al Qaeda know who exactly in their networks we have identified, and who we havent.  That will really boost our ability to monitor and prevent future terrorist attacks.  

me of when we knew that guy moosowie was a bad cat but we feared pc wrath crap and refused even to go after his computer well before 911.  

this why we losing war.

of course you recall wewere attacked in nyc, yes?

you recall qaeda trying to get nukes to blow up whole city, yes?

sheesh....

Yes publish it.

I want to see if I am on it. So I can sue the Administration and make a buck on this dumb ass King George.

I should be on the list- I was detained for 6-8 hours in 2003 in Rabat Morocco for taking a picture of the American flag in front of the embassy over there.

I was questioned by the head of the anti-terrorist task force in the capital. That was an experience!

Our president arrogant behavior is very similar to president from banana republics.

Publish the list and give reparation and apology to the citizens whose right was infringed upon.

This administration is falling apart at the seams. I love it. What a sweet revenge for 00 and 04.

Too bad the ones without tax breaks will flip the bill for our stupid president and those who elected him, not once but twice! I say, they are the ones who should pay, not the ones who opposed the neo-cons policies.

Tax Bush voters and spy on them, they are the anti-Americans.

I've got a different perspective up at Seeing the Forest.  I think they tasked the NSA with monitoring all US communications, as they were already said to do internationally.  This would require huge infrastructure and is illegal, so it would have needed a "9/11 changed everything" moment to push it through.

and tell AQ suspects that they're being monitored?  hmmmmm...

if Johnny Q is on the list, and Janey Q (not related), showing that the NSA was spying on regular citizens, suddenly I no longer care about those AQ suspects.....they're the screen in screen-pass, put up to say "see? we're really doing what we should!"

hell, even if they redact the names or numbers, I at least want to see evidence of where the calls were routed....  internal or international , whatever direction the origination.

Hate to say it, but I personally don't care that much if teh government watches me....PROVIDED THEY'RE UP-FRONT ABOUT IT.  IF they did, they would be bored to tears and more...

It's the deception that pisses me off to no end.  Don't tell me you're protecting my rights when you're ignoring them at your convenience.  Either play by the rules, or discard them completely and publicly.  I want to know what kind of game I'm in, to see how I can get through without losing (since I cannot be expected to win in that kind of game anyways)

Cause I'm prolly on it...

And so are the rest of you!

At last, our names in lights.

the jackals don't win this fight the government will be obligated to publish every name on the list that isn't protected by some actual valid intelligence or national security concern.

However, we have:

* Congresscritters sweating panic on TV saying the Prez has King like powers during an undeclared war.

* Former intelligence officials spreading the reassuring word that the people most likely to be swept up in this are listed in a Homeland Security database under the category, Muslims of America.

* Cheney about ready to visit his pals in Arabia, Egypt, Pak and Afghanistan to see if something sufficiently distracting can be ginned --extra turn at the grab bag for those that can create actual fear of Muslims-- to bolster the argument that they really need to be omnipresent in every facet of private life.

* A congress that is willing to take the entire month of January off merely for political gain (aren't we paying them to be there, instead of scheming to not be there? Do we get a rebate?).

* A WH that says it can't comment on an investigation about one of their own outing a covert CIA agent while it reveals the existence of secret NSA ops the day after it said to do so would compromise national security. This on the heals of the Chief Executive publicly proclaiming Delay's innocence mid-trial.

* And a disturbingly sizeable proportion of otherwise reasonable people that think the current administration actually has the average-American's interests at heart. They believe Bush when he pulls their pants down exclaiming, "This is for your own good, now bend over. It will hurt a lot less if you go ahead and concentrate on that mushroom cloud picture I provided. Heh, looks good don't it? Boo! Sorry, I just love doin' that."

While I don't flatter myself by thinking that I might be on this list, I really would not want my privacy violated by having my name and other personal details made public if it was.  A person could get fired or even killed as a consequence of revealing this information. If people on the list want their names made public, that's another thing, but the choice should lie with the victim.  

Some independent investigative body, maybe the GAO, since they seem less subject to political pressure than Congressioal committees, should do an analysis of the listees to see who they are.  The underlying concern is whether Bush decided to violate the Constitutional rights of people who are arguably real terror suspects or also included some political enemies.  If it's the latter, we are talking IMHO not just an overstepping of Constitutional authority but high crimes.    

...a step back and look at the broader context of things.

