Orwellian Speak
"Much of the press has called this a surveillance
program, it is not."
Senator Diane Feinstein (D)
It is all an Orwellian control of the language to fool the simple minded. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. NSA surveillance does not exist.
Also note that all this unconstitutional spying never alerted us to Major Hasan, the Boston Bombing, the mall attack in Kenya, the attack on our embassy in Libya or the recent slaughter of Pakistani Christians by terrorists.
So who are we really spying on? If we are not watching terrorists, then a process of elimination says we are spying on the average American and building files on their friends, emails, politics, text messages, weapons and interests.
U.S. officials refused to answer lawmakers’ questions in public on Thursday about the full scope of the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ data, including whether it has ever sought to acquire large volumes of cellphone location information or other records.
The neo-fascist hacks won't say in public if they are spying on the American people. Everything is "classified". Effectively our leaders are telling the people to fuck off and go away.
NSA Director Keith Alexander dodged questions
NSA Director Keith Alexander dodged questions by a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee about whether the agency has ever tried to augment its broad collection of virtually all Americans’ phone-call records by gathering data that would indicate the callers’ locations. He noted that intelligence officials had given a classified answer to the question reports the Washington Post.
“Is it the goal of the NSA to collect the phone records of all Americans?” Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) asked.
“I believe it is in the nation’s best interests to put all the phone records into a lockbox that we could search when the nation needs to do it, yes,” Alexander said.
Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Udall and other lawmakers have introduced reform legislation that would, among other things, end the phone records collection, while allowing for a more limited program.
On Thursday, Wyden accused U.S. officials of not being more forthcoming about intelligence-collection programs.
“The leadership of your agencies built an intelligence-collection system that repeatedly deceived the American people,” he said. “Time and time again, the American people were told one thing about domestic surveillance in public forums while government agencies did something else in private.”
At the start of the hearing, the Democratic chair of the committee, Diane Feinstein, outlined a separate bill she is introducing with Republican vice-chairman Saxby Chambliss.
Their proposed legislation broadly echoes the small tweaks the intelligence establishment says it will consider, but does not go further.
Republican Senator Chambliss defended the unconstitutional spying and said that "while we are here in large part because of the Snowden leaks", they had caused huge damage to the US and its interests and "would ultimately claim lives", something he said Snowden should be held to account for.
The Feinstein-Chambliss bill would also widen the powers of the NSA, allowing laws that authorise foreign spying to be continued for a period of time after targets enter the United States. Never mind that the 4th Amendment requires a search warrant.
Other senators on the committee criticised media reporting and argued the essence of the surveillance apparatus should be left in place. Republican Senator Dan Coats said journalists were throwing "raw meat out there", suggesting the reporting was misleading the public. He cautioned against overreacting "for fear of the public saying, 'Oh, that headline makes me nervous,'" reports the UK Guardian.
Democrat Jay Rockefeller said that public "misunderstandings" of the unconstitutional spying risked dismantling a system of surveillance that has taken a decade to construct in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. "You don't build a Roman fort and then build another one next door because you've made a mistake," he said.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden who, as a member of the committee, has for years been privy to classified briefings that he cannot discuss in public. "You talk about the damage that has been done by disclosures, but any government official who thought this would never be disclosed was ignoring history. The truth always manages to come out," he said.
Surviving The Surveillance State
Glenn Beck's "SURVEILLANCE STATE"
. “Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984 |
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