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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGreenwald: "Sen. Ron Wyden: NSA 'repeatedly deceived the American people'"
In particular, the current chair of the Senate Committee created in the mid-1970s to oversee the intelligence community just so happens to be one of the nation's most steadfast and blind loyalists of and apologists for the National Security State: Dianne Feinstein. For years she has abused her position to shield and defend the NSA and related agencies rather than provide any meaningful oversight over it, which is a primary reason why it has grown into such an out-of-control and totally unaccountable behemoth.
Underscoring the purpose of yesterday's hearing (and the purpose of Feinstein's Committee more broadly): the witnesses the Committee first heard from were all Obama officials - Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander, Deputy Attorney James Cole - who vehemently defended every aspect of the NSA. At the conclusion of their testimony, Feinstein announced that it was very, very important to hear from the two non-governmental witnesses the Committee had invited: virulent NSA defender Ben Wittes of the Brooking Institution and virulent NSA defender Timothy Edgar, a former Obama national security official. Hearing only from dedicated NSA apologists as witnesses: that's "oversight" for Dianne Feinstein and her oversight Committee.
But there are two members of that Committee who actually do take seriously its oversight mandate: Democrats Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. Those two spent years publicly winking and hinting that the NSA under President Obama was engaged in all sorts of radical and abusive domestic surveillance (although - despite the absolute immunity protection they enjoy as Senators under the Constitution - they took no action, and instead waited for Edward Snowden (who had no such immunity) to bravely step up and reveal to the American people specifically what these two Senators kept hinting at).
Wyden spoke yesterday for 6 minutes - part of of it as monologue and part of it questioning Gen. Alexander - and it's really worth watching the video, embedded below. The Oregon Democrat condemned what he called "the intrusive, constitutionally flawed surveillance system" the NSA built. About Snowden's whistleblowing, he said that NSA officials should have known from "a quick read of history, in America, the truth always managed to come out." And his primary point was this: "the leadership of NSA built an intelligence collection system that repeatedly deceived the American people."
I'm more and more amazed every day by the influence that one ordinary(ish) citizen like Snowden can have on national affairs when he has the means, motive and opportunity. Thank god for people like him, who see evil and are willing to take a stand against it.
randome
(34,845 posts)You can definitely argue that there isn't enough accountability but hyperbole like this deserves ridicule.
The harder Greenwald tries to sell us his goods, the more irrelevant he becomes.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)accountable.
Your hyperbole is the next person's close and reasonable approximation. You may as well be screaming "hyperbole" when someone says they will be over at six and arrives either at 5:57 or 6:04. Hell, in this case you are damn near hollering "hyperbole" because it is 5:59:59.
You are splitting the hair so much that I fear you will slice an atom in the process and kill yourself and your whole city with you.
randome
(34,845 posts)Add to that the fact that many of the requested warrants are initially turned down until sufficient safeguards are added and there is definitely accountability. Like I said, there can be more but to say there is none is wrong on the face of it.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)Rein in? What are the sanctions for violations? What are the consequences for wrong doing? What are the corrective measures for being wrong? Having a finger wagged at you and being given corrections that if you don't do them is without consequence is not accountability and sure as hell accountability gets very flimsy when in order to be even fakely accountable the "court" must wait for self reporting. If anyone goes cowboy and cuts them out of the loop then they just wait for the next report and rubberstamp or scold as they deem appropriate.
A grade school child is more accountable.
There is ZERO accountability to the American people on who's behalf the entire effort is for. Hell, the idea was for the people to be kept ignorant, call that accountability all you want but it is being an accessory after the fact. Your arguments just help to make sure there is little to no accountability by supporting and advancing flimsy pretense as serious effort.
Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)Rubbish. Get back to me when he takes a stand against the evil going on in Russia.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I figured that might draw a comment or two!
Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)stonecutter357
(12,697 posts)SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Or are we still not taking a stand on that? Last time I heard Obama said it would be wrong not to attend and spend at the Putin Winter Games.
You can't pretend to be taking both a stand against Russia and a plane to Sochi.
LondonReign2
(5,213 posts)then we can safely ignore that which he has.
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)like every dogooder in the world has to tackle ALL the evil everywhere to be entitled to kudos for the good they do.
What passes for rationality and reason on this board sometimes qualifies as an evil that should be stamped out.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Snowden did his duty as an American citizen. He wasn't born in Russia, he was born here. Like Ellsberg and every other courageous individual who took their job as Citizens seriously.
ronnie624
(5,764 posts)Last edited Fri Sep 27, 2013, 12:43 PM - Edit history (1)
not nosy Americans who point away from their own government, the crimes of which are much worse. If Russians were yammering about US domestic issues, I would tell them to mind their own business, because it is our responsibility to reform our own government.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)You want Snowden to take a stand against the evil in Russia?
I'm not sure how that would work.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Those making excuses for NSA domestic spying are carrying a load of something else.
BTW: NSA spied on Frank Church, the liberal Democratic senator who warned us in 1976:
That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesnt matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I dont want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return. -- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) liberal, progressive, World War II combat veteran
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Octafish/277
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)bringing the discussion back to the topic.
