Spying on Americans = no prosecutions, whistleblