Warrantless Wiretapping

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But what laws did Bush break? What rights did you lose? You people are moonbats!

Ruling Limited Spying Efforts
Move to Amend FISA Sparked by Judge's Decision

By Carol D. Leonnig and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 3, 2007; A01



A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the Bush administration's wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers this week to expand the president's spying powers.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court's decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.

The judge, whose name could not be learned, concluded early this year that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States, according to two other government sources familiar with the decision.

The decision was both a political and practical blow to the administration, which had long held that all of the National Security Agency's enhanced surveillance efforts since 2001 were legal. The administration for years had declined to subject those efforts to the jurisdiction of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and after it finally did so in January the court ruled that the administration's legal judgment was at least partly wrong.

The practical effect has been to block the NSA's efforts to collect information from a large volume of foreign calls and e-mails that passes through U.S. communications nodes clustered around New York and California. Both Democrats and Republicans have signaled they are eager to fix that problem through amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

"There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States," Boehner told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto in a Tuesday interview.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/02/AR2007080202619_pf.html
 
"If you've got nothing to hide, why shouldn't you let the government listen to your phone conversations and read your mail???"

--Dixie
 
You can fight em over there and fight us here too.
Do you want terrorists in Bloomies shoe dept ?

No not in the Bloomies shoe department! I'll do anything to avoid terrorists in the Bloomies shoe department. Here, take my civil rights. Listen to my phone conversations. Read my emails. Ask me anything you want to know about my neighbors, I'll freely speculate on what I think they're doing. I'll rat out my newspaper boy! Anything. Just keep me safe when I'm buying shoes.
 
Yeah, you reminded me of the reporting suspicous acting people stuff and the recent stuff for legal protections for those who squeal on people that act different.
 
The practical effect has been to block the NSA's efforts to collect information from a large volume of foreign calls and e-mails that passes through U.S. communications nodes clustered around New York and California. Both Democrats and Republicans have signaled they are eager to fix that problem through amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Congress already passed this... BAC posted it yesterday.
 
I wonder how many loopholes are in what congress passed....
I would be pleasantly suprised if none exist to bypass the restriction.
 
I'm interested to find out that the communications simply passed through a node here. The whole cry has been, "They are monitoring our communications!" But it seems, at least in this story, no Americans were on the conversation, it simply passed through a node in the Eastern US.
 
Yes, insisting on FISA oversight which is not what the administration wanted. Anyway, the fact remains, Bush broke the law.
How many times has a law passed congressed that was later ruled unconstitutional? It seems that Congress, including the Dems, passed a law that bipartisanly lets him continue this activity and didn't pass a Impeachment over it. Hmmm....

It could be that much like any law passed or any action that once deemed unconstitutional it simply stops, at least until laws can be passed to either continue or to make it constitutional.
 
I'm interested to find out that the communications simply passed through a node here. The whole cry has been, "They are monitoring our communications!" But it seems, at least in this story, no Americans were on the conversation, it simply passed through a node in the Eastern US.

Again, I will be pleased if that is the whole truth Damo.
Somehow I doubt it though.
 
How many times has a law passed congressed that was later ruled unconstitutional? It seems that Congress, including the Dems, passed a law that bipartisanly lets him continue this activity and didn't pass a Impeachment over it. Hmmm....

It could be that much like any law passed or any action that once deemed unconstitutional it simply stops, at least until laws can be passed to either continue or to make it constitutional.

He knowingly broke the law, and the worst part is, we know only a very small fraction of what they actually did. Someday it will come out, but it will be at least 10 years from now and nobody will care. Well, most wouldn't care now anyway.
 
He knowingly broke the law, and the worst part is, we know only a very small fraction of what they actually did. Someday it will come out, but it will be at least 10 years from now and nobody will care. Well, most wouldn't care now anyway.

Well by then it will be pretty much as irrelavent as we will be deeper into a police state existance.
We will be worrying more about getting gas for our cars.
 
He knowingly broke the law, and the worst part is, we know only a very small fraction of what they actually did. Someday it will come out, but it will be at least 10 years from now and nobody will care. Well, most wouldn't care now anyway.
It seems in this case, like in the cases where they write unconstitional law, they believed that they were within it. After they found they were not, laws were proposed and passed. The system worked as it was supposed to.
 
It seems in this case, like in the cases where they write unconstitional law, they believed that they were within it. After they found they were not, laws were proposed and passed. The system worked as it was supposed to.

Even with the new legislation, they still need FISA approval, which they refused to get.

Therefore, they did not think they were within the law ( the law is very clear there), they thought they were above the law.
 
Even with the new legislation, they still need FISA approval, which they refused to get.

Therefore, they did not think they were within the law ( the law is very clear there), they thought they were above the law.
No, the judge ruled that they needed that extra step so the new law covers it. You are being disingenuous.

They thought they were within it, were ruled against, they requested and got a change. The system worked here.
 
No, the judge ruled that they needed that extra step so the new law covers it. You are being disingenuous.

They thought they were within it, were ruled against, they requested and got a change. The system worked here.

The law always stated, and still does, that they need FISA approval.

It's being disingenious to be able to read the law?

They broke the law, it's real simple here.
 
The law always stated, and still does, that they need FISA approval.

It's being disingenious to be able to read the law?

They broke the law, it's real simple here.
As I said, it was taken to court, they were ruled against, they asked for and received a change, that is how it is supposed to work if one side believes that they are within the law and the other side disagrees.

Sometimes they are vindicated in their belief, sometimes they are ruled against. In this case they were ruled against.
 
As I said, it was taken to court, they were ruled against, they asked for and received a change, that is how it is supposed to work if one side believes that they are within the law and the other side disagrees.

Sometimes they are vindicated in their belief, sometimes they are ruled against. In this case they were ruled against.

AS I said, who cares? The part about needing FISA approval was not changed, was illegal, still illegal.

You don't "believe" you're within the law.
 
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