Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : FREE AMERICA -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (5827)	5/11/2006 5:45:47 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 14758

<< "If it CANNOT listen to the content of my phone conversations without a court order (which it can't) I can see no reason why it has the right to know who I am talking to." >> Well, it can listen in without a warrant if the Executive Branch reasonably suspects you are speaking to known/suspected terrorists. It is part of the inherent powers the Prez has & the courts have always upheld. Gathering statistics about your calling patterns when done as part of a national security sweep as indicated by the illegal leak in the "news" today also falls under the inherent powers of the Prez.

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (5827)	5/11/2006 5:50:59 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14758

If it CANNOT listen to the content of my phone conversations without a court order (which it can't) I can see no reason why it has the right to know who I am talking to. actually it can... (oh and of course we can thank the NY Times and CIA leakers for rendering our secret monitoring strategy moot....just like they did a number of years ago when it was publicized that we had bin laden's satellite communication monitored, and of course he stopped, and of course 9/11 followed) --Strategy #4: Reject Secrecy. A subtext of many Patriot Act critiques is a refusal to grant any legitimacy to government secrecy. Recipients of document production orders in terror investigations—whether Section 215 orders or national security letters under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act--should be able to publicize the government’s request, say the critics; targets of searches should be notified at the time of the search. Time and again, law enforcement critics disparage the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, because its proceedings are closed to the public. The ACLU, for example, opposes the roving wiretap authority for terrorism investigations in the Patriot Act (Section 206), even though criminal investigators have long had the roving wiretap option, because Section 206 wiretaps “are authorized secretly without a showing of probable cause of crime.” (Section 206 requests must demonstrate probable cause that the wiretap target is an agent of a foreign power and that he will be using the tapped communications devices.) This transparent approach may satisfy those on the left and right who believe that the American people have no greater enemy than their own government, but it fails to answer the major question: how would it possibly be effective in protecting the country? The Patriot Act critics fail to grasp the distinction between the prosecution of an already committed crime, for which probable cause and publicity requirements were crafted, and the effort to preempt a catastrophic attack on American soil before it happens. For preemptive investigations, secrecy is of the essence. Opponents of the Patriot Act have never explained how they think the government can track down the web of Islamist activity in public. These four strategies, in various combinations—hide the judge, invent new rights, conceal legal precedent, and reject secrecy—lie behind nearly all of the Patriot Act attacks. The crusade against Section 214, for example, which allows the government to record the numbers dialed from a phone if relevant to a terrorism investigation (the so-called pen register power), uses all four strategies. (A related section, Section 216, extends the longstanding rules on pen registers, to the 21st century technologies of e-mail. Section 216 allows the government to capture only an e-mail’s routing and addressing information, not its content.) Section 214 merely allows the agents investigating a terrorism case the same power that criminal investigators have. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls the section “a serious threat to privacy.” This charge rests on inventing new rights. In fact, pen registers threaten no privacy rigths, as the Supreme Court has held, because there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in the numbers dialed from a phone, which are recorded already by telephone companies. Even though judicial authorization for a pen register is not constitutionally required, section 214 nevertheless mandates that the government obtain an order from the FISA court for their use. EFF dismisses the value of the court, however, because it “operates in total secrecy.” In conclusion, the Patriot Act is a balanced updating of surveillance authority in light of the new reality of catastrophic terrorism. It corrects anachronisms in law enforcement powers, whereby health care fraud investigators, for example, enjoyed greater ability to gather evidence than Al Qaeda intelligence squads. It created no novel powers, but built on existing authorities within the context of constitutional checks and balances. It protects civil liberties while making sure that intelligence analysts can get the information they need to protect the country. The law should be reenacted. manhattan-institute.org

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (5827)	5/11/2006 8:04:14 PM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14758

Why not? The gov't has my ss#. It does NOT have the right to publicize it. The same applies to most info on a tax return. It does not have the right to know what books I have in my house unless it goes before a judge and gets a search warrant. If it CANNOT listen to the content of my phone conversations without a court order (which it can't) I can see no reason why it has the right to know who I am talking to. Inapt. Your SSN and tax information are protected from disclosure by specific federal statutes (try starting with 26 USC Sec. 6103) As for who you are talking to, this latest criminal leak does not related to a program to identify who you are talking to, much less what you are talking about. As I understand the program, it identifies calling patterns. If your calling patterns or those calling you match up with whatever parameters are programmed to be identified, then they might look further. Whether that is done with a FISA warrant or otherwise, I don't know.