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In reply to the discussion: Photos of an NSA “upgrade” factory show Cisco router getting implant [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)83. You really should learn why NSA spying on Americans is so, uh, wrong.
The late Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) explained:
That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesnt matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I dont want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.
I dont want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.
Sen. Church was a patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American. The guy also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy:
In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committees responsibility for Welchs death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.
SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1
SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1
From GWU's National Security Archives:
"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.
Newly Declassified History Divulges Names of Prominent Americans Targeted by NSA during Vietnam Era
Declassification Decision by Interagency Panel Releases New Information on the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Panama Canal Negotiations
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 441
Posted September 25, 2013
Originally Posted - November 14, 2008
Edited by Matthew M. Aid and William Burr
Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history. For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. Also startling is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Howard Baker (R-Tennessee).
SNIP...
Another NSA target was Senator Frank Church, who started out as a moderate Vietnam War critic. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Church worried about U.S. intervention in a "political war" that was militarily unwinnable. While Church voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, he later saw his vote as a grave error. In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson made decisions to escalate the war, Church argued that the United States was doing "too much," criticisms that one White House official said were "irresponsible." Church had been one of Johnson's Senate allies but the President was angry with Church and other Senate critics and later suggested that they were under Moscow's influence because of their meetings with Soviet diplomats. In the fall of 1967, Johnson declared that "the major threat we have is from the doves" and ordered FBI security checks on "individuals who wrote letters and telegrams critical of a speech he had recently delivered." In that political climate, it is not surprising that some government officials eventually nominated Church for the watch list.[10]
SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/
I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-CT) also got the treatment from NSA?
I think that the (Warren Commission) report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the (investigation of the) John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up. Senator Richard Schweiker on Face the Nation in 1976.
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Photos of an NSA “upgrade” factory show Cisco router getting implant [View all]
grahamhgreen
May 2014
OP
You stated where you think the NSA should be reigned in? And its operations overseen
villager
May 2014
#34
Ah yes, "the NSA isn't violating any laws! The 'courts' are keeeping them in check!"
villager
May 2014
#40
I'd imagine many more alternative exist; e.g., a dogmatic hack, possibly...
LanternWaste
May 2014
#12
after reading this thread so far, it's interesting the person trying to have an actual discussion
KittyWampus
May 2014
#77
Yes, we understand - they are spying on the wrong people, inciting wars, and destabilizing the world
grahamhgreen
May 2014
#47
No. I do understand your points. I hope you understand mine. What I'd like to see is evidence
grahamhgreen
May 2014
#102
Yes. Why? They work for me and have zero credibility. They've jumped the shark and are over their
grahamhgreen
May 2014
#104
So does a police state. They work for us. They are spying on us. They failed on 9-11 & Iraq. They
grahamhgreen
May 2014
#107
Sure, but the NSA should not be performing them. They seem to have been corrupted by the neo-cons.
grahamhgreen
May 2014
#109
Would you keep going back to the same doctors once you figured out that nothing was wrong with you,
grahamhgreen
May 2014
#111
In my view, the NSA is not providing intelligence for the American people. They are willfully
grahamhgreen
May 2014
#121
What part of the NSA Charter allows them to gather intelligence on US Citizens domestically?
Savannahmann
May 2014
#71
Except they didnt show up until after someone posted a taunt that was sure to draw them in
cstanleytech
May 2014
#44
I'm disappointed. I thought for sure you'd go with your 'there is no proof' argument.
DesMoinesDem
May 2014
#24
I object that you didn't claim that the NSA newsletter wasn't proof of anything.
DesMoinesDem
May 2014
#28
nice to see the NSA use the baby blue console cable like the rest of the world
snooper2
May 2014
#20
I'm SHOCKED, SCHOCKED I SAY That our spy agencies actually, you know, SPY! eom
MohRokTah
May 2014
#60
I would agree with you. What is described in the story does NOT violate the 4th
MohRokTah
May 2014
#58
No, the traitors who shipped all our chip manufacturing to China deserve prison!
grahamhgreen
May 2014
#53
Exactly. It's a strange, narrow panic-response, causing more and more rhetorical knots
villager
May 2014
#69