We're facing an enemy that we have a very limited ability to truly counter, where it counts. I've read a lot of the stuff on al-Qa'eda from the beginning to the "2.0" and successor versions, and the one thing that stood out for me was that, frankly, people knew pretty damned little about the organization. It was tenuous, nebulous, ephemeral. Where it started and stopped in a network of personal connections could often be defined only arbitrarily, even in retrospect. How it worked could be explained only in the most general terms.

As a recent related example of this last, I just finished reading the two major available open source biographies of Zarqawi - the conclusions and perspectives the authors offer are completely opposed to one another. Very little can be reconciled between the two accounts other than the most mechanical of details (and even some of those can't be reconciled), and this is the current number one target of the USG.

Bluntly, their ORBAT is a mystery to us. And that's a crucial piece of missing information in an assymetric conflict.

Opposed to this is the fact that the administration authorised NSA collection against US persons, without FISA authorization. (I've speculated elsewhere as to why those FISA warrants might be lacking) If the New York Times is to be believed, that collection is limited and may or may not have cracked a thousand people. These targets are apparently selected based on exploitation of recovered connection data, presumably supplemented by traffic analysis (i.e., someone from KSM's datebook calls person X, person X is either a US person or in contact with a US person who becomes a target).

I think you might have to live with that. Technical intelligence is one of the few advantages that the western alliance has (and the enemy is reasonably skilled at counter-measures to it). It's going to take a programme like this to actually have a hope of bringing that advantage to bear. Given that the number one fear in the days after 9/11 (the timeframe in which this programme seems to have been authorised) was whether there were cells in place in CONUS that they didn't have a handle on (and that continues to be a fear expressed by some I know of), this sort of thing doesn't look to me to be entirely beyond the bounds, provided there's some oversight.

The NYT story broke on Friday morning. By tonight, my [admittedly crappy] local news station was claiming that it was perfectly legal for the NSA to spy in the U.S. without warrants and that Dems were politicizing a legitimate endeavor. And this is not a Fox affiliate.

Has everyone forgotten the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed in 1978? This isn't something the NYT invented. What Bush did was illegal.

And what recourse do ordinary citizens have when the President can ignore any law that inconveniences him in the name of protecting us from terrorists?

Wish I could organize my thoughts and be more articulate about this.

It is obvious that terrorists can enter and exit the USA at their own will. So, why are there no terrorist strikes? Because it doesn't serve their purpose. They are completely happy when the USA is busy in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It goes the other way too. Try to withdraw from Afghanistan/Iraq and there will be a provocative terrorist strike in the USA or similar.

Bush is King, he can do as he wishes.

If you know the list is related to al-Qaeda, isn't it illegal to you to say so?

Why do you automatically assume that everyone on the list is associated with al Qaeda?

Let me guess: "If you're a law-abiding patriot, you have nothing to fear from illegal government surveillance."

You're making a huge assumption that the government never makes mistakes.

if our government is allowed to toss the constitution out the window, then the attack has already happened and America is no longer free.  America has lost.  

The constitution defines our freedom, so far not one Al Qaida has taken our freedom.   Yet our own government is peeling it away like it's garbage.   Who exactly is defending America from the government?  

There are many ways short of making to list public to verify that it has be compiled for the purposes stated.  We have a senate select committee on intellegence.  The list could be revied by them,  unless you no longer trust Dick Durban.

case you can do anything you want.

to investigate the administration on its use of the Iraq war intelligence? And the committe chaired by Pat "Whitewash for Cheney" Roberts?

Sounds great.

in the Senate at all?  You will only trust your government when members of your own party contorl it again?

as you well know I am in favor of each branch of the government defending its own prerogatives and not marching in lockstep with whatever party is in the White House. Unlike you who reflexively defends everything any Republican in Congress or the President does. Every single time you have defended them regardless of the circumstances or the evidence. I've asked you several times, would you be comfortable with Hillary having the same kind of powers W has but all you did was avoid the the question. So, I'll answer your question, no matter how silly it is, when you answer mine: are you comfortable with a future President Hillary having the same sweeping powers Bush has now? Yes or no.

well, three actually.

First, I was simply pointing out that there are ways to validate the list of targets for this operation without publicly disclosing the list.

Second, I did answer you question about Hillary, I said it was irrelevant because she, like her husband before her, would use the government how ever she felt regardless of the legality, so weather or not she was legally granted any specific power is irrelevant to weather she would attempt to use it.

Third, I have not defended the Republicans or the president reflexively.  I have never attempted to defend the administration on the torture issue.  I have never attempted to defend the administration on the patriot act.  And that is just two issue that come to mind that are related to national security.  As I said before, I see no need to criticize the administration here, as there are so many others doing that.

executed in Texas and was actually innocent. Infallible, that's the argument now.

