Why don't people get this? If you communicate with someone overseas YOU ARE NOT AN AMERICAN

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Thu Aug 8, 2013, 04:40 PM - Edit history (1)

I am so tired of the hand-wringing about "spying on Americans."

Get it straight. We do not spy on Americans. The NSA spies directly on (by reading the content of messages to and from) people in America who have a history of communicating with people overseas.

A person in America who has a history of communicating with persons overseas IS NOT AN AMERICAN. Communicating with foreigners is just not something an American would do. Why would they? Everyone worth talking to is here in the USA.

And an American talking to another American about someone overseas who is suspicious is obviously not an American... why would an American "cite information" about foreign persons under surveillance? Talking about foreigners implies there is something interesting about them, and there just isn't. Foreigners are boring, and real Americans don't talk about foreigners, let alone about foreigners under suspicion.

Sure, one might be a nominal American citizen in some hyper-technical legal sense of the sort defense lawyers prattle about, but someone who has ever emailed a foreigner, or received an email from a foreigner, or written to another American about a foreigner is not really what anyone would call an AMERICAN.

We do not spy on Americans.

Rather than getting outraged over nothing, try reading a newspaper or something...

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country, hunting for people who mention information about foreigners under surveillance, according to intelligence officials.

The N.S.A. is not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas, a practice that government officials have openly acknowledged. It is also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners, like a little used e-mail address, according to a senior intelligence official.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/us/broader-sifting-of-data-abroad-is-seen-by-nsa.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1&

See? We don't spy on Americans. "People who cite information about foreigners under surveillance" is hardly any right-thinking person's idea of an American.

[Common Sense Party]

1. I get all my news from The Tonight Show.

"try reading a newspaper," indeed!

[AnotherMcIntosh]

2. Does that include communicating, or trying to, with technical support?

[loli phabay]

3. rofl, taliban tech support here

[Dragonfli]

5. I just noticed after posting that you had the same idea as I

Great minds and all that

[Dragonfli]

4. I suppose all it would take to classify me "NOT AN AMERICAN" is dialogue with outsourced

Tech Support, or outsourced Customer Service.

Luckily the chances of interacting with non-American based Tech Support or Customer Service Representation is very close to 0% because the corporations we all do business with always use American based support contractors.

[warrprayer]

6. rotf n/t

[liberal_at_heart]

7. so people who move here aren't allowed to talk to friends or family overseas?

[Dash87]

8. Why travel? Everything is the same as Texas, right?

[LiberalFighter]

9. Really?

You're not an American if you have any dealings with anyone that is not an American?

American citizens cannot communicate with any family members they might have in other countries?
American citizens cannot do business with anyone in other countries?
Government employees cannot communicate with other countries?

How about foreigners that live here in the United States? We can or can't communicate with them? Can we communicate with them if they don't with anyone in other countries?

I'm guessing that we can't communicate with anyone because either the person we might communicate might be a foreigner or has communicated with a foreigner.


To reduce contact with foreigners we need to cancel all of those Free Trade Treaties with other countries.