Bush is Genius?
 

But if there is a Congressional law saying Middle Eastern entities are de facto suspious, wouldn't that be probable cause to troll through all calls into and out of those countries?

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

Sure, per the algorithms.

Which means they probably had some hits and a lot more misses, and until they listened in on all of the pieces of information that the algorithms pulled out, they weren't going to know which were hits and which were misses.

So some guy's conversations over the course of a few weeks with his brother in Beirut about whether or not to put mom in a nursing home would have been followed up on for a while until the NSA guys figured out if he was a hit or a miss.

The question is how often do the algorithms pick up hits? My guess is not often enough to be able to go to a judge and say "we have modeling evidence that conversations at xyz time from abc place, with the words 'coherent' and 'broccoli' will lead to al Qaida operatives more than half the time. We need to follow up on this guy for a few days." Hell, until they tried out the modeling, they were not going to even know how often they would pick up hits.

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

Maybe, but the point I'm making is that I, and a majority of the country, are not holding our civil rights as absolute/are comfortable with some infringement depending on the severity of the circumstances.



If Bush was violating the constitution, I imagine it wouldn't be illegal for them to come out with that. They also could have threatened to cut funding.

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

Are the very few people who knew about this stuff actually the ones who come up with budgets? It seems like it would be different committees. Also, this seems like an area that wouldn't really be a line-item funding thingy, plus, how do you single out something you can't say to be denied funding, when the budget for the agency goes to a lot of things that can't be disclosed in any detail at all?

You seem very naive here.

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

Maybe, but the point I'm making is that this is not about civil rights, it's about the constitutional separation of powers and whether the President can simply ignore the law and the courts when he wants to.

You would imagine wrong. There's nothing that I know of in the federal code that says that you can reveal classified information because you think another government official is violating the Constitution. Hell, Rockefeller couldn't even talk to a staff lawyer to get legal advice about the situation.

Maybe you're not following. They couldn't tell anyone. A subset of "anyone" is "other Congressmen."

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

No, I would ask the secret court for a warrant. Not so tough.

can't think of funny re. line :(
 

http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=951

This link has a declassified summary of an al queda foot soldier's opinion of bin Ladin. Parts of it read like how you guys see W. It's sort of funny.

• PERHAPS, BROTHER ABU MATTAR HAS WARNED YOU THAT HIS OPINION HAS
  CHANGED A LOT SINCE HE GOT OUT OF HIS PREVIOUS SITUATION. HE HELD ME
  RESPONSIBLE BY SAYING TO ME: FEAR ALLAH BECAUSE YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE
  AMONG THE BRETHREN WHO IS NOW IN THE EXTERIOR AND THE WHOLE MATTER IS
  ON YOUR SHOULDERS. I HAD THIS MATTER ON MY MIND, BUT I AVOIDED IT
  BECAUSE THE TEACHER (TN: BIN-LADIN) CORRESPONDS DIRECTLY WITH YOU
  (AND THAT, UNFORTUNATELY, IS HIS ABSOLUTE HABIT THAT HE WILL NOT
  ABANDON. IF SOMEONE OPPOSES HIM, HE IMMEDIATELY PUTS FORWARD ANOTHER
  PERSON TO RENDER AN OPINION IN HIS SUPPORT, CLINGING TO HIS OPINION
  AND TOTALLY DISREGARDING THOSE AROUND HIM, SO THERE IS NO ADVICE NOR
  NOTHING) . THE CONSEQUENCES THAT YOU SEE ARE NOTHING, BUT AN OUTCOME OF THIS
  ONRUSH. VERY REGRETTABLY, HAD I TALKED BEFORE THE DISASTERS OCCURRED
  -AND I DID TALK -I WOULD HAVE BEEN CONSIDERED A COVETOUS PERSON,
  BUT NOW THAT THE MATTER HAS BECOME A REALITY, I HAVE ABSOLVED MY
  CONSCIENCE. HE (TN: THE TEACHER) PUSHES YOU RELENTLESSLY AND WITHOUT
  CONSIDERATION AS IF HE HAS NOT HEARD THE NEWS AND AS IF HE DOES NOT
  COMPREHEND THE EVENTS. TO ABSOLVE MY CONSCIENCEB EFORE ALLAH, AND TO
  ANNOUNCE MY INNOCENCE IN FRONT OF ALLAH, I SAY TODAY WE MUST
  COMPLETELY HALT ALL EXTERNAL ACTIONS UNTIL WE SIT DOWN AND CONSIDER
  THE DISASTER WE CAUSED.

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

as usual, you seem very naive here.

I wonder how waiting for a warrant to listen to Mussiaou and the other September 11 hijackers is working out for the majority of people in the world trade on September 11.

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

I thought you could apply after the fact.

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

and yet it still probably would have been to their benefit if someone had been leading the charge to listen to these guys back in 2000 when a lot of planning was going on. your pov is probably some consolation though, your caring side is showing again.

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

You can.

Of course, the joke of it is (if it's a joke) was that NSA intercepted communications that, in retrospect, were a tip-off something big was going to happen. They just didn't realize it in time (I think they were caught the day before or maybe a couple of days).

eta: link to WaPo story

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

There you go again - the discussion was about getting a warrant under FISA. Be a man, put another in the L column, and move on.

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

yes, good one. not as funny as "bush is dumb" but still better than SS's best material.

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

Are you suggesting that they sought a warrant and were denied one? Or are you just a fucking idiot?

Port (yes, whine) Issue
 

I agree absolutely. It would have been good if, in the first 9 months of 2000, before the 9/11 attacks that occurred in 2000, someone had been leading the charge to investigate and listen in on al Qaeda. Especially after that report came out, in the summer of 2000, that al Qaeda was "determined to strike within the US. Unfortunately, the government sat on its hands throughout 2000, and then, on 9/11/2000 we were attacked.

Still, though -- it seems to me that the problem was in not using the intelligence that was available, throughout the first 9 months of 2000. Not that anyone was "waiting to get a warrant"

If you have any basis for saying that the problem was that they were worried that they couldn't get a warrant, I would like to hear it. But I think it was simply that the federal government was not bothering to investigate at all, and that this is why there was no effort to do a damn thing throughout the first nine months of 2000 despite the warnings that came in the months before 9/11/2000.