If this surveillance program is so in-dept why haven't they broken up the child prostitution

[Maraya1969]

rings and child pornography rings?

Just a question. I don't have the answer.

[bowens43]

1. If it's warm in the summer why are traffic lights red yellow and green? Just asking

[Maraya1969]

3. Are you trying to say the only reason they institute this is to control the people and that they

ignore this horrible crime by design?

After watching a Dr. Phil show about a week ago about a girl who was a victim of incest and fed heroin by her father and taken to a warehouse regularly in Mexico where she was dropped off and all the men there raped her and she was made to beat up another younger, smaller girl I would consider allowing surveillance if it meant getting all these monsters behind bars.

So if surveillance is used why haven't they at least applied it to some good?

[loyalsister]

16. Exactly

I have talked with a human rights investigator who was focused on human trafficking. Since those crimes often take place in public businesses, they enlisted the federal and state inspectors (ie. food inspectors) who did not need warrants.
It is a complicated process, and certainly if the surveillance extended as far as some claim it would be much easier.

[In_The_Wind]

2. My guess is:It needs to be programed to look for that.

[randome]

4. 'It'?

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[In_The_Wind]

5. ... call it what you will, - - - needs to be programed with a word ( s ) to detect

[Recursion]

11. The surveillance system

The NSA doesn't have the resources to actually look at all the traffic in the world, so they have to be applying heuristics of some sort, and those are presumably not targeted at child porn since that's not the NSA's brief.

[Are_grits_groceries]

27. They could write an algorithm(s)

to find child porn rings. They would probably need some info from experts who deal with it, but it can be done.
They aren't concerned with it.
If you want to talk about terror, those kids are ground zero for it.

[Recursion]

29. Several possibilities come to mind

1. Snowden is conning Greenwald, and in fact the government isn't actually intercepting all communications

2. They are, and the high profile child porn ring busts of recent years are a result of that

3. They are, but they're not using it for domestic law enforcement for legal reasons

[Are_grits_groceries]

33. I thought about #2.

Hopefully, that is the case.

"Legal" has become an extremely fungible term. I'm sure they could come up with a legal reason no matter how tortured it would be. They are masters at that.

[SugarShack]

6. Because our government is involved in the "black money" these "rings" provide

Google the Franklin Cover Up

[1-Old-Man]

7. Because such rings are of no interest

And you can tell because if they cared they'd be there.

[Zorra]

8. Child prostitution does not affect the 1%.

It does not threaten their wealth, power, or control.

[1-Old-Man]

12. I've got to be honest with you, its never effected me either

By the way, Affect means to convey a false impression. I think you meant to say Effect.

[Zorra]

23. Thanks. nt

[historylovr]

26. No, you used it correctly. nt

[Are_grits_groceries]

24. Effect is a noun.

Affect is a verb.

Where can I find a definition of either being used differently?

[1-Old-Man]

36. Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition (Deluxe), 1975; pp 23

It actually gives two completely different definitions, not numbers 1 and 2 but to completely different entries. My definition came from the second entry. I'd transcribe them for you here but I'm having real problems with my eyesight this morning.

[WinkyDink]

14. Bwahahahah! Oh, it most certainly does, just maybe not the way you mean.

[Zorra]

22. Thanks. I didn't want to go there with that caveat. nt

[ladjf]

18. My guess is that you are "on the money". It's a simple matter of priorities as they relate to money

and power which are almost synonymous.

[sibelian]

9. Because they aren't mining the data to get the "terrorists" or the "child abusers".

They are mining the data to get the DATA.

[Recursion]

10. They do all the time

There's usually one big ring broken up every year or so. But that's the FBI, so you'd have to look at their programs for that.

[Daniel537]

13. The elite don't give a shit about that.

For fucks sake, this is the richest country on Earth and we can't even get universal health care, what would make anybody think our govt. is seriously interested in the well being of the people?

[Octafish]

15. It might expose ''sources and methods.''

Double-talk for when they don't want to divulge how they do it in court or public.

