Obama administration defends 'critical' NSA phone records collection
The White House has sought to justify its surveillance of millions of Americans' phone records as anger grows over revelations that a secret court order gives the National Security Agency blanket authority to collect call data from a major phone carrier.
Politicians and civil liberties campaigners described the disclosures, revealed by the Guardian on Wednesday, as the most sweeping intrusion into private data they had ever seen by the US government.
But the Obama administration, while declining to comment on the specific order, said the practice was "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States".
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.
Continued http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/obama-administration-nsa-verizon-records
Obama will be worse than Nixon on press freedom: Former NYT lawyer
James Goodale has a position of privilege from which to render judgments in re: Obama v. Nixon on the question of respect for press freedoms. He represented the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case and wrote a book about it.
In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Goodale wastes few words in rendering his judgment:
The search warrant filed to investigate the Fox News reporter James Rosen proved as many had suspected: President Obama wants to make it a crime for a reporter to talk to a leaker. It is a further example of how President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom.
The motives, says Goodale, are quite clear by now: “President Obama wants to criminalize the reporting of national security information. This will stop reporters from asking for information that might be classified. Leaks will stop and so will the free flow of information to the public.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney yesterday affirmed that the president believes journalists should not be prosecuted “for doing their jobs.”
Now I'm no big city lawyer type, but I'm pretty sure this is a form of dictatorial behaviour that is in direct breach of the privacy amendment to the US Constitution. The United States today is, I fear, an alien place to the one that held the Church Committee and actually held these fuckers to account.
I don't think ya'll should give up your guns at all, republican/democrat is only a moniker, a Security-Industrial complex run by incompetents. Is America on the fast track to serious civil strife?
"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights."
Maj Gen Smedley Butler USMC.
The White House has sought to justify its surveillance of millions of Americans' phone records as anger grows over revelations that a secret court order gives the National Security Agency blanket authority to collect call data from a major phone carrier.
Politicians and civil liberties campaigners described the disclosures, revealed by the Guardian on Wednesday, as the most sweeping intrusion into private data they had ever seen by the US government.
But the Obama administration, while declining to comment on the specific order, said the practice was "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States".
The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.
Continued http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/obama-administration-nsa-verizon-records
Obama will be worse than Nixon on press freedom: Former NYT lawyer
James Goodale has a position of privilege from which to render judgments in re: Obama v. Nixon on the question of respect for press freedoms. He represented the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case and wrote a book about it.
In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Goodale wastes few words in rendering his judgment:
The search warrant filed to investigate the Fox News reporter James Rosen proved as many had suspected: President Obama wants to make it a crime for a reporter to talk to a leaker. It is a further example of how President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom.
The motives, says Goodale, are quite clear by now: “President Obama wants to criminalize the reporting of national security information. This will stop reporters from asking for information that might be classified. Leaks will stop and so will the free flow of information to the public.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney yesterday affirmed that the president believes journalists should not be prosecuted “for doing their jobs.”
Now I'm no big city lawyer type, but I'm pretty sure this is a form of dictatorial behaviour that is in direct breach of the privacy amendment to the US Constitution. The United States today is, I fear, an alien place to the one that held the Church Committee and actually held these fuckers to account.

I don't think ya'll should give up your guns at all, republican/democrat is only a moniker, a Security-Industrial complex run by incompetents. Is America on the fast track to serious civil strife?
"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights."
Maj Gen Smedley Butler USMC.
