Domestic Surveillance
While my readers may or may not be following the controversy on the Domestic Surveillance issue, here are my thoughts on the subject: I believe that the President not only has the right and authority to conduct this type of surveillance, both constitutionally and as given to him by Congress, but it is his sworn duty.
The President has a larger and sworn responsibility to protect the lives and the interests of the citizens of the United States. It would be negligence on the part of the President if he had the capacity to monitor and prevent or stop altogether a threat or threats to the United States and her Citizens and failed to do so. How quickly people forget that this world is a very different place post September 11th.
Within the constraints outlined by the program, the only persons subject to monitoring are those persons who are in regular electronic contact with persons of interest, suspected members, or individuals presenting reasonable suspicion of being affiliated with Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. This means if you are an American citizen, whether an immigrant or not, from whatever country, and you make a call to a foreign country of interest, your call may be intercepted. If this happens, a determination will be made if either you or the party you are calling has some sort of terrorist or criminal affiliation.
If none can be established or determined, you will no longer be monitored. People really need to understand the technology involved and the reality of this program. The news reports make it sound like any and all calls from all citizens are monitored and recorded, and that people are completely losing their privacy. This is simply not the case.
Not even the NSA has the capacity, manpower, funding or time to possibly monitor and record EVERY electronic transmission that leaves or enters the United States. This is not a politically motivated partisan statement, but a statement of scientifically possible technical fact. I will try to explain.
It is said that every single electronic signal emitted from the planet Earth since the early to mid 80s has been and is recorded by the NSA. While this may be scientifically and technically possible, it is highly unlikely it is occurring purposefully. Think about all the possible forms of electronic communications and emissions that occur daily on our planet.
Cell phones, PDAs, computers, the internet, telephones, microwave, radio, Wi Fi and others. The average household and the average individual is in possession of and regularly uses several of these devices daily. Factor in all the various forms of communication used by the various military forces all over the world, and the number of personnel using them. The number is astronomical.
Scaling back to just the United States, there are millions of people and devices communicating daily. There are millions of overseas calls and transactions, emails, and other types of transmissions on a daily basis. Computers could be programmed to capture and record all incoming and outgoing international calls easily. Computers could further be programmed to specifically flag communications in which certain conditions are met. These would be conditions such as particular phrases, or even calls to specific locations or hotspots. Even with this type of filtering, these calls and recorded or monitored communications would be on the order of millions or hundreds of thousands. This would then require HUMAN technicians to listen to these calls and determine significance or threat. If these calls were in foreign languages, (As you might assume many calls to foreign nations might be.) it would then require the skills of a translator as well.
The amount of time and effort required to accomplish a task such as this would take literally years to complete. There are a number of dialects of Arab languages, not to mention all the other languages spoken in the world. It would be necessary for a skilled technician to filter out the appropriate transmission to be monitored, a translator to transcribe the recording, and an intelligence agent to assess it.
If only one million calls were captured (Excluding all other forms of communication) it could potentially require 3 million employees to process and review the recorded information, if it was to be monitored in any sort of actionable time frame. I am fairly certain that the NSA employs far less than 3 million folks. The less people doing the work, the more time it would take to get it done.
All that being said, it is far more likely that the calls being monitored are those being made by people being previously identified as having questionable affiliations based on information obtained through other investigations. There has been a tremendous amount of intelligence and information collected post September 11th, and this information has generated names and leads.
The point is, if you aren’t doing anything illegal, and you aren’t affiliated with or otherwise interacting with people in that line of work, you are not likely to ever be monitored. Making calls to your mother in France or your cousin in Jordan is not likely to be recorded or even noticed.
Citizens of most countries, especially the United States have an obligation and moral duty to report crimes and suspected crimes to the authorities. Not doing so makes you an accessory. Americans have no business making calls and having chats with known or suspected terrorists.
If you are a law abiding citizen, and not engaged in criminal activities, and don’t associate with people who do, it is highly unlikely that you would ever be monitored, and even more unlikely that your name would have come up in any investigations of known associates or contacts of terrorists or other criminals.
I find it far less disturbing to think I may be monitored, since I have nothing to hide, and I am not planning anything ominous against the United States, or any other citizens of the world for that matter. I find it far more comforting to think that someone in a position to protect me has the ability to catch, react to, and prevent someone from crashing an airliner into a building, or detonating an atomic bomb in a mall.
I would rather my fellow Americans, and all other citizens of the world be protected from the loss of three thousand or more of there countrymen due to the acts of a religious zealot.
