The Senate today, in a 67 to 31 vote, completely stripped Americans of their Fourth Amendment rights by granting retroactive immunity to the American telecommunication companies that have helped the Bush Administration illegally spy on American citizens for the past 7 years.
The Senates action, in the FISA Amendment Act, would shield from lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission. Effectively ending forty pending lawsuits against the various telecommunication companies and forever shrouding the unlawful activities of this administration from public scrutiny.
The Bush Administration has maintained that no laws were broken and only communications between suspected terrorist outside the United States were monitored. In late 2007 evidence emerged that contradicted the administrations claim and indeed implicated the presidency in previously unimaginable levels of illegal domestic spying, data cataloging and monitoring of all United States citizens.
On November 7, 2007 telecommunications technician and AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein spoke on Capitol Hill about his first hand experience the technology AT&T built to assist the government's domestic warrant less wiretapping program at AT&T's main switching facility in San Francisco. As part of his job at AT&T, Klein connected high-speed fiber optic cables to sophisticated equipment that intercepted communications from AT&T customers and then copied and routed every single one to a room controlled by the National Security Agency (NSA). Klein has provided evidence for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) class-action lawsuit against AT&T for its role in the illegal spying.
"My job required me to enable the physical connections between AT&T customers' Internet communications and the NSA's illegal, wholesale copying machine for domestic emails, Internet phone conversations, web surfing and all other Internet traffic. I have first-hand knowledge of the clandestine collaboration between one giant telecommunications company, AT&T, and the National Security Agency to facilitate the most comprehensive illegal domestic spying program in history," said Klein.
In essence the NSA is capturing all domestic communications, studying the patterns and content then archiving the results for future action. They are documenting our online activities and analyzing our surfing habits. If you use any electronic media for communications the information being relayed, as well as who you are communicating with, is being captured and analyzed for later use.
This surveillance has nothing to do with terrorist activities...unless our government considers its citizen terrorists. This surveillance allows our government to monitor all our communications and take preemptive actions against those it considers a threat. If the administration does not like the sites you visit or the people you are communicating with you will be rounded up and disappeared.
Telecommunication Immunity is a bellwether event for me. The government is preparing for something...something so bad that American citizens need to be tracked and monitored. Expect the worst and expect it soon!
7 comments:
Barack Obama voted against immunity…apparently Obama still believes in the rule of law and the Constitution.
John McCain supports immunity…I guess we can expect a continuation of the Bush agenda and lawlessness for the rich.
Hillary Clinton skipped this vote even though she was in DC…how gutless and un-American.
If Obama voted against it, it wasn't because he believes in the Constitution. As with all politicians, there is an angle in there somewhere. Clinton not voting allows her to take whichever side looks politically expedient when this gets out. McCain....I couldn't hazard a guess what angle that crapweasel is playing. This election is going to suck. No one in the current field gives a shit about the Bill Of Rights and the Constitution, they only get in the way of whatever statist agenda they have planned. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I am much less concerned with this event then what it could lead to. Presidents are a dangerous thing.
Here is what it could lead to:
A nice-sounding bill called the "Global Poverty Act," sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States.
The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.
Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not endorsed either Senator Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the presidential race.
But on Thursday, February 14, he is trying to rush Obama's "Global Poverty Act" (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.
The irony is, that the people far outnumber the government with all its machinery, but like a herd of cattle being driven to the slaughterhouse by one person, not knowing their strength, most of the population doesn't seem to know that it is in their hands to put an end to tyranny. The trouble is, there people complicit in the enslavement by the government through their personal greed and trying to save their own skin. No one knows who is spying or snitching on them, so they can never gather together in strength. Tyranny is only possible because of weasels and a few being made examples, keeping the populace as individuals in fear. We must, as best we can, not play their game.
This began back in the 1970's with the FBI using illegal wiretaps on the so called "revolutionaries". The sheeple in this country will only fight back when all forms of entertainment dissolve, i.e. TV, video games, movies, sports arenas, bars, organized religions,atvs, motorcycles, cars and illegal drugs to name a few. As long as we can escape reality the pigs will come to the feed trough. Do not look at the man behind the curtain. Maybe when we do, it will not be too late.
2knives, you've nailed it, the incentives for staying compliant are too great at present. This is helped with making people believe that their situation is nowhere near as bad as it could be compared to others. This alternative reality is served up to them in the form of "realistic" soap operas with characters dropping like flies, or dependent on an array of drugs, and with a multitude of mega problems (no, I don't watch such dross, but you can't escape the headlines plots make in papers displayed on news stands). Meanwhile the machinery grows stronger, until it is unstoppable. By that time those soap opera story lines will seem like a good deal.
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