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Old 01-17-2006, 03:45 AM   #1
Blushing Heliophobe
 
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Presidential Power

For those who are American or are interested in American politics...

Recently the news has gotten out that President Bush gave the NSA the go-ahead to spy on American phone calls without first obtaining warrants

Read the Story Here.

To start, I believe that it is sending the wrong message to the public. It amazes me that there hasn't been more outcry over this. What shocks me the most is that while President Bush does not deny that he overstepped the law - he staunchly defends his right to do so.

But what do you think - is he abusing our rights, or should the President have the right to do so if he feels necessary? How much right to 'make' or 'break' the law should a President have?
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Old 01-17-2006, 05:04 AM   #2
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If he gets anymore paranoid we're going to all be on video 24/7 by the end of this year.

Nobody is above the law, but I doubt anything would happen to Bush no matter what laws he broke.

Isn't there something in the constitution about privacy rights? I'm not positive, but we did learn a little about the US in Socials class. If it is there how the hell can Bush just do whatever the fuck he wants? He's a president not a Dictator. I think he needs to realize that.
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Old 01-17-2006, 06:05 AM   #3
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The Fourth Amendment protects against 'unlawful search and seizure'. I think that searching Americans without a warrant and without the intent to file for one clearly violates that Amendment. Sometimes police officers may search without a warrant, but only on emergency situations, and the case is studied after that to determine that there was just cause for not waiting on a warrant. Al Gore is currently calling for President Bush to be tried...

Does anyone think the President should have this kind of power?
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Old 01-17-2006, 05:39 PM   #4
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What's the patriot act? hehe
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Quote:
Originally Posted by George Carlin
People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.
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Old 01-17-2006, 06:45 PM   #5
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http://www.epic.org/privacy/terroris...t/default.html

Something that might be of interest concerning the Patriot Act.
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Old 01-18-2006, 06:44 PM   #6
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Ahhhh, the almighty Wikipedia, of course
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Old 01-19-2006, 11:51 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Blushing Heliophobe
What shocks me the most is that while President Bush does not deny that he overstepped the law
He does deny it. That's been his whole defense, is that he had the power to do this, according to a law/bill granting him the power to order these taps. If that's the case, as a Congressional investigation will yeild, he's not overstepping anything and no one should be getting their panties up in a bunch about the President making use of a power that was granted some two decades ago.

You'd think that if your phone number or email address was on an al-Qaeda member's computer contact list, that'd be enough to obtain a warrant, but no. It's not. "If al-Qaeda's been calling/e-mailing you, we want to know why," is the line Bush stands behind.

If he did this legal, more power to him. I'd like to know why too. If it wasn't legal, the guy need to be reprimanded or face impeachment charges. Pending a Congressional investigation though, it's a little early to throw out accusations that deplict something in stone rather than calling it into question.
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Old 01-20-2006, 12:34 AM   #8
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Executive Order... not a bill... sorry.
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Old 01-20-2006, 01:17 AM   #9
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Bush insists that it is within his power to do it, but he admits to ordering the NSA to wiretap without warrants. I guess you can look at it either way.

Quote:
Originally Posted by LA Daily News
The research service report found there was no indication that Congress intended to authorize warrantless wiretaps when it gave President Bush the authority to fight al-Qaida and invade Afghanistan.
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_3419585

Bush's supporters say that if he's the commander in chief, then it's his right to do so. His detractors say that there wasn't specific enough legislation backing him up.

I think that it does toe a very delicate line. If you are talking to known Al-Qaeda members, then I don't see why it would be that difficult to get a warrant. If it was, then maybe he could have tried to legally assume power to do so, not just order them to be done without warrants.
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Old 01-20-2006, 01:34 AM   #10
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Right, the Patriot Act still requires that you go through the courts. However, just like with assassination orders, there are ways of circumventing these. The NSA and well as members in the Justice Department are pointing towards an executive order signed under Reagan that supposedly grants these powers that say they're allowed to do this without warrants.

