The Conservative Blogs

are all a-twitter and giddy over the revelations coming out about data mining by the government.  They believe their prayers for bringing down the Obama administration have been answered.

Remember when we learned that the Republican President George W. Bush (via The Patriot Act) data mined US citizens' emails and phone calls, and how that brought down the Bush administration.

Oh, and how LOUDLY the conservative blogs SCREAMED about BIG BROTHER?!

No.  Neither do I.

Yes.  I know.  "Change We Can Believe In."  And all that.

Here is something worth reading from the "Immoral Minority" blog:

Courtesy of CNN:  

The U.S. government has obtained a top secret court order that requires Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of Americans to the National Security Agency on an "ongoing daily basis," the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported. 

The four-page order, which The Guardian published on its website Wednesday, requires the communications giant to turn over "originating and terminating" telephone numbers as well as the location, time and duration of the calls -- and demands that the order be kept secret. 

If genuine, it gives the NSA blanket access to the records of millions of Verizon customers' domestic and foreign phone calls made between April 25, when the order was signed, and July 19, when it expires. 

While the report infuriated people across the country -- former Vice President Al Gore called the idea "obscenely outrageous" -- a senior official in the Obama administration defended the idea of such an order early Thursday. 

Without acknowledging whether the order exists, the administration official emphasized that such an order does not include collection of "the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call." 

"Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States," the unnamed official said in a written statement to media. 

The official also insisted that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorizes intelligence collection. Activities "are subject to strict controls and procedures under oversight of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FISA Court, to ensure that they comply with the Constitution and laws of the United States and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties."

Regardless of whether this data mining is subject to "strict controls and procedures under oversight of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FISA Court: or not, the truth is that it is wrong. Just like it was wrong when the Bush administration started it: 

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.

The difference then was that the news agencies simply did not get as indignant and demonstrate the kind of outrage that they are about to demonstrate now that President Obama is in the White House.

However if anybody expects me to make excuses for this President, and his administration, you are wrong. I fucking hated this crap when Bush was doing it and I hate it just as much now that a Democratic President is doing it.

So if Fox News wants to jump all over this and use it to attempt to attack the President, something they would NEVER have done while Bush was in office, I see that as a good thing, because if people get angry enough perhaps we can finally put a stop to this outrageous spying on American citizens.

You know I heard somebody way back when Obama was first elected say that no President gives up the powers gained by his predecessors. In other words now that this kind of program was in place it was highly unlikely that Obama would not take advantage of it.

Sadly that turned out to be true.


But Charlie Pierce (bless him) gets it just right:

"The companies are so deep in weasel-speak on this one that they never may find their way out. At this point, after over a decade of this, "in accordance to the law" could mean almost anything, and probably does.

(Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog has caught some interesting by-play about the source of these leaks. I admit that leaking an entire PowerPoint presentation is a whopper and indicates some serious power behind the leak.

Other than that, I don't have a lot to say that I didn't say yesterday. We hid under the bed after 9/11 and let a lot of people who don't care much for the Bill of Rights, with one notable (Bang!) exception, run amok.

The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under President Bush and renewed under Obama in December 2012. The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US. It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.  

(And an aside, will you note that, in that paragraph, the previous guy is "President Bush" and the current officeholder is "Obama." That's kind of an odd style quirk, no?)

The government is pushing back, as is expected. There's the "It's not what you think it is" defense, and there's the "It's for your own good" defense, too. (Read all the way through to see Huckleberry Graham wave the Fourth and Fifth Amendments away with his magic wand.) The problem, again, is not what's illegal, it's what's been made legal. Or quasi-legal. Or something. Also, ignore anyone who says that a magic coalition of Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Ron Wyden, and Mark Udall is going to form to repeal The Patriot Act. The Republicans love the Patriot Act, and so do many Democrats. (Hi, Dianne Feinstein!) There are just a few Republicans who don't like the guy using it at the moment..."

DING!  DING! DING!  wE HAVE A WINNAH!