Live coverage of NSA testimony at House hearing, if anyone is interested

[dixiegrrrrl]

http://www.breakingnews.com/topic/report-of-us-mining-internet-company-data

[malaise]

1. Thanks n/t

[JimDandy]

2. Checking it out. Thx! n/t

[dkf]

3. Alexander is full of it. He pretends we don't know about their 51% criteria for foreignness.

It's like they've created a foolproof test when we know they haven't come anywhere near it.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. I really do not have the patience or temperment

to listen to the hearing.
But I figured someone else would.

Hearings were at least a good source of comedy during the Bush era....esp. Gonzales' appearances.

[dkf]

5. So one of their most successful cases they identified someone, linked to others overseas, "lured"

Them here, caught them in the plot and arrested them all.

Sounds like they located haters, gave them the capabilities, then arrested them.

Without giving them the capabilities were they much of a danger?

If we offered that to people in a country that hates us wouldn't we get oodles of takers?

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. "Sounds like they located haters, gave them the capabilities, then arrested them."

Yes!!!!
a repeated pattern of that, too. Followed by huge headlines that FBI and et al. were doing such a good job.

Sorta reminds me of all the headlines reporting repeated killings of # 2 Al-Quada,
but no one seems to notice that #1 continues to be floating around.

[dkf]

7. Now we are stuck paying for their care and upkeep.

I dunno. Potential boondoggle

[sabrina 1]

10. Well, that's part of the propaganda they are giving to the media. I watched one of their media

puppets trying to 'look serious' and 'neutral' the other night droning on about the British Terror Cell that was exposed. He tried to look 'neutral' by working the 'report' he was giving on how it was exposed. Not one time was he able to, nor did he try, to explain how collecting phone American's phone numbers (can't they just use the yellow pages anyhow) had anything to do with that case.

But nevertheless after telling this whole 'scary story' about that 'terror cell' he finished by saying something along the lines of the NSA's claims of having helped with that. If you knew nothing about any of this, you would walk away hearing only 'terror cell exposed' 'NSA' somehow involved. And that is how they do it. He was NOT asked to explain exactly how that cell was exposed, which had zero to do with the NSA's data collection on Americans.

Alexander is using the same tactic here. Throwing out 'terror' (god, they will never end terrorism, what woud they use to justify all the money if they did?) and 'NSA' and making claims with nothing backing them up. But some idiots will just hear they caught terrorists using phone numbers, and that's okay with me.

[dkf]

12. They were Brits? I didn't hear that.

[Monkie]

8. How Disclosed NSA Programs Protect Americans, and Why Disclosure Aids Our Adversaries

that sure sounds like unbiased hearings to find out the truth about these programs!

if you are a pig in orwells 1984
this is what a open debate about the programs means in the US?

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Well, if they were more specific

They would give up methods and sources...

(Yes, it is sheer comedy) Alexander is protecting the golden goose

[Monkie]

11. now they are telling us how they foiled hypothetical plot 9/11's!!!

stupidity on a epic scale.
how anyone can "watch" this and defend this is beyond me.

Alexander is talking about how the NSA surveillance programs could have – he emphasizes that this is all hypothetical – prevented a 9/11 plot.

Joyce (of the FBI) earlier said the government failed to intercept a phone call between a Yemeni safehouse and Khalid al-Midhar in San Diego. The safehouse had been under surveillance; it is unclear whether the call was not intercepted, or whether it was intercepted but could not be tied to Midhar.

If the tie between Yemen and Midhar had been made, Alexander says, the greater plot may have become visible.

"Ideally, going from Midhar, we would have been able to find the other three teams in the United States," Alexander says. "Or in Germany."

It's hypothetical, but we didn't have that ability. We couldn't connect the dots because we didn't have the dots.

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. I have learned that most Congressional hearings

are simply plays, for the masses and media.
Gives the Congress people a chance to wave their arms and develop their sounds bites.

Very little comes of it.