Basically what happened is that al-Qaeda members were arrested in Pakistan. The ISI (Pakistani intelligence) seized their computers and turned them over to US authorities. We found names and numbers on contact lists in the computers, but nothing to prove a connection to terrorism. Some of these people could have just been a buddy online that played checkers with them on yahoo once or twice. In most cases, without much else (than just a name, number, and email address), you don't have the grounds to obtain a warrant. Sometimes you actually do and the White House is just saying, "That process takes too long." Which they have.

If they can speed it up legally or just obtain taps in this manner, it's all good. If this E.O. didn't grant the powers, we'll all see a shit storm stirred up in Washington. If it was legal, however, you'll still see a shit storm of reform that'll soon eliminate this power.
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Old 01-20-2006, 01:47 AM   #11
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It's going to be interesting to see what happens.

Hopefully there won't be another episode like what happened to Nixon...ending up with decreased power to federal agencies...
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Old 01-20-2006, 10:17 AM   #12
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As I understand it what most of the controversy was about was not only did Bush wiretap calls from the middle east, but also tapped any calls from outside the U.S. Be them from europe, china, africa. Some of them would probebly be otherwise legal, but calls from said foreign countrys/areas were traced to the phones in the U.S. More calls from those phones were also tapped. Even if the happened to be wrong numbers.

Calls were also eavesdropped on and searched for specific words like bomb, attack and specific known terrorist targets.


[QUOTE from:http://www.thestatesman.net/page.new...ss=1&id=103476

Electronic surveillance
On top of all these atrocities sullying the image and reputation of the USA as a staunch champion of democracy and human rights, the New York Times (16 December) has exposed how in 2002 Bush broke the American law that forbids domestic spying. By an executive order, he authorised the National Security Agency (NSA) to track and intercept international telephone and e-mail exchanges coming into or going out of the USA when one party was believed to have direct or indirect ties with Al Qaeda. It has resulted in big-time, Big Brother electronic surveillance on American “subversives”.
Americans, cutting across the political divide, have balked at the involvement of their government in warrantless domestic eavesdropping. For his part, however, an unrepentant Bush has not only asserted that domestic spying is both legal and vital to thwarting terrorist attacks, but has also ordered criminal investigation into the source of leak of the information to the press.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was enacted in 1978 in the wake of the Frank Church Committee report focused on the uses and abuses of intelligence derived from wiretapping by President Richard Nixon. The FISA set limits to electronic monitoring of telecommunications and created a separate 11-member secret court in the Justice Department to decide NSA applications for wire-tapping warrants.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the question uppermost in the minds of White House officials was whether other terrorist “sleeper cells” were lying in wait in the USA and how to know where to find them. As the CIA and FBI had failed to penetrate the terrorist outfits, actionable human intelligence in this regard was woefully meagre and faulty. This heightened the importance of electronic intelligence, but the limitations imposed by the FISA to the collection efforts of the NSA stood in the way of harnessing the agency’s full intelligence potential. To sidestep this hurdle, White House hawks, headed by Vice-President Cheney, wanted to circumvent the FISA by liberalising the rules of domestic spying and free the NSA to eavesdrop on terrorist suspects within the country without having to seek a warrant. Having failed to persuade the lawmakers to amend the law, Bush decided to ignore it. By a 2002 secret executive order he authorised the NSA to intercept without a warrant phone conversations, e-mail and other electronic communications. The order remained a closely guarded secret until the New York Times broke it to the public last month.

Eavesdropping by NSA
The NSA has been reluctant to seek court approval because they consider the FISA process too slow to cope with a situation in which a known terrorist calls a number in the USA not already covered by an existing FISA warrant. By using the 14 September 2001 Congressional resolution authorising the President to use “all necessary and appropriate force” to combat global terror, Bush has approved eavesdropping by NSA on 500 telephones of Americans a day in the last four years.
The administration argues that the said Congressional resolution covered the presidential executive order to dispense with the court warrant for intercepting telephone conversations and e-mail messages. But the fact is the Administration knew perfectly well that it did not have that implicit authority because “White House officials had unsuccessfully sought to Congressional leaders to include explicit language approving no-warrant wiretaps in the resolution”.