Historic NY
(37,452 posts)please they knew the security apparatus was going to change after Sept. 11th. what did they expect. America was fairly lax with domestic security issues and most people took them for granted. I've been caught up in a couple issues in Britian all related to "the troubles", while traveling, I always said we don't do security well here. When and if, things would change, it would never go back, the never again would take us all in its wake. Technology and its exploitation are the central defense our security apparatus uses and one way or another we have all signed off on it, years ago.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Yet, the Bill of Rights remain under assault and I am considered a suspect, based solely on my opposition to secret government and wars for profit that are illegal, immoral, unnecessary and disastrous for democracy.
Historic NY
(37,452 posts)unless your subverting or perpetrating a crime.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Lookit what they did to OWS:
FBI Document(DELETED) Plots To Kill Occupy Leaders If Deemed Necessary
By Dave Lindorff
June 27, 2013 WhoWhatWhy.org
Would you be shocked to learn that the FBI apparently knew that some organization, perhaps even a law enforcement agency or private security outfit, had contingency plans to assassinate peaceful protestors in a major American city and did nothing to intervene?
Would you be surprised to learn that this intelligence comes not from a shadowy whistle-blower but from the FBI itself specifically, from a document obtained from Houston FBI office last December, as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington, DC-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund?
To repeat: this comes from the FBI itself. The question, then, is: What did the FBI do about it?
The Plot
Remember the Occupy Movement? The peaceful crowds that camped out in the center of a number of cities in the fall of 2011, calling for some recognition by local, state and federal authorities that our democratic system was out of whack, controlled by corporate interests, and in need of immediate repair?
That movement swept the US beginning in mid-September 2011. When, in early October, the movement came to Houston, Texas, law enforcement officials and the citys banking and oil industry executives freaked out perhaps even more so than they did in some other cities. The push-back took the form of violent assaults by police on Occupy activists, federal and local surveillance of people seen as organizers, infiltration by police provocateursand, as crazy as it sounds, some kind of plot to assassinate the leaders of this non-violent and leaderless movement.
CONTINUED...
http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/06/27/fbi-document-deleted-plots-to-kill-occupy-leaders-if-deemed-necessary/
Secret Police. Secret Spying. Secret Laws. Secret Detentions. Secret Executions...Anyone seeing a pattern, here?
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)It was stroke of genius that Occupy chose not to emphasize the leadership role. Leaders would have become targets.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)A top secret NSA document provides context for yesterday's abusive detention of Baraa Shiban
Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian, Sept. 25, 2013
A well-known and highly respected Yemeni anti-drone activist was detained yesterday by UK officials under that country's "anti-terrorism" law at Gatwick Airport, where he had traveled to speak at an event. Baraa Shiban, the project co-ordinator for the London-based legal charity Reprieve, was held for an hour and a half and repeatedly questioned about his anti-drone work and political views regarding human rights abuses in Yemen.
When he objected that his political views had no relevance to security concerns, UK law enforcement officials threatened to detain him for the full nine hours allowed by the Terrorism Act of 2000, the same statute that was abused by UK officials last month to detain my partner, David Miranda, for nine hours.
Shiban tells his story today, here, in the Guardian, and recounts how the UK official told him "he had detained me not merely because I was from Yemen, but also because of Reprieve's work investigating and criticising the efficacy of US drone strikes in my country."
The notion that Shiban posed some sort of security threat was absurd on its face. As the Guardian reported Tuesday, "he visited the UK without incident earlier this summer and testified in May to a US congressional hearing on the impact of the covert drone programme in Yemen."
Viewing anti-drone activism as indicative of a terrorism threat is noxious. As Reprieve's Cory Crider put it yesterday, "if there were any doubt the UK was abusing its counter-terrorism powers to silence critics, this ends it."
But perceiving drone opponents as "threats" or even "adversaries" is hardly new. Top secret US government documents obtained by the Guardian from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden characterize even the most basic political and legal opposition to drone attacks as part of "propaganda campaigns" from America's "adversaries".
CONTINUED with LINKS etc...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-uk-drone-opponents-threats
Russian Proverb: The tallest blade of grass is the first mown.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Truth tellers are now seen as the enemy. There's a pertinent quote about that somewhere.
whttevrr
(2,345 posts)Is getting tougher to ignore.
Maybe I should whistle... louder?
zeemike
(18,998 posts)Amen.
Without them we would still be ignorant of what they are doing to our constitution....which would please some I suppose.
K&R for keeping this out there.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)davidpdx
(22,000 posts)kenny blankenship
(15,689 posts)...the current chair of the Senate Committee created in the mid-1970s to oversee the ______________ just so happens to be one of the nation's most steadfast and blind loyalists of and apologists for the ______________.
dotymed
(5,610 posts)JEB
(4,748 posts)and Eric Snowden is my hero. The truth will out and that is a good thing.
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)The second video automatically plays after the first and is comprised of
Wyden's post hearing remarks.
Regardless of speculation about the messengers that is triggered
everytime the mere mention of the names Snowden/Greenwald
appear, we need to listen to the message. Some up thread
contend we citizens have signed off years ago on the surveillance
techniques our gov't uses. I object. How could I have signed off
on these techniques and practices when they were implemented
under a less than transparent environment?
grasswire
(50,130 posts)You are the new patriots.