Newsmax lies and says Clinton did same NSA spying

[papau]

WHICH IS NOT QUITE TRUE. All eavesdropping by NSA was outside US under Clinton. The Toronto Center would capture key word phrases and then the operator would send captured phrase plus conversation 30 seconds before and after after to superior to see if followup needed. At this point the speaker is unknown. If follow up is approved and outside USA, NSA went for FISA Court order to allow identification of speaker and future eavesdropping of that person. As usual the right wing lies via partial truth. And I expect our media to lie by saying the same GOP points that miss the facts.
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Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency has eavesdropped on the international phone calls and emails of people inside the United States without court-approved warrants.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/12/16/142620/20

More generally, Newsweek reports that from January 2004 to May 2005, the NSA supplied intercepts and names of 10,000 U.S. citizens to policy-makers at many departments, other U.S. intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies."
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With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff
For the story behind the story...
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/18/221452.shtml


"During the 1990's under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon.

On Friday, the New York Times suggested that the Bush administration has instituted "a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices" when it "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without court-approved warrants."

But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 1990s - all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.

In February 2000, for instance, CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:

"If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency." NSA computers, said Kroft, "capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world."

Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told "60 Minutes" that the agency was monitoring "everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs."

Mr. Frost detailed activities at one unidentified NSA installation, telling "60 Minutes" that agency operators "can listen in to just about anything" - while Echelon computers screen phone calls for key words that might indicate a terrorist threat.<snip>

Still, the Times repeatedly insisted on Friday that NSA surveillance under Bush had been unprecedented, at one point citing anonymously an alleged former national security official who claimed: "This is really a sea change. It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches."<snip>


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http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd29.htm
PRESIDENTIAL DECISION DIRECTIVE/NSC - 29
Security Policy Coordination

Are there any civil rights safeguards actually working?
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1994 Clinton Administration Counter Terrorism Initiative plan

http://www.cdt.org/policy/terrorism/adm-anti-terror-otl.html
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Under current law they can do the eavesdropping for 3 days without a court order. They did not need to break the law.

They must get an order within 72 hours of starting.

And they refuse to do so.

And it is a Court that never says no to the administration (the secret FISA Court).

Feingold is correct - the law is clear.

The NY Times only error was in not reporting this during the 2004 election campaign - and in buying the National Security/inherent power of the King idea.

[papau]

1. Correction of my error above - paragraph should read:

All eavesdropping by NSA was outside US under Clinton. The Toronto Center via computer analaysis would capture key word phrases and then the operator would send transcribed captured phrase plus conversation 30 seconds before and after after to superior to see if followup needed. At this point the speaker is unknown. If follow up is approved and is "not" ("not" is a VERY IMPORTANT WORD! :-) ) outside USA, NSA went for FISA Court order to allow identification of speaker and future eavesdropping of that person. As usual the right wing lies via partial truth. And I expect our media to lie by saying the same GOP points that miss the facts.

[papau]

2. Clinton's HR 1555 added more controls on the NSA

The following is an extract of Section 309 of H.R. 1555. The full bill can be found at:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.1555.ENR :

SEC. 309. REPORT ON LEGAL STANDARDS APPLIED FOR ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE.

(a) REPORT- Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of Central Intelligence, the Director of the National Security Agency, and the Attorney General shall jointly prepare, and the Director of the National Security Agency shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees, a report in classified and unclassified form providing a detailed analysis of the legal standards employed by elements of the intelligence community in conducting signals intelligence activities, including electronic surveillance.

snip

http://www.actionamerica.org/echelon/echelon1555.html
"Events in the United States have also indicated that the "wall of silence" might not last much longer. Exercising their Constitutionally created oversight authority, members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence started asking questions about the legal basis for NSA's ECHELON activities. In particular, the Committee wanted to know if the communications of Americans were being intercepted and under what authority, since US law severely limits the ability of the intelligence agencies to engage in domestic surveillance. When asked about its legal authority, NSA invoked the attorney-client privilege and refused to disclose the legal standards by which ECHELON might have conducted its activities. (27)

President Clinton then signed into law a funding bill which required the NSA to report on the legal basis for ECHELON and similar activities. (28) However, the subsequent report (entitled Legal Standards for the Intelligence Community in Conducting Electronic Surveillance) gave few details about Echelon's operations and legality. (29) "

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ECHELON

[freesqueeze]

3. Even if it were true...

This is the lamest of all defenses for misbehaving.

But Dad, all the kids are doing it!

I wouldn't let my four-year-old get away with that.

[dennis4868]

4. cnn radio.....

radio was reporting that Newsmax has learned that clinton did the dame thing as Bush....really sad that CNN relies on Newsmax so much.