams, Speech, State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, August 1, 1776
Posted By: patrick henry
Date: 2008-05-12 07:49:12
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberty, for temporary security, deserve neither security nor liberty"- Ben Franklin
Just like Trotsky, what makes you think that you are not gonna be on the other side of the oligarchy, all you statist fools fail to see that all the state has to do is declare you unpatriotic and off to the camps in Neveda you go.
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2008 Locke, all rights reserved.