[boilerbabe]

17. they break up child prostitution rings all the damn time. you are never going to completely wipe out

all crime so there is NONE left no matter what is being done.

[Dash87]

19. Because they don't care. That sums it up.

[leeroysphitz]

20. These programs,so they say, focus on anti-terrism, not law enforcement.

God help us all if domestic law enforcement agencies ever get a hold of these digital spy systems...

[stevenleser]

21. The reason appeals courts view this surveillance as a 4th amendment exception is that the ultimate

target of the surveillance is foreign affiliated espionage or terrorist groups. You cannot use this data to prosecute regular crime. As soon as you do, you violate the 4th amendment rights of whoever you are going after. Note here http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022981244 I talk about this...

FISA was created by Ted Kennedy for two reasons. First, it was created as a response to President Nixon using warrantless wiretaps and other searches to target political opponents and activist groups. The other reason it was created was made clear by one of the US Court of appeals decisions that affirmed the constitutionality of FISA, and that is the 1984 US v Duggan decision. Part of the Duggan decision reads:

Prior to the enactment of FISA, virtually every court that had addressed the issue had concluded that the President had the inherent power to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence information, and that such surveillances constituted an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment.

The Duggan decision goes on to list six or seven other appeals court decisions where courts concluded that the President has the inherent power to conduct this kind of warrantless electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence information.

[Demo_Chris]

25. Because that's not the point

It does not exist to serve you or the people. It's not there to stop terrorists or criminals, it's not even there to protect the government. The purpose is power and fear, not for any objective purpose, but as an end in itself. THIS is one of the most difficult things for ordinary sane people to get their minds around -- they simply do not think in that way -- and this is one of the great dangers. It's rarely stopped in time precisely for this reason, ordinary people are simply not wired this way.

[historylovr]

28. Exactly. nt

[Poll_Blind]

30. Maraya, I want to show you two articles:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-01/missile-defense-staff-warned-to-stop-surfing-porn-sites.html
[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: none; border-radius: 0.3846em 0.3846em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]Missile Defense Staff Warned to Stop Surfing Porn Sites[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: none; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3846em 0.3846em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency warned its employees and contractors last week to stop using their government computers to surf the Internet for pornographic sites, according to the agency’s executive director.

In a one-page memo, Executive Director John James Jr. wrote that in recent months government employees and contractors were detected “engaging in inappropriate use of the MDA network.”

“Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images,” James wrote in the July 27 memo obtained by Bloomberg News.

“These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code,” he wrote.

More at the link!

Bonus blast from the recent past:
9/3/2010: Pentagon declined to investigate hundreds of purchases of child pornography

A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department -- including some with the highest available security clearance -- who used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show.

The cases turned up during a 2006 ICE inquiry, called Project Flicker, which targeted overseas processing of child-porn payments. As part of the probe, ICE investigators gained access to the names and credit card information of more than 5,000 Americans who had subscribed to websites offering images of child pornography. Many of those individuals provided military email addresses or physical addresses with Army or fleet ZIP codes when they purchased the subscriptions.

PB

[Newest Reality]

31. It appears to be for the benefit

of those who benefit most from the surveillance. The government works with the major corporations that provide the technology in order to protect its own interests.

The mistake is to assume that the protection involved relates, primarily to us, in general. There is a bigger picture that sort of comes together and if you watch a James Bond movie, you get a sense of what's more important at that level of the spheres within spheres.

However, that was a good question to posit since it gives the potential to sort-out the assumptions and conflation about who does what for whom.

We are more like numbers, statistics or livestock -- a herd.

[Drale]

32. Because many of the Republican "Officials"

are involved in those rings

[sabrina 1]

34. Why weren't they able to stop the Boston bombers especially since they knew about one of them?

Maybe when you are busy collecting so much data (probably more for Corporate interests than for terror) that you can't even read it, rather than focusing on actual suspects, you miss the real terrorists and spend your time learning who is going to what wedding in Ca or hiring what limousine company to take their kids to the prom.

[n2doc]

35. Because they don't want to send Rush Limbaugh to prison

There, I went there.