{"id":10404,"date":"2013-06-08T01:44:54","date_gmt":"2013-06-08T08:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10404"},"modified":"2013-06-08T01:44:54","modified_gmt":"2013-06-08T08:44:54","slug":"a-snoop-too-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/08\/a-snoop-too-far\/","title":{"rendered":"A Snoop Too Far"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news of the Verizon Wiretaps and PRIS presents us with highly complex issues, not given to knee-jerk reactions without careful consideration.  In my opinion, these programs, as currently constituted, are bad for America, but not to the extent that the anti-Obama folks on both sides of the aisle would have us believe.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"wiretap\"President Obama on Friday defended a pair of recently disclosed surveillance programs as striking the \u201cright balance\u201d between national security and civil liberties following a speech Friday in California. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can’t have 100 percent security and also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a government,\u201d Obama said. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can complain about big brother and how this is a potential program run amok, but when you actually look at the details I think we’ve struck the right balance.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"8TIA\"The administration acknowledged Thursday that the National Security Agency had monitored domestic telephone data<\/strong> and international internet traffic<\/strong> from tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. <\/p>\n

Obama stressed that every member of Congress had been briefed on the phone monitoring program<\/strong> and that the relevant Intelligence committees were aware of PRISM \u2014 the system by which the NSA accessed internet traffic. He also noted that federal judges had to sign off on data gathering requests\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <The Hill<\/a>><\/p>\n

Obama said there are safeguards in place, and while that may well be what her intends, that intent has not carried forward into practice.<\/font><\/p>\n

Chris Hayes revealed the character of the judge who signed the order.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font> <\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This Republican judge was appointed to the FISA Court long before Obama was elected.  FISA is the safeguard the law intended, so technically that safeguard is in place.  However, having FISA in place has no effect whatsoever, when such men abuse their power to circumvent the law. Chris also interviewed Jeff Merkley (D-OR), but that part of the video is missing. Of course, Jeff is on our side, fighting for oversight and accountability.<\/font><\/p>\n

Rachel Maddow discussed congressional complicity.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font> <\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Note that Ron Wyden (D-OR) is a leader in opposition.  Once again, Oregon is leading the way.<\/font><\/p>\n

Are there sufficient safeguards in place?  The real problem here is that we have no way to know, because even the limits on these programs are classified.  Only the Gang of Eight (the top Democrat and Republican in the House and Senate and on the House and Senate Intelligence  Committees) are so informed, and they may tell nobody else, rendering them incapable of doing anything about it, without committing an act of criminal sedition.<\/font><\/p>\n

Having classified limits does not work.  Obama may well have other limits that he has imposed about how the data so gathered is used.  I hope he does and wish I knew.  But I know for a certainty that during the Bush\/GOP regime, national security devolved into Murder, Inc.  If, God forbid, another Republican ever infests the White House, proper checks and balances had better be in place.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news of the Verizon Wiretaps and PRIS presents us with highly complex issues, not given to knee-jerk reactions without careful consideration.  In my opinion, these programs, as currently constituted, are bad for America, but not to the extent that the anti-Obama folks on both sides of the aisle would have us believe. President Obama […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}