Does Anyone Else Feel Like This Privacy Invasion Stuff is a lot worse

[leftyladyfrommo]

than we know about now?

I do. I think we will eventually find out that all kinds of phone lines have been tapped - for all sorts of reasons - many political. And that many e-mails have been read.

The way these things go in this adm. what we know will only be the tip of the iceburg.

If people are as secretive as this adm. is there is a reason. And what we are going to find out is not going to be pretty. Well, pretty scary.

So I want the News people to just keep digging.

[MADem]

1. Yes, I do.

The military surveillance of peace groups, to include the frigging QUAKERS, the tapping of overseas calls, the data mining of American calls...I think it is just, as you said, the tip of the iceberg.

[bullimiami]

2. of course it is. you want to bet they spied on political opponents?

and possibly have used this info to blackmail people, maybe members of congress or judges, or give some corporation info on a competitor?

[leftyladyfrommo]

3. I think Rove would do absolutely anything to his political foes.

Tapping phone lines would be so easy.

I have to wonder about our mail.

I really don't consider anything to be secure any more. Pretty soon I will be calling my mother from a public phone.

[Stand4something]

6. And don't cha wonder

about those that believe intrusion into their lives is just dandy since they've nothing to hide????? It is simply beyond comprehension. The "I told ya so" when the 4th amendment no longer exists won't even phase them....stupid people!!!!!:banghead:

[newyawker99]

19. Hi Stand4something!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[think4yourself]

4. The things we DO know make me vomit.

I can't even wrap my mind around the shit that we DON'T know about. So sad. America was great, my poor children will have to rebuild.

[leftyladyfrommo]

5. Really. Well said.

But we made it thru Nixon and we will make it thru this.

People just forget what happens whenever the Republicans get in power. And then we have to relearn it again and again.

[seg4527]

7. yes, it's much worse

everything is connected, down to the most insignificant thing.

here in minneapolis, where i'm a pretty active member in the student anti-war movement, we know that the police have signed up on our e-mail lists. there is probably nothing illegal about this, after all, they are open e-mail lists and people can sign up rather easily. the police are using the e-mail lists to keep tabs on when we will have protests, march routes (so they can block us off, etc), and probably which members are the most militant. they used it to stop a peace concert that we had all but had in place (we actually got confirmation from the hosting community college that we could have it, but after the police called a bunch of "processing" errors magically appeared). i have no doubt that there are orders from above and all of this stuff is connected and there is a pattern of trying to stifle dissent.

it's not like they sign up on the e-mail list as [e-mail] or something. for all we know, they've actually infiltrated organizations as members. and it is all connected, to think otherwise and to give them the benefit of the doubt is to ignore the history of how all governments react to dissent.

the "fusion" centers or whatever all around the country, being locally run intelligence gathering operations, it's all one big giant clusterfuck that has a lot more to do with keeping tabs on "domestic threats" (read liberals, leftists, socialists, anarchists, activist democrats, and so on) than actually stopping terrorism. in the days leading up to the war, the minneapolis student anti-war group was actually on a terrorist watch list becasue of a plan (which we actually didn't have, the local intelligence officers seemed to have either made it up or gotten a really bad tip from somebody who didn't know what they were talking about or were just trying to get us into trouble) to park cars in the middle of every intersection in downtown MPLS in order to cause city-wide gridlock.

to think that all of these things are just coincidences that can be connected in no way at all is to give this administration and this government a lot more credit than they have shown that they deserve.

[seabeyond]

8. of course. that is a given. this has been out in past, just waiting for

the rest of the story. drip drip drip process. we never just get it.

[MichiganVote]

9. So long as they look for these needles in the haystacks

real criminals, with real agenda's, get away with whatever they want. Average Americans are about the poorest sources for intelligence there is. Besides, I believe that this all about two things, political peeing toms and corporate cataloguing of consumers. For the neocon's, nothing oculd be finer.

[leftyladyfrommo]

17. Political spying and spying on the New people?

[TahitiNut]

10. The lack of separation between government and global corporatism

... is what I find most frightening. We continue to use the old paradigms of "government intrusion" and ignore the coincident and more extensive "corporate intrusion" into our activities and attitudes. I'm beginning to think that the last thing we'll have to worry about is "due process" considerations - that whether a person can be legitimately prosecuted for "wrong-doing" based on the information collected by these extra-legal means is the least of our worries. The data being collected and the construction of a "Social Networking" information base has far more serious implications in economics, employment, and politics than merely public law enforcement.

I think it's worth remembering that virtually everything being done using taxpayer dollars is being done "under contract" by affiliates/subsidiaries of global corporations. It's like paying Boeing to develop a bomber or paying Westinghouse to develop a bomb. That capability is in the hands of those corporations. (I think of this when it comes to the "right to bear arms" - why nobody thinks about the "arms" in the hands of corporations.) When it comes to the kind of information being assembled, TRW credit reporting is a mere flea on the ass of an elepahnt. There's no telling where this information is being used - or for what purposes. Public "law enforcement" is trivial in comparison, I think.

[marions ghost]

11. yes

it keeps a lot of people and computers busy. I think the average American would be astounded if they knew the extent of it.

[Robbien]

12. Remember, the whistleblower said this is only the tip of the iceberg

We need to watch the NSA hearings very carefully next week and make sure we bug the MSM to report on it.

[Oeditpus Rex]

13. Certainly

If the technology exists, they'll use it for whatever they deem necessary. If political power were your blood and oxygen, you would too.

[Tactical Progressive]

14. The media whores got their story down within two days

glomming on almost immediately to that push-poll to show that slightly less than half the people polled were upset about it.

Their Republican-defending beltway take: Americans support Bush's illegal wiretapping of not just overseas calls, but of all communications within the United States.

Nothing to see here. Bush is protecting Murka. Move along.

They were all smiles at how quickly they had put it to bed on PBS's Washington Week in Review last night. I had to turn it off as I usually do.

Don't count on the corpo journalists to make anything of this revelation, even though one of them broke the story.

There is no amount of Republican corruption that gets to them. The only time they look worried is when something happens where they can't seem to defend Bush and Republicans. That gets them visibly flustered.

[Vidar]

15. Yes. This is McCarthy & J Edgar all over again, but much more wide spread

[Golden Raisin]

16. Do the words "tip of the proverbial iceberg"

mean anything to you? The phone stuff is just a small sample. This regime makes Hoover, Nixon, McCarthy look like bungling amateurs (and those previous generations didn't even have the advantages of today's technologies).

[Ksec]

18. Id be willing to bet the bank on it.

There is no way this is NOT being abused. Even if we were able to take them at their word that its "legal" , without the oversight its like waving a steak under a dogs nose. You know the dog is gonna eat that steak.