The President has a larger and sworn responsibility to protect the lives and the interests of the citizens of the United States. It would be negligence on the part of the President if he had the capacity to monitor and prevent or stop altogether a threat or threats to the United States and her Citizens and failed to do so. How quickly people forget that this world is a very different place post September 11th.
Within the constraints outlined by the program, the only persons subject to monitoring are those persons who are in regular electronic contact with persons of interest, suspected members, or individuals presenting reasonable suspicion of being affiliated with Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. This means if you are an American citizen, whether an immigrant or not, from whatever country, and you make a call to a foreign country of interest, your call may be intercepted. If this happens, a determination will be made if either you or the party you are calling has some sort of terrorist or criminal affiliation.
If none can be established or determined, you will no longer be monitored. People really need to understand the technology involved and the reality of this program. The news reports make it sound like any and all calls from all citizens are monitored and recorded, and that people are completely losing their privacy. This is simply not the case.
Not even the NSA has the capacity, manpower, funding or time to possibly monitor and record EVERY electronic transmission that leaves or enters the United States. This is not a politically motivated partisan statement, but a statement of scientifically possible technical fact. I will try to explain.
It is said that every single electronic signal emitted from the planet Earth since the early to mid 80s has been and is recorded by the NSA. While this may be scientifically and technically possible, it is highly unlikely it is occurring purposefully. Think about all the possible forms of electronic communications and emissions that occur daily on our planet.
Cell phones, PDAs, computers, the internet, telephones, microwave, radio, Wi Fi and others. The average household and the average individual is in possession of and regularly uses several of these devices daily. Factor in all the various forms of communication used by the various military forces all over the world, and the number of personnel using them. The number is astronomical.
Scaling back to just the United States, there are millions of people and devices communicating daily. There are millions of overseas calls and transactions, emails, and other types of transmissions on a daily basis. Computers could be programmed to capture and record all incoming and outgoing international calls easily. Computers could further be programmed to specifically flag communications in which certain conditions are met. These would be conditions such as particular phrases, or even calls to specific locations or hotspots. Even with this type of filtering, these calls and recorded or monitored communications would be on the order of millions or hundreds of thousands. This would then require HUMAN technicians to listen to these calls and determine significance or threat. If these calls were in foreign languages, (As you might assume many calls to foreign nations might be.) it would then require the skills of a translator as well.
The amount of time and effort required to accomplish a task such as this would take literally years to complete. There are a number of dialects of Arab languages, not to mention all the other languages spoken in the world. It would be necessary for a skilled technician to filter out the appropriate transmission to be monitored, a translator to transcribe the recording, and an intelligence agent to assess it.
If only one million calls were captured (Excluding all other forms of communication) it could potentially require 3 million employees to process and review the recorded information, if it was to be monitored in any sort of actionable time frame. I am fairly certain that the NSA employs far less than 3 million folks. The less people doing the work, the more time it would take to get it done.
All that being said, it is far more likely that the calls being monitored are those being made by people being previously identified as having questionable affiliations based on information obtained through other investigations. There has been a tremendous amount of intelligence and information collected post September 11th, and this information has generated names and leads.
The point is, if you aren’t doing anything illegal, and you aren’t affiliated with or otherwise interacting with people in that line of work, you are not likely to ever be monitored. Making calls to your mother in France or your cousin in Jordan is not likely to be recorded or even noticed.
Citizens of most countries, especially the United States have an obligation and moral duty to report crimes and suspected crimes to the authorities. Not doing so makes you an accessory. Americans have no business making calls and having chats with known or suspected terrorists.
If you are a law abiding citizen, and not engaged in criminal activities, and don’t associate with people who do, it is highly unlikely that you would ever be monitored, and even more unlikely that your name would have come up in any investigations of known associates or contacts of terrorists or other criminals.
I find it far less disturbing to think I may be monitored, since I have nothing to hide, and I am not planning anything ominous against the United States, or any other citizens of the world for that matter. I find it far more comforting to think that someone in a position to protect me has the ability to catch, react to, and prevent someone from crashing an airliner into a building, or detonating an atomic bomb in a mall.
I would rather my fellow Americans, and all other citizens of the world be protected from the loss of three thousand or more of there countrymen due to the acts of a religious zealot.
posted by Josh at 8:21 PM
2 Comments:
so you wouldnt mind if the President just decided to take a sneak peek into your computer at any given time?
Not a bit, nothing on here that is illegal, and Im certainly not communicating knowingly with any terrorists or other criminals or subversives. I'm quite sure I'm not on any people of interest lists.
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