Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard
Jason P
Posts: 19,138
I cannot believe the Obama Admin is even considering using Jonathan Pollard's freedom as a token for Israel / Palastine peace talks. First off, this guy is just slightly behind Ed Snowden in giving up classified info to foreign elements. Second off, the odds of this leading to future peace between Israel and Palastine is about 1,000,000,000 to 1.
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Jonathan Pollard is an Israeli spy, and passed official U.S documents to the Israeli government.
Ed Snowden was a whistle blower who revealed that the U.S government was breaching the U.S Constitution by spying on every American without due process. He passed no sensitive information to any foreign government. He was therefore a whistleblower.
Big difference.
But then you know this already.
Anywho, this isn't a thread about snowden so go back to derailing threads about tigers.
Seriously though, you need to work on your position here. You don't seem to understand the difference between a whistleblower and a spy. Snowden didn't give info to anyone but the US citizens who deserved that info. Also, you reference Snowden in OP as justification of your opinion so I would expect people to address that and you should too..duhhhh
I cannot believe the Obama Admin is even considering using Jonathan Pollard's freedom as a token for Israel / Palastine peace talks ... First off, the odds of this leading to future peace between Israel and Palastine is about 1,000,000,000 to 1.
As for the other thread you mention, it was never about tigers. It was about somebody's hatred of the Chinese.
Carry on.
What are your thoughts on the amazing reality that Crimeria militias without any access to military goods or arms were able to take over the peninsula that were under the command of the Ukraine military without the aid of Putin? A bunch of farmers just happened to have tanks and a fleet of attack HIND helicopters hidden in bales of hay? Bullshit in China must be a darker shade of brown than it is here.
I've seen a bunch of "US manipulation" of Central America claims by you in the past ... Yet in a live real time event that would be as despicable as you have claimed the US has done in the past you're tongue is silent. Why so?
But there is no way that my opinion may hold true on Snowden being a Russian agent because Putin says it's not true. Just like he has stated that Russian troops did not invade the Ukraine.
I know. Putin says it is BS.
What is The Guardian's. ... I mean, what is your opinion? I mean ... Hungry, hungry hypo.....
Still trying to be funny? I suggest you work harder at it. Or better still, just give it up.
As for the Constitution, speaking as a graduating law student who's finishing a major research paper on NSA surveillance, I can tell you that you don't know what you're talking about. To begin with, the Due Process Clause has nothing to do with NSA surveillance. What's at issue is warrantless search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and to a much lesser degree First Amendment concerns relating to the potential of surveillance to chill freedom of speech and association. As for whether the surveillance is constitutional, under current precedent, specifically the third party doctrine, it is pretty clear that the NSA's surveillance programs do not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment, and are therefore constitutional. If you're interested, the relevant case is Smith v. Maryland.
That said, based on the concurrences for five justices in United States v. Jones from a few years back, there's a possibility that SCOTUS will find some of the surveillance programs unconstitutional once they get a chance to review the cases currently working their way through the lower courts. At the moment, though, there just is not a good basis for saying that NSA surveillance is unquestionably unconstitutional.
But then you know this already.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/18/edward-snowden-us-would-have-buried-nsa-warnings-forever
'...He disputed speculation that he had run the risk of China and Russia gaining access to the top secret files. He said he was so familiar with Chinese spying operations, having himself targeted China when he was employed by the NSA, that he knew how to keep the trove secure from them.
As for Russia, he revealed that he had left all the leaked documents behind when he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow. He told the New York Times he had decided to hand over all the digital material to the journalists he had encountered in Hong Kong – Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian, and the independent filmmaker Laura Poitras – because to hang on to copies would not have been in the public interest.
“What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of materials onward?” he said, adding: “There’s a zero per cent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents.”
........................................................
“The government’s accusation that we have been irresponsible with the security measures we took with the materials with which we are working are negated by their own admission that they have been unable to obtain access to virtually any of the documents they seized from Mr Miranda because, in the government’s words, those materials are ‘heavily encrypted’.” - Alan Rusbridger - Guardian Editor
Glenn Greenwald worked as a constitutional lawyer for approx 6 years before becoming a political journalist. So I think I'll take his word over yours:
GLENN GREENWALD: So this should be a huge scandal for the following reason. The essence of the Constitution is that the government cannot obtain evidence or information about you unless it has probable cause to believe that you’ve engaged in a crime and then goes to a court and gets a warrant. And only then is that evidence usable in a prosecution against you. What this secret agency is doing, according to Reuters, it is circumventing that process by gathering all kinds of information without any court supervision, without any oversight at all, using surveillance technologies and other forms of domestic spying. And then, when it gets this information that it believes it can be used in a criminal prosecution, it knows that that information can’t be used in a criminal prosecution because it’s been acquired outside of the legal and constitutional process, so they cover up how they really got it, and they pretend—they make it seem as though they really got it through legal and normal means, by then going back and retracing the investigation, once they already have it, and re-acquiring it so that it looks to defense counsel and even to judges and prosecutors like it really was done in the constitutionally permissible way. So they’re prosecuting people and putting people in prison for using evidence that they’ve acquired illegally, which they’re then covering up and lying about and deceiving courts into believing was actually acquired constitutionally. It’s a full-frontal assault on the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments and on the integrity of the judicial process, because they’re deceiving everyone involved in criminal prosecutions about how this information has been obtained.
The NSA programs operate in essentially the same way. The NSA goes to the FISA court and details how they plan to collect info and what regulations are in place to guard against abuse and make sure that the program is minimally invasive of privacy. Once the court signs off on the regulations the NSA can collect the info and analyze it to identify risks, in much the same way that one would when looking for diseases in the population. If evidence of a crime surfaces during this process then the government can absolutely use it in a prosecution without violating the constitution.
GLENN GREENWALD: What this secret agency is doing, according to Reuters, it is circumventing that process by gathering all kinds of information without any court supervision, without any oversight at all, using surveillance technologies and other forms of domestic spying.
So that's just not true. The NSA is actually supervised by the FISA court, by the Executive branch, and by Congress. This oversight is far from perfect, but it's just flat out wrong to say that the NSA is unsupervised.
GLENN GREENWALD: And then, when it gets this information that it believes it can be used in a criminal prosecution, it knows that that information can’t be used in a criminal prosecution because it’s been acquired outside of the legal and constitutional process, so they cover up how they really got it, and they pretend—they make it seem as though they really got it through legal and normal means, by then going back and retracing the investigation, once they already have it, and re-acquiring it so that it looks to defense counsel and even to judges and prosecutors like it really was done in the constitutionally permissible way. So they’re prosecuting people and putting people in prison for using evidence that they’ve acquired illegally, which they’re then covering up and lying about and deceiving courts into believing was actually acquired constitutionally. It’s a full-frontal assault on the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments and on the integrity of the judicial process, because they’re deceiving everyone involved in criminal prosecutions about how this information has been obtained.
The paragraph above describes a practice called "parallel construction," which is allegedly being done by law enforcement officers who receive information from an intelligence division of the DEA, which reportedly gets some information from the NSA. It is far from definitively clear that the NSA is passing information along explicitly so it can be used in prosecutions. Moreover, the constitutional issues here relate to how law enforcement is using information in prosecutions, NOT the fact that the NSA itself may have acquired the information in the first place.
So again, you don't know what you're talking about. Unless you want to go read up a bit so you actually know something about constitutional law, I suggest you let this lie.
You can spin it however you want, but the fact is that there's zero evidence that either China or Russia gained access to any of his files. Add to that the fact the British intelligence services did gain access to the files and were unable to decipher more than a tiny fraction of them because they were so heavily encrypted, and your argument becomes completely redundant.
'A large group of people', you say? I think you mean 'every single American'. As for not 'too great an invasion of privacy', I suspect that recording everybodys e-mails, and phone conversations, qualifies in most peoples schema as 'too great an invasion of privacy'. No it isn't. Have you not been paying attention? Congress has been stonewalled at every turn in it's search for any transparency and accountability in these mass surveillance operations. Funny how you twist everything to suit you. I can see that your training as a lawyer is working out well. As Greenwald explicitly states: 'evidence [is being] acquired illegally'. The illegality is based on it's being unconstitutional.
You think you know more about the law than Glenn Greenwald? Dream on.It's you that doesn't know what he's talking about.
You can spin it however you want, but the fact is that there's zero evidence that either China or Russia gained access to any of his files. Add to that the fact the British intelligence services did gain access to the files and were unable to decipher more than a tiny fraction of them because they were so heavily encrypted, and your argument becomes completely redundant.
'A large group of people', you say? I think you mean 'every single American'. As for not 'too great an invasion of privacy', I think recoring everybodys e-mails, and phone conversations qualifies in most peoples schema as 'too great an invasion of privacy'. No it isn't. Have you not been paying attention? Congress has been stonewalled at every turn in it's search for any transparency and accountability in these mass surveillance operations.
GLENN GREENWALD: And then, when it gets this information that it believes it can be used in a criminal prosecution, it knows that that information can’t be used in a criminal prosecution because it’s been acquired outside of the legal and constitutional process, so they cover up how they really got it, and they pretend—they make it seem as though they really got it through legal and normal means, by then going back and retracing the investigation, once they already have it, and re-acquiring it so that it looks to defense counsel and even to judges and prosecutors like it really was done in the constitutionally permissible way. So they’re prosecuting people and putting people in prison for using evidence that they’ve acquired illegally, which they’re then covering up and lying about and deceiving courts into believing was actually acquired constitutionally. It’s a full-frontal assault on the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments and on the integrity of the judicial process, because they’re deceiving everyone involved in criminal prosecutions about how this information has been obtained.
The paragraph above describes a practice called "parallel construction," which is allegedly being done by law enforcement officers who receive information from an intelligence division of the DEA, which reportedly gets some information from the NSA. It is far from definitively clear that the NSA is passing information along explicitly so it can be used in prosecutions. Moreover, the constitutional issues here relate to how law enforcement is using information in prosecutions, NOT the fact that the NSA itself may have acquired the information in the first place.
So again, you don't know what you're talking about. Unless you want to go read up a bit so you actually know something about constitutional law, I suggest you let this lie.
Funny how you twist everything to suit you. I can see that your training as a lawyer is working out well for you. As Greenwald explicitly states: the information was obtained illegally. The illegality is based on the fact that it was unconstitutional. You think you know more about the law than Glenn Greenwald? It's you that doesn't know what he's talking about.
Anyways, if you don't want to accept that I actually may know what I'm talking about, and would rather rely on arguments from authority, I'll indulge you. I think we can agree that United States federal judges are better authorities on the constitution than Glenn Greenwald, or I (and certainly you). At this point there have been two federal district court judges (one in Virginia and the other in New York) who have ruled on the NSA's phone metadata program. One found it unconstitutional (Virginia) the other found it constitutional (New York). My opinion, and that of most legal scholars I've read on the issue, is that the court that found the program constitutional has the better position based on the law as it currently stands. The judge who ruled the program unconstitutional could only do so by writing off a Supreme Court case from the 1970s as essentially being too old to control the outcome of a case so closely tied up in the capabilities of modern technology. To me that's a great common sense argument but it's very weak legal analysis given the central importance of stare decisis (precedential authority) to American law. The Supreme Court is binding authority, and you don't get to just ignore what they say because you think the world has moved on. If you don't want to rely on my word about who has the better of the argument based on the current state of the law, then I'd refer you to the fact that the FISA Court, comprised of 11 federal appellate court judges, also found the program to be constitutional. It's very possible that the Supreme Court will change the law once these cases get to them, but as of right now these programs are legal.
Last thing: the NSA didn't record "everybody's e-mails, and phone conversations" as you assert. They collected metadata from all those communications (e.g., phone numbers, date of call, duration of call, etc.). They didn't actually record the content of people's conversations. Now, I happen to think that metadata is extremely revealing when aggregated and data-mined, which is why I'd like the Supreme Court to change the law. But as of legal doctrine right now, the fact that they were only collecting metadata is very, very important, because it means that the collection program isn't considered a "search" under the Fourth Amendment (again the relevant law is the third party doctrine). Essentially, the metadata collected is considered to have been shared with the service provider (i.e., a third party), which negates any reasonable expectation of privacy that an individual may have in that data (that's a term of art - a fourth amendment search is defined against an individual's objective "reasonable expectation of privacy" in a given situation).
In sum, once again, you don't know what you're talking about.
Unfortunately I do not have a lot to add, as we long ago passed the point where what I feel is unjustifiable case law has trumped the constitution utterly warping the foundations of our system of law. The most egregious current example being the utterly fucked and inconsistent reasoning for allowing the ACA (not to get off topic, just citing an example, and FWIW, i now have entirely FREE - to me - health care because of ACA which i am morally disgusted by).
If I opened it now would you not understand?
I know you're incredibly conceited, but that really takes the fucking biscuit.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/16/nsa-phone-surveillance-likely-unconstitutional-judge
NSA phone surveillance program likely unconstitutional, federal judge rules
• Dragnet 'likely' in breach of fourth amendment
• Judge describes scope of program as 'Orwellian'
• Ruling relates to collection of Americans' metadata
Spencer Ackerman and Dan Roberts in Washington
theguardian.com, Monday 16 December 2013
A federal judge in Washington ruled on Monday that the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency is likely to violate the US constitution, in the most significant legal setback for the agency since the publication of the first surveillance disclosures by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Judge Richard Leon declared that the mass collection of metadata probably violates the fourth amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and was "almost Orwellian" in its scope. In a judgment replete with literary swipes against the NSA, he said James Madison, the architect of the US constitution, would be "aghast" at the scope of the agency’s collection of Americans' communications data.
