So what's what's worse: a terrorist attack or the loss of liberty?

You make it sound all inclusive. Which liberties and freedoms are you speaking about? I might agree with your comment if I knew which you were thinking about.

I see no particular liberty concerning phone calls. After all the telephone company already has records of all numbers called. I see no thread in the government know who I call. I am not particularly concerned about tracing e-mail to who I send them to. Internet servers already have that tracked also.

Additionally every web site you visit is tracked and shared. That is how advertisements are selected to show up on your computer.

There is no privacy when you are no the Internet nor telephone.

As I said in another thread, make is as difficult as possible for terrorists to communicate secretly.

 

Is collecting all phone records of all Americans a "reasonable search and seizure"?

If you say no, then you have to ask if such collection violates the 4th amendment.

If you say yes, then you invalidate Supreme Court rulings that supplement the 4th Amendment regarding "probable cause," or you must explain why ALL Americans are considered suspects and thereby subject to probable cause.

Anyone who would sacrifice constitutionally-given protections from their government, doesn't deserve the freedoms that constitution provides.

 

Ah, but the government is employing Clinton-speak to get around the 4th amendment. They say that since they are acquiring information on almost all Americans it's simply an info dump. It's not a search unless they actually look at individual phone records, they say.

 

I believe the data collection is under the guise of terrorism is a cover for something else. We already know that IRS agents gave conservative tax and donor info to the DNC.

Why should we believe anything different would be done with this info.

 

It's more than just Clinton speak. When the government is actively funding and arming the very enemy it's using to scare us into giving up our liberties there's something wrong with the picture.

When the same government that claims the authority to execute American citizens without due process of law merely for being suspected of supporting terrorism can openly collect money to lobby for a known terrorist group then strut around free like they hadn't just violated the law they helped pass there's something wrong with the picture.

When the same government that is telling us it needs to have huge databases full of our personal information on hand forever is telling us it's most secure computer networks are being hacked by other countries (or corporations?) there's something wrong with the picture.

Can you guess what it is?

 

Boulder, Colorado police are using the same principle. Can't find the article right this minute, but a woman complained that she left her door open; she doesn't have a screen door; and left for a while. When she came back, there was a note on her table that a policeman had been in her house. She asked, and was confirmed, that the local police consider that an open door and no response to voiced inquiries implies consent to enter the premises.

Frankly, while I understand the mindset that maybe someone had fallen and needed help - and I completely condone that the officer left a note identifying that he'd been in the house - I'm not sure how I feel about the police department acknowledging that this is standard operating procedure. I mean, there was no actual probable cause ... and frankly, I could use the "I was checking to make sure no one had fallen and couldn't get up" excuse any time I wanted to go into someone's house....

 

BTW - and this one's for you, Poncho - I'd been wondering for a couple of years what they replaced Carnivore with. Now we know.

 

What the IRS and the NSA did was illegal. It was done for the benefit of the Obama re-election campaign. I imagine that the Democrats might want to give Snowden the death penalty. This surpasses Watergate in all respects. The tracking of plastic card transactions could be used to trace political activity as well as purchases of self-defense items. Obama claims that the telephone companies were only keeping records for a short time and therefore the government had to keep them forever. It is unclear to me why Obama wants to read my computer activity keystroke by keystroke.

One is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, although that is not true South of the Border where one is guilty till proven innocent. It seems that Americans are moving to Roman law where one is guilty or one would not be arrested, would one?

 

Well, now we know more how much is there we don't know?

I found this to be interesting.

UK gathering secret intelligence via covert NSA operation

The UK's electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ, has been secretly gathering intelligence from the world's biggest internet companies through a covertly run operation set up by America's top spy agency, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The documents show that GCHQ, based in Cheltenham, has had access to the system since at least June 2010, and generated 197 intelligence reports from it last year.

The US-run programme, called Prism, would appear to allow GCHQ to circumvent the formal legal process required to seek personal material such as emails, photos and videos from an internet company based outside the UK.

CONTINUE . . .

 

I'm with Patrick Henry:

Give me liberty, or give me death.