Just because Bush did this in his administration which was wrong I think Obama is really pissing people off by doing this when he said at one time he never believed in this at all with his transparency messages always.What is next seeing what toilet paper people use.

Regarding Prism: Glenn Grenwald got the media to bite on a story that is 6 years old.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/07/aclu-challenges/


That toilet paper might be the Washington Post, now seriously walking back the sensationalist Grenwald claims.

The Washington Post Has Now Hedged Its S...o Their Servers

The story isn't 6 years old -- proof of the Executive's use of FISA legislation to cast incredibly broad nets across vast swaths of domestic communications is today's news. Back 6 years ago we were assured this would be used only in instances of international communications to catch bad guys talking to bad guys in other countries. Now it seems it's been used as a license to launch giant fishing expeditions domestically and to gather details of all domestic communications over the last few years in to a convenient, easily-searched and -mined database ...

I don't recall all that happening 6 years ago ...




It seems "direct access" may be in they eye of the beholder -- giving the NSA an API with which they can gather data from your server with their own interface rather than tapping directly into the server itself may or may not not qualify as "direct" is a strict sense, but the result is the same ...

I understand the rationale behind PRISM and that it's legal under current law. The conversation we need to have is wether those legal actions should be kept secret when they threaten the privacy of a huge portion of the population, and wether the fact that we've legalized such behavior is worth whatever "security" we're getting in return ...

Barry actually addressed this yesterday: "You can't have 100% security, and also then have 100% privacy and 0 inconvenience [...] we're gonna have to make some choices as a society" Which sounds great until you realize the hypocrisy of proposing a conversation about making choices while having tried to keep those same choices a secret from everybody ...

The Republican majority of both houses of the 109th Congress gave Bush the power of the Patriot Act to conduct data mining under the FISA court, and immunity to all of the telecommunications companies that he had previously abused his power to avoid FISA Court Warrants.

I argued this point many years ago on this forum. The Bush NSA was criminal because it purposely avoided the FISA court, or played this stupid game of getting FISA warrants months & years after the fact to cover the administrations ass … and then the Republican Congress gave it all blanket immunity retroactively.

The Republican congress gave Bush executive power to everything that's now a Prism "scandal" for Obama, as if Obama is breaking the law. When in fact the Intelligence committee and congress has been routinely notified of the NSA's actions under FISA court orders. But with Obama it's a scandal. The headlines last week from Grenwald were that Prism was used domestically, now the news agencies are very quietly backpedalling on that. Grenwald's other sensational headlines of phone taps and illegal eavesdropping stretches the truth and only feeds the rightwing echo chamber and progressive left, but none of the metadata gathering is new and none of it is illegal.

I don't like the executive powers under the Patriot Act but I find it more offensive to misrepresent the legal actions of the NSA and attack the president because the public doesn't have a grasp of these executive powers. That's all the rightwing media cares about, and what is scary is how quickly all the media is interested in is a sensationalist headline.

I recall just a few weeks ago Obama made a very important speech to reconfigure and reboot our position on the War on Terrorism. Yet, today Obama could give a detailed talk to the American people on the Patriot Act and executive power, the NSA and counterterrorism efforts and a heavy dose of no-nonsense reality checks --- but if some douchebag from CodePink stands up and heckles him, then THAT is the only thing the media will report.

In my opinion, Glenn Grenwald is just this week's douchebag. He's obviously got a direct line to another douchebag with Congressional Intelligence clearance that's feeding him a steady stream of classified docs. So todays fauxoutrage is that the military has plans on how to conduct cyber attacks on foreign countries. Yes, this is now another Grenwald created Obama scandal.

The republicans and the mainstream media do not like the fact that a democratic president has executive powers, even after the President himself said a few weeks ago that some of these powers should be limited … but all the public heard then was that CodePink yelled at the President.

People on Facebook and Gmail are so upset about losing metadata privacy, LOL!

Why do you say the Republicans do not like this type of action Obama is involved in now?

Meh... It doesn't meta to me.

Now Rand Paul has jumped on the bandwagon.

Rand, Rand, Rand! You're part of the Congress that authorized and funded this! You can't have it both ways!

PLEASE !!! . . Don't confuse him with mere FACTS !!

Too bad he's a douchebag, Gary. For a lesser man you coulda used this.

Because the perpetual paranoid dystopia inside the rightwing/FoxNews media bubble has the unique ability to insulate their soulless hatred for the President and project upon themselves an image of Reagan/Jesus saviors of the Constitution, liberty, morality and prosperity … Bush Good, Obama Bad. >>>>> get it? <<<<