The ruling, by the US district court for the District of Columbia, is a blow to the Obama administration, and sets up a legal battle that will drag on for months, almost certainly destined to end up in the supreme court. It was welcomed by campaigners pressing to rein in the NSA, and by Snowden, who issued a rare public statement saying it had vindicated his disclosures. It is also likely to influence other legal challenges to the NSA, currently working their way through federal courts...
Leon expressed doubt about the central rationale for the program cited by the NSA: that it is necessary for preventing terrorist attacks. “The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack,” he wrote.
“Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation – most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics – I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.”
Leon’s opinion contained stern and repeated warnings that he was inclined to rule that the metadata collection performed by the NSA – and defended vigorously by the NSA director Keith Alexander on CBS on Sunday night – was unconstitutional...
[b]Snowden welcomes ruling[/b]
In a statement, Snowden said the ruling justified his disclosures. “I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts," he said in comments released through Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian journalist who received leaked documents from Snowden.
"Today, a secret program authorised by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.”
As I said in my last post (or really implied) the better approach to take to this whole question is to accept that it IS a question, i.e., you seem committed to taking an absolutist position that these programs are unconstitutional, whereas what I'm trying to tell you is that the constitutionality of these programs is actually very much up for debate. Certainly there are those, Judge Leon among them, who believe that the programs are unconstitutional. There are many other legal thinkers who disagree. Moreover, the objective state of the law at this moment, based on binding precedent, is that these programs are constitutional. Judge Leon knows this - he works hard in his opinion to argue around these precedents. That doesn't mean that the law won't change. Again, the Supreme Court may very well adopt Judge Leon's position. As of right now, however, my understanding is that his opinion is odds with the case law.
Finally, no, I am not suggesting that ONLY someone with legal training is capable of understanding the law. Certainly there are autodidacts out there. I do, however, think that the whole point of legal training is to get a better understanding of the law, and that people who have gone to law school will in general have a vastly better understanding of the law than people who haven't. I don't think that's conceited. I think that's just an acknowledgment of the fundamental purpose of a legal education. The whole reason you hire a lawyer is because he or she has a professional expertise in the law that you, as a non-lawyer, lack.
It's also not clear exactly what congress knew when. There are some members of congress who are claiming that they had no idea what was going on and there are others who are saying that the congress was fully informed. My instinct is not to put too much credence in either assertion. Everybody on the hill is looking to cover their own ass, they all have an agenda, so who knows who's telling the truth. My guess is the truth is somewhere in the middle.
All I can find is this:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131014/17191824879/even-dianne-feinstein-admits-that-nsa-oversight-is-often-game-20-questions.shtml
Even Senate Intelligence Committee Admits That NSA Oversight Is Often A Game Of 20 Questions
We just recently quoted Rep. Justin Amash talking about how Congressional "oversight" of the NSA tended to be this bizarre game of 20 questions, where briefings would be held, but you wouldn't be told any information unless you asked precisely the right questions:
But Amash said that intelligence officials are often evasive during classified briefings and reveal little new information unless directly pressed.
"You don't have any idea what kind of things are going on," Amash said. "So you have to start just spitting off random questions. Does the government have a moon base? Does the government have a talking bear? Does the government have a cyborg army? If you don't know what kind of things the government might have, you just have to guess and it becomes a totally ridiculous game of twenty questions."
It would appear that sense goes beyond just folks like Amash, all the way up to the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein. While she's still a strong supporter of the NSA's surveillance programs, the latest revelations about the NSA's collection of buddy lists and email address books pointed out that those issues weren't covered by Congressional oversight, since they happened overseas. When the Washington Post questions Feinstein's office about this, a senior staffer seemed unconcerned, mentioning that perhaps they should be asking questions about it:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in August that the committee has less information about, and conducts less oversight of, intelligence-gathering that relies solely on presidential authority. She said she planned to ask for more briefings on those programs.
“In general, the committee is far less aware of operations conducted under 12333,” said a senior committee staff member, referring to Executive Order 12333, which defines the basic powers and responsibilities of the intelligence agencies. “I believe the NSA would answer questions if we asked them, and if we knew to ask them, but it would not routinely report these things, and in general they would not fall within the focus of the committee.”
That, ladies and gentleman, is the kind of "oversight" that Congress conducts.
And this:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/hill-draws-criticism-over-nsa-oversight-104151.html
Hill draws criticism over NSA oversight
Cries of lax Capitol Hill oversight are piling up as Snowden-inspired stories continue to explode in the media, casting doubt on whether the legislative watchdogs can be trusted to oversee national security agencies that they’ve long defended.