The presidential executive order waiving prior court approval for wire-tapping was unwarranted. The FISA court has been quite liberal in conceding NSA requests for warrants. According to the Justice Department, from 1979 to 2004 the court approved 18,724 wiretaps and denied only three, all in 2003. Despite the 2002 presidential order allowing the NSA to work without a warrant, the agency has continued to apply for them. Last year, it sought and got 1754 warrants, but the court has been subjecting such requests to closer examination. It, however, made “substantive modifications” to 94 of last year’s requests, for example, reducing the scope, timing and targets on the original application.
The argument that the FISA process is too slow in cases where immediate action is called for is factually untenable. The law permits the agency to eavesdrop without a warrant provided it applies for one within 72 hours of commencing the operation. The FISA court is “notoriously obliging” to the NSA and issues warrants within hours. The special intelligence collection programme of the NSA itself seems illegal.
The FISA specifically allows warrantless surveillance in a war situation, but for only 15 days after the war has been declared. If such surveillance were needed for a longer period, the executive branch must change the law to give the NSA necessary authority.
The administration’s argument that America is at war and the administration has no time to obey the law is as unacceptable as its contention that any legislative change amending the ground rules for wiretapping operations would “tip off our enemies”. The NSA’s surveillance programme is an affront to the American system of checks and balances and the Americans’ right to privacy as guaranteed by the 4th Amendment. The government is not free to simply tap your phone to find out who’s calling you and why.

End QUOTE]



It's wrong that he did such searches without warrents. These laws are in place for a good reason. Bush broke the law, and now he must face the penalties of the law, like any citizen. Though i too find it unlikely that he will.
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Old 01-20-2006, 10:51 AM   #13
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This is the latest I have seen on the issue today:

Bush to visit ultra-secret NSA headquarters

Friday, January 20, 2006; Posted: 1:23 p.m. EST (18:23 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is opening a campaign to push back against criticism of its domestic spying program, ahead of congressional hearings into whether President Bush has the legal authority to eavesdrop on Americans.

President Bush will visit the ultra-secret National Security Agency on Wednesday, underscoring his claim that he has the constitutional authority to let intelligence officials listen in on international phone calls of Americans with suspected ties to terrorists.

"We are stepping up our efforts to educate the American people," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said about Bush's trip to the NSA, based at Fort Meade in Maryland.

"This is a critical tool that helps us save lives and prevent attacks," he said. "It is limited and targeted to al Qaeda communications, with the focus being on detection and prevention."

On Monday, deputy national intelligence director Mike Hayden, who headed the National Security Agency when the program began in October 2001, will speak on the issue a the National Press Club.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is delivering a speech on the program in Washington.

Gonzales plans to testify publicly about the secret program at a Senate hearing set to begin February 6.

Gonzales said he reached an agreement with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to answer questions about the legal basis -- but not the operations -- of the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping on telephone conversations between suspected terrorists and people in the United States.

Gonzales this week sent congressional leaders a 42-page legal defense of warrantless eavesdropping, expanding on arguments that he and other administration officials have been making since the program was first disclosed last month.

The memo argues that Bush has authority to order the warrantless wiretapping under the Constitution and the post-September 11 congressional resolution granting him broad power to fight terrorism.

Vice President Dick Cheney, who was to meet with congressional leaders at the White House on Friday to discuss the issue, defended the program on Thursday in New York in a speech to the conservative Manhattan Institute. He stressed that the program was limited and conducted in a way that safeguards civil liberties.

At a briefing held by House Democrats on Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union called the program an illegal operation.
'Not imperial power'

"The executive power of our country is not an imperial power," Caroline Fredrickson, the director of the ACLU legislative office in Washington, told Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee.

"The president has demonstrated a dangerous disregard for our Constitution and our laws with his authorization for this illegal program," she said.

Fredrickson spoke to Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee. The ACLU filed suit against the NSA on Jan. 17 on behalf of journalists, nonprofit groups, terrorism experts and community advocates. The suit alleges that the NSA program violates the First and Fourth amendments and the separation of power.

Source

My main issue is this; I just don't friggin like getting played.

If you're going to attempt to do something like this, don't be fucking sneaky.

The language under which they are trying to say the President had authority for these warrantless orders is too broad and way too general in my opinion. I don't care if Mother Theresa was President, I wouldn't be comfortable with HER having a vast undefined Umbrella of Power to wield as she saw fit in regards to out safety and rights as citizens. There are checks and balances in place for a reason.

And I really am not impressed with the whole " Well, you SORTA said we could do it.." stance that is being taken.

Not one bit.
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Old 01-20-2006, 02:29 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by angel_dark_demon_bright
It's wrong that he did such searches without warrents. These laws are in place for a good reason. Bush broke the law, and now he must face the penalties of the law, like any citizen. Though i too find it unlikely that he will.
Wrong to do searches without warrants? In the irony of all this, the FISA actuall permits the President to issue warrantless wiretaps against certain targets under cirumstances of war. That's a law. So don't cling to the FISA if you're totally against warrentless wiretaps or searches, because that Act legalizes them against specified targets.

And again, just to make sure you know this, you're citing an opinion piece, not fact. So what the guy says is wrong and right is worth as much as what you or I say.

This is not some foreign thing that US Presidents have legally circumvented the law many times in the past. In 1986 (I believe), Reagan issued assassination orders against Qaddafi and his family when we were bombing targets in Tripoli, Libya. Our pilots specifically had orders to hit the Libyan leader and his family. Pilots killed a close relative of his and nearly destroyed Qaddafi (we hit the building he was in). The guy was shaken up beyond belief after that, which probably had something to do with him giving up Libya's WMD program shortly after we invaded Iraq. But getting back to it, ordering an assassination is illegal for a President, however, there are loopholes that he slunk through in an E.O. that stated he could circumvent these laws by declaring the assassinations to be in defense, which is what he did. Army lawyers got it by the U.N. and it sat. Today, Bush can sign assassination orders under the same loophole to kill Bin Laden or Hamas leaders if he wanted.

Clinton passed an E.O. durring his administration that allowed for warrantless physical searches. This was done somehow in consistency with the FISA, even though it completely circumvented it's provisions on physical searches (which require court orders).

Back to the topic: in addition to what the President is saying about the Constitution, the White House and members of the Justice Department are also pointing towards something passed by Congress called the, "Authorization for the Use of Military Force," or AUMF. This article grants the president the ability to "use all necessary... force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the [9/11] terrorist attacks." That would include al-Qaeda, but as EPS said, that's broad as hell. Most likely the battle over the legality is going to end in a stalemate because of these broad statements that grant power to the President. However, it's likely that Congress will make a move to clarify or snub such language in the article soon after.
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Old 01-20-2006, 02:34 PM   #15
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Old 01-20-2006, 03:43 PM   #16
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I love that story more everytime I read it. Too bad it's not real.
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Old 01-25-2006, 09:04 PM   #17
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aawww, it's not?
ugh, I believe anything I hear
so, umm..... yea
by the way, funny
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Quote:
Originally Posted by George Carlin
People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.
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Old 01-26-2006, 09:18 AM   #18
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What I thought was hilarious was the press secratery talking about the taps, dismising the fact they hadn't lead to the capture of any "terrorists", insisting they were useful and effective tool in homeland security. Saying words to the effect of :

"There haven't been any more attacks and that is what you have to look at".

Riiight. So because there's been no attacks, the taps are useful.

That immediately reminded me of the Simpsons, with Lisa explaining to Homer "that is like saying this rock is a Tiger Repelling Rock because there are no Tigers around"

Great, the government are picking up tips for the homeland defense from cartoon sitcoms.
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Old 01-26-2006, 11:50 AM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vorsuc
What I thought was hilarious was the press secratery talking about the taps, dismising the fact they hadn't lead to the capture of any "terrorists", insisting they were useful and effective tool in homeland security.
Are you thinking of public statements by the Justice Department about the Patriot Act back in 2001/2002? I don't know, but it's not this case here, as President Bush, himself, came right out and cited two cases in which the NSA program played a role in leading to the arrests of Iyman Faris and the prevention of a British fetalizer bomb plot.

Lawyers also belive that the program had a role in leading to the arrests and convictions of Adham Amin Hassoun, Jose Padilla, and Ali al-Timimi. Nothing can be confirmed nor denied yet though, as it's all still tightly under wraps, but Administration officials have indeed cited the arrests if "terrorists."
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Old 01-28-2006, 10:06 AM   #20
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I know an ass I'd "tap", Miss Xng.

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