A majority Congress believes the same thing, especially Republicans. Look how far McCarthy had to go before he was beaten back. Note that Obama just nominated a guy who wouldn't sign off on this stuff, at peril of his job and under "orders" from Cheney, to lead the FBI.

Things are a lot more complex than the "Thanks Obama" crowd seem to believe. Remember what happened when Obama actually tried to close GITMO. Of course you don't. Too much Fox news.

Gonna quote from the wiki link for the "Thanks Obama! " crowd:

The IAO was established after Admiral John Poindexter, former United States National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan and SAIC executive Brian Hicks approached the US Department of Defense with the idea for an information awareness program after the attacks of September 11, 2001.[3]

Poindexter and Hicks had previously worked together on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA agreed to host the program and appointed Poindexter to run it in 2002.

The IAO began funding research and development of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program in February 2003 but renamed the program the Terrorism Information Awareness Program in May that year after an adverse media reaction to the program's implications for public surveillance. Although TIA was only one of several IAO projects, many critics and news reports conflated TIA with other related research projects of the IAO, with the result that TIA came in popular usage to stand for an entire subset of IAO programs.


Note: it would help if right wingers and libertarians would subscribe to the NY Times/WA Post to cut down on the remedial information one has to present. See last years WA Post series on the security apparatus with like 2 million security clearances.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...ion-documents/

Been a member since 2009.
Bro, no offense but your posts itt are pretty awful. Not sure why you're trying to make this a partisan thing. It's pretty clear the cat is out of the bag. It's too easy for the people in Washington to simply interpret the law however they want knowing that they will never have to face a legal or political challenge since they can just hide behind "too secret, can't tell you." What today's revelations have shown is that all restraint is gone.

FYP.

Nope. Bush started it, therefore it's eternally unchangable. Sorry guys we tried.

As I mentioned, Obama just nominated to only high level official I've ever heard of trying to stop this stuff as the head of the FBI. Does that register at all?

People blame Obama for this **** and when he tries to close GITMO, the republicans cut off the funding to transfer prisoners? Obama may share some "blame" but lets not pretend that the national security/surveillance state is not, above all else, the republican's baby. Sure there are outliers like Paul, and he's joined with "socialists" like Bernie Sanders.

Nice engagement on the substance.

"House bill would block funds for closing Gitmo
GOP-authored bill would de facto keep open detention center by blocking means to move detainees"

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/03/hous...tmo/singleton/

Oh yeah, another one of Bush's immutability charms! FOILED AGAIN

You guys are over-reacting. Just don't ever say anything on your phone, a forum, facebook, twitter, email, texting, etc. and you have nothing to worry about. You all sound guilty.

You've got to be kidding me. Obama has been in power for 5 years. This is the executive branch's baby. He could have ended this in any nanosecond of his presidency if he actually wanted to. We tried voting for a guy who campaigned against this crap and then we found out he continued doing and expanding this **** any way. There is no democratic solution. The genie is out of the bottle.

Those right wing extremists over at the New York Times editorial board have an article calling out Obama for his whole violating everybody's privacy rights shenanigans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/op...s-dragnet.html

OK but why? What is the goal of this massive monitoring?

That and vote rand paul for president....

Not exactly loving our chances of success.

hahahahahaowow

https://jitsi.org/

If you think lefties are disappointed in a lot of the stuff Obama has done, just wait until libertarians get a Paul in the White House.

Or really any libertarian candidate.

Uhhh, if this were being used to catch terrorists, why did the Boston bombing happen? In before "they can't catch everything."

It's obv designed to be used in the same way the IRS is now used -- isolate keywords for dissenters, and put them on a watch-list, and/or **** with their lives.

Hi Obama! What's up NSA? I'm a friendly, don't drone/audit/wiretap me plz

That's a great op-ed.

I'm hopping mad here. Ready to man the barricades.

I think the highlight of this entire thing thus far, is when Chambliss said that it's not a big deal, since it's been going on for 7 years and not one citizen has complained about it yet. That's just golden. Either Saxby has balls the size of Neptune, or he truly is the most clueless man on planet Earth right now.

Obviously they can't foil every Brotherhood attack

Oh fo sho

Yeah, Chambliss and Feinstein confirmed buffoons. You failed America, senators. Joe McCarthy would think you guys have lost your minds.

Can we get a thread name change? Something that reflects the scope of prism. I got nothing but can count on y'all funny types.

This is the best thing I've read taking the other side:

http://www.skatingonstilts.com/skati...ep-breath.html