Intelligence Committee leaders from the House and Senate insist they’ve done their due diligence but acknowledge that lawmakers can glean only as much information as the president and his team will share. And even then, anything of such a highly classified nature can’t be legally disclosed anyway.
Still, a “trust us” promise from the lawmakers with the highest of high-security clearances isn’t satisfying critics.
Among Snowden’s stated reasons for leaking stolen documents to select members of the press: Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, for asking “softball questions” of national security officials during public hearings. “The system failed comprehensively,” the former National Security Agency contractor told The Washington Post in December.
...Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is even pushing a resolution to create a new Senate investigative panel that can dig in on all the surveillance issues already under the purview of the Intelligence committees. The existing panels, he said, can’t be trusted to do their job.
“Clearly, they’ve been co-opted. There’s no doubt about that,” McCain told POLITICO.
It’s a classic Washington story in which Congress and national security agencies end up in lock step, with lawmakers seen as serving more like cheerleaders than watchdogs. Four decades ago, then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Stennis (D-Miss.) was widely quoted telling the CIA’s leaders he didn’t want to know what they were doing.
....“What happens when you get on the committee, right away the intelligence community sweeps in and basically starts the process of trying to kind of say, ‘Well, these are tough issues.’ And, in effect, only one point of view gets conveyed,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime Intelligence Committee member and NSA critic, said in an interview. “It’s our job to do vigorous oversight and not just get caught up in the culture that makes you, in effect, something more like an ambassador than a vigorous overseer.”
“You can get caught up in that world. There’s a certain glamour to it I think for a lot of elected officials,” explained freshman Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), one of the Intelligence Committee’s newest members.
At a recent hearing, Heinrich saw firsthand how difficult public oversight can be while pressing CIA Director John Brennan on his agency’s interrogation and detention programs. When Brennan replied that he’d rather answer in a private session, Feinstein cut off her fellow Democrat’s line of questioning.
“I’d only say we view our roles somewhat differently,” Heinrich later said of Feinstein during an interview.
I wonder which is more morally disgusting to you, "free" health care, or decades long insurgent wars with body counts in the thousands?
We absolutely CAN afford the ACA if we make defense contracts a smaller piece of the pie.
My health insurance, which I was forced to get or pay a penalty for not receiving, is 100% subsidized by some other poor shmucks hard earned dollars. As someone who had never taken a dollar, I am somewhat disgusted by being forced with a monetary stick in to health care that some one else had to pay for.
And you won't get very far by trying to somehow one-or-the-other me with a free health care vs. insurgent wars debate. I think you can ask anyone on here, and they will tell you I have never been on this forum advocating for the CIA, the MIC, neocons, nwolibs, Kissinger, Brzezinski, or any other group or persons whom advocate and actively supports such policies. I understand why these things are done. I understand the agenda that frames our leaders desires to engage in these geopolitical strategies, but I detest such actions as much as the most radical leftist on here.
We need to refrain from lashing out others based on our uninformed opinions of what we believe they think based solely on their stance on an unrelated topic - ie. my dislike of being roped in to socialized medicine does not inherently make me an ignorant redneck warhawk.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/dianne-feinstein-on-nsa-its-called-protecting-america-92340.html
Responding to the first article you cited: you're conflating a whole bunch of different programs that operate under different legal authorities. Intelligence collection that occurs within the territorial boundaries of the United States must be authorized by an act of Congress. Those are the programs that Congress does oversight of. Intelligence gathering that is done exclusively abroad is generally authorized solely by the Executive (the relevant Executive Order is # 12333). This foreign/domestic distinction reflects the Constitutional principle of separation of powers, specifically the delegation to the Executive Branch of authority over foreign affairs. The reason Congress generally doesn't look into foreign intelligence operations conducted solely under Presidential authority is because that would risk encroaching on powers exclusively delegated to the Executive by the Constitution.
In any event, the two programs that people are the most up in arms about are domestic programs, which ARE subject to Congressional oversight. These are the bulk collection of telephone metadata, and PRISM, which collected Internet communications data of "non-U.S. persons" (to quote the statute) located outside the United States, where the data itself was being stored or was crossing through fiber-optic cables located within the United States. The phone program is authorized under section 215 of the FISA Amendments Act, and PRISM is authorized under section 702 of the same.
Regarding the second article, I agree that there are definitely problems with Congressional oversight, but I don't think it's fair to say that the intelligence committees are in complete lock-step with the intelligence community. Just look at the fight that's going on right now between Feinstein and the CIA over Bush-era "enhanced interrogation" (read "torture").