A request to publish the list means that a judge has to go through it. The names which will be published were on the list erroneously or for no legal reason.

the government never makes mistakes

Are you now talking about the existence of WMDs?

The bureaucrats have tendency to make less mistakes when they know that they are supervised. And work more.

The situation in the USA is a little bit difficult when there are those powerful agencies of bureaucrats which are not mentioned in the constitution.

or bureaucrats who tricked (here we go again) Bush to sign something what he didn't comprehend (here we go again)?

Bureaucrats sometimes persuate politicians to do something what they can use later to blackmail the politicians :-)

With the word 'administration' here?

Bush, bureaucrats or republicans?

extremely relevant. Do we want a president, any president, to have these kinds of powers. That is why I ask the question. It goes to the heart of what this country is about. And you say, "hey, let Congress investigate." And I say, "ok, works for me but they need to do a better job than they did investigating torture. They need to do a better job than they did with many other things." I want Congressional oversight not because it is a Republican issue or a Democrat issue but because it is a Congressional issue. This whole wiretapping thing goes to the heart of separation of powers. And I get the sense from they way you argue that you either don't care or don't get it.

That Sean-Paul asked you a simple question , and you still don't answer ...

You will only accept findings from congress if they agree with your pre-concieved ideas of what happened.  Just like the Intel issue, if they come to a finding you don't like, even though they have had access to all of the evidence and you have just read news reports, you dimiss their finding as insufficient.

So far as I have seen, from the one piece of information we have on this issue (the NYT story) the administration has been careful and focused on who is the target of this type of operation.  Now, do I fear that this could be miss used by our government?  Absolutely.  I have the feeling that those in the government feel the same way.  That is why they specifically took steps to brief senior members of congress on the operation, including sentior democrats, to make it clear that this was an issue they knew was sensitive and wanted congress aware of.  You give the administration no credit for taking those steps to make sure that members of both parties in congress were aware of this very sensitve operation.  Why should the administration even attempt to keep congress notified of such potentially sensitive operastions if you and your compatriots on the left simply ignore the fact that they do keep congress infomred?

this:

Is a part of the problem. Wasn't it you who said the 9/11 Commission's conclusions were bogus?

The same can be said for both of us. But here is the thing: you know I'm amenable to compromise. As I demostrated in your diary about the CSM article.

You also reference Congressional oversight, when you say this: That is why they specifically took steps to brief senior members of congress on the operation, including sentior democrats, to make it clear that this was an issue they knew was sensitive and wanted congress aware of.

But are you absolutely certain that this is the case? The Post article says that only "Congressional sources familiar with limited aspects" etc. . .

Key word: limited. Is it possible that there is more to this than even what you posit Congress knows? That maybe that's why this has gotten some moderates from both sides in Congress so exorcised?  

Here we go again.

In the other thread you posted that administration's actions violated the law of the USA. (If a citizen of the USA is identified by spies and resides in the USA, the spy has to seek a warrant to spy him/her. A simple protection of citizen's rights case here.)

It might be that the other party is part of conspiracy or not. Actually they didn't do the spying. This is yet another 'due to inaction' thing.

The most in risk are the bureaucrats, who broke their oath and the president. And especially anybody involved in covering this up :-)

I assume that the fraction of republicans who don't like Bush might sacrifice him and a couple of bureaucrats but not other politicians.

up until Able Dange became public knoledge.  Then, I began to question if they really did look at "all" of the facts, or just the ones that fit their narative.

In the other thread is the difficult-to-read law.

What the US legislation says about promoting crime? Is misinterpretation of a law criminal offense?

today blasting the unauthorized disclosure of his secret spy ring was very effective.  The Democrats pointed out that Bush doesn't even need the Patriot Act to begin with because he makes up whatever rules he wants to follow anyway regardless of the law.

Before hearing the Democratic response, I had wondered if it had been particularly effective because Fox News was totally silent about the Democratic reply to Bush's speech.  Fox News usually provides the Democratic response but for some reason they did not today.

The constitution defines our freedom, so far not one Al Qaida has taken our freedom.

The families of the 9/11 victims surely believe that AQ took away their loved ones freedom.

Obligated to notify, not necessarily publish

Thank you for reminding.

Has this juridical implications inside the USA? Does special wartime legislation apply or not?

But the broader context is that if we let domestic spying and all the inevitable abuses that go along with it to proceed than wtf is the point? This isn't an isolated case of overreach or abuse. Are you saying we must abandon our values to survive? I say won't survive if we do.

the colleciton of intelligence in such a way except that it was done illegally. If a FISA judge has qualms about it, and the Times article clearly indicates one does, that says something to me. I've repeatedly cited the 72 hour retroactive rule. Why haven't they used this?

Again, I am all for prosecuting the war against al Qaeda. They need to die. All of them. And it really does suck that they use our freedoms as a weapon against us. And it is a dilemma for many people. Some are willing to give up the freedoms for safety.

But the fact is, if the Times article is to be believed, the Bush Admin broke the law. If we are not a nation of laws then what does that leave us with?

constitutional rights seriously bristle at cutting corners.  There was simply no justification for eliminating the middle man (the judge) here.  In a free society there will always be risks and if you start compromising fundamental freedoms to reduce those risks you are an a very slipperly slope.  I'd rather trade the small (and I doubt when the extent of it comes out it's more than that) of security risk that might have resulted from bypassing that step.  The point is that the government had damn well better have a provable reason to get into your private life before doing so.  Our founders gave us that protection and to change that there has to be a change in the Constitution.

would be very interesting to poll them and find out what they think about what's happening. I interviewed Beverly Eckert and while she didn't answer one very direct question about Bush her refusal to do so and the tone of her voice, in my opinion gave a lot away.

They were killed by murderers.  It's not reason enough to allow the government to strip the whole nation of it's freedoms.   The 9/11 victims though murdered, were free.  

If the government continues to strip our nation of our freedoms and liberties, no matter how we die, we won't die free.  

You'll have to explain to me how it is that "domestic spying" leads inevitably to abuses and the destruction of the American way of life. There are a number of contexts in which intercepting communications where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy is permitted in the name of the greater social good (i.e., Title III and FISA wiretaps), and I don't see the American way of life plunging into the abyss. If anything, it's as vibrant and healthy as ever, though the political discourse seems quite corrosive. That said, as I said below, it's not an absolute, it is a balance.

Now, if you want to argue that conducting intercepts like this without oversight and without having come to a political accord with broad inputs that sets the rules for balancing the concerns between civil rights and this type of collection, will lead inevitably to abuse, then I have a good deal of time for that argument. But I have very little patience for the argument that targeting US citizens for collection in these circumstances, provided that there's some evidentiary basis and oversight on how that basis is evaluated, is somehow intrinsically linked to the collapse of western civilization. The rules on not targeting US persons worked well for the previous situation, dominated by either nation states or non-state actors with less ephemeral compositions (and with a smaller number of US persons in statuses that exempted them from collection), but based on what I know of the way the new transnationals work, strict adherence to those rules won't allow an effective collection programme.

...speculating that these intercepts wouldn't meet a FISA standard, yes? I think that this wasn't driven by exigency, but by the fact that these connections were too tangential to be authorized by the statute. If they believe that the intercepts wouldn't meet the standard, they couldn't do a 72 hour provisional intercept, either.

Look, the bottom line is that the balance between civil rights and the safety and functioning of a free and liberal society is just that, a balance. FISA was not carried down from the mountain engraved on stone tablets - it was and is a good piece of legislation for its purpose (i.e., setting up the rules to strike a balance between Americans' civil rights and the foreign intelligence threats they face for the types of targets envisioned by the legislation). When the nature of the threat changes and when the nature of the targets changes, as it has with the rise of transnational terrorist threats like al-Qa'eda, the actions of government may have to change as well.

Now, I'm pretty pissed (though not really surprised) that this administration apparently chose to authorize this programme through the agency of the President's war powers - this is consistent with how they've tried to do most everything else, but it's a real bad idea, not least because it puts this programme too close to the executive and administrations, regardless of their political stripe, have historically had a real hard time keeping their politics and their int as seperate as they need to. That said, I can't get too bent out of shape about the notion of running collection on these targets. That, frankly, is appropriate, given the nature of the threat. This is absolutely an unprecedentedly intrusive collection against US persons and it goes much, much further down that road than NSA has been permitted to go since Church and Pike, but it's my opinion that given the threat, how little insight we have into it, and how little we have in the way of tools other than SIGINT hits on the apparatus, that this is something we really better do.

Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who's been reading about FISA, FISC, the abuses that the Church and Pike Commissions uncovered, and the reactions of government and the IC to them for many years, and has been rightly appalled by what was previously allowed to happen. Every serious work that I've ever read on any of the agencies that make up the IC has a big whomping chapter on the prior abuses and warns of their corrosive effects on both the agencies themselves, and their critical relationship with the American people. Protecting the civil rights of Americans has to be central to the missions of all of these agencies, right from the top, down to the smallest associated activity - that said, it does have to be a balance, and I'm not seeing a lot of acknowledgement of that in the criticisms that many are levelling at these actions. You've got to at least acknowledge that this collection may have been appropriate, even if the way of authorizing it deeply, deeply flawed, if not flat out without real basis under the President's war powers.

...argument fully, you'll see why I think this:

"There was simply no justification for eliminating the middle man (the judge) here."

...is subject to interpretation. It's my suspicion that this may have been justified if FISA warrants could not have been successfully used to authorize this collection, and if that collection was necessary, given the nature of the threat.

If the nature of the threat and the communications environment (which damned near everyone seems to ignore completely) changes, your reasonable expectation of privacy changes, too. Now, I don't know where that line should be drawn, frankly, but I do know that trying to treat legislation that was written in one context as if it were somehow holy writ is a bad idea, and it seems to me that this is how people are reflexively treating things.

(see my post below). My qubble was quite specific.  

Protecting the civil rights of Americans has to be central to the missions of all of these agencies, right from the top, down to the smallest associated activity - that said, it does have to be a balance, and I'm not seeing a lot of acknowledgement of that in the criticisms that many are levelling at these actions. You've got to at least acknowledge that this collection may have been appropriate, even if the way of authorizing it deeply, deeply flawed, if not flat out without real basis under the President's war powers.

Whilst understanding your point about considering some of the collections may have been appropriate, I think you are seeking to find balance when most of those outraged here feel that the balance has tipped already. For some people, secret prisons, flights, torture, spying on citizens without any judicial oversight and all the rest have tipped the scales so far that it is not longer a question of discussing it to understand the other side. These policies and actions are certainly at the top of a slippery slope. Do you not see that?

History has given many lessons on how citizens should watch over their leaders and how those with too much power can be corrupted and become dictators. Even starting wars. I personally find the US administration very scary and these actions and the powers they are assuming in this so called "War On Terrorism".

You'll have to explain to me how it is that "domestic spying" leads inevitably to abuses and the destruction of the American way of life.

I think it's the spies that have to explain how anything they want to do fits into the framework of the Constitution and the expectations of the citizenry.

"You'll have to explain to me how it is that "domestic spying" leads inevitably to abuses and the destruction of the American way of life."

When the President ignores legal remedies and chooses to circumvent established law, and by acting in ways that directly challenges the clear limit on Executive power as set forth in the Constitution he has already exposed a willingness to abuse his power. If allowed to set aside FISA and Constitutional limits based on War Powers then he will be able to do as he damn well pleases.  This is a contradiction to the separation of powers concept and our democracy will in fact be just a memory.

FISA allows for spying on AQ and includes an emergency 72 hour grace period before requiring any oversight.  Timeliness is just not a genuine argument. Why circumvent the Congress, existing law and seek to keep it a secret? Political advantage, obviously.

"But I have very little patience for the argument that targeting US citizens for collection in these circumstances, provided that there's some evidentiary basis and oversight on how that basis is evaluated, is somehow intrinsically linked to the collapse of western civilization."

That is the point. There is no evaluation on an evidentiary basis or any oversight. To give the Executive Branch the powers that Bush is claiming to have through Yoo and Bybee, is to allow that we now have our very own Caesar. I'd say that pretty well brings the house down. I have little patience for pie-eyed narrow interpretations of what the President is attempting to do.

The push for power without oversight is across the board:

Pincus - Pentagon's Intelligence Authority Widens:

[A former Pentagon intelligence official] added, noting that there had been no congressional oversight of CIFA, that the Defense Department is "too big, too rich an organization and should not be left unfettered. They rush in where there is a vacuum."

    A former senior counterterrorism official, also familiar with CIFA, said, "What you are seeing is the militarization of counterterrorism." ...

    CIFA's new authority will give the agency the ability to propose missions to Army, Navy and Air Force units, which combined have about 4,000 trained active, reserve and civilian investigators in the United States and abroad. ...

    By comparison, the FBI recently disclosed it has about 11,000 special agents overall, about 4,929 of whom are assigned to terrorism investigation.

Instead of flouting it?

are willing to concede that we are living in a police state where the rules are subject to change by secret executive fiat rather than ordinary democratic processes.  The warantless interception of private communications of US citizens is not allowed under the existing legislative framework and it is therefore illegal.  The fact that the intelligence people feel hampered by these limitations does not justify violating them.  One can attempt to layer this with nuance and dress it up with complexities, but what was done was wrong - the government has processes for changing its own rules and if it does not follow them it is out of control.