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Not much use for an ongoing investigation I would think.
I would think that in an ongoing investigation, the government would actually have a phone number whose activity they wanted to track. They wouldn't need the information about my phone. In an ONGOING investigation. But it the government only wants data on their citizens, without going through the appropriate and lawful channels to obtain that data, then having a dummy court sign TOP SECRET warrants is the way to go. I would think.
And the purpose for keeping the warrants secret, TOP SECRET, is to keep the breadth and depth of the data mining secret from the American people.
So on a practical level does the government go about picking which Americans they would like to know how they conduct surveillance and those that they are trying to surveille?
More Democrats in DC voted FOR expanding the powers of the PA than ever before. Go ahead and believe what you want.
BTW, Biden says he drafted the bill in 1995 after Oklahoma City.
A person can claim whatever, but the Patriot Act as a matter of reality involved a lot of people and agencies that is just objective reality.
Again, most of the Opposition of the Patriot Act has been the Democratic party. The majority of Democratic voters have never supported the Patriot Act.
The opposite facts are true of conservatives. I know it sucks, but it is the truth. Liberals were opposed to the Patriot Act and conservatives were wildly supportive. Liberals were saying giving the government this kind of power will lead to spying on Americans, and conservatives said they didn't care as long as we got the terrorists and won the war on terror.
I know it sucks to now see the results of the terrible policies that conservatives support, but reality is there for anyone to see. Go look at polling data on who supports the Patriot Act.
Go look at congressional voting records to see who voted for the Patriot Act.
So on a practical level does the government go about picking which Americans they would like to know how they conduct surveillance and those that they are trying to surveille?
On a practical level, the government gets information about a potential terrorist, and investigates that potential terrorist. There is nothing practical about declaring that all of Verizon's customers are potential terrorists, and therefore every one of their phone calls is of potential interest to the government, so therefore the government should compel a phone company to, on a daily basis, provide the government with the records of every phone call placed on the phone company's network.
Well, this "scandal" seems to have run it's course..... What's up next?
Why would you think this was a scandal ?
It was all legal and above board..they did go to a judge to get the records on all verizon subscribers.
So 1/3 of all Americans need to be monitored until the middle of July in order to keep the country safe.
There were/are many liberals and many liberal organizations that were/are against the Patriot Act. Ron Paul wasn't nearly close to being the only one.
He was a rarity amongst conservatives, who love the surveillance state and whose voters by overwhelming majorities supported the Patriot Act, but that is not the case for a lot of Democrats and liberals who have been against the Patriot Act since day one.
On a practical level, the government gets information about a potential terrorist, and investigates that potential terrorist. There is nothing practical about declaring that all of Verizon's customers are potential terrorists, and therefore every one of their phone calls is of potential interest to the government, so therefore the government should compel a phone company to, on a daily basis, provide the government with the records of every phone call placed on the phone company's network.
Verizon reported 121 million subscribers as of April so that's 1/3 of all Americans who are potential terrorists.
The government's War on Terror has turned on its own people.
I would think that in an ongoing investigation, the government would actually have a phone number whose activity they wanted to track.
What I learned along time ago while covering drug enforcement operations is that what we civilians think is how an operation is suppose to go and how they work in real life are three different things. Does that mean that I would love to understand the details of how this data mining works, you bet I would. Is it in the interest of the government for me to know... that is a whole other story.
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US government secretly collecting phone records of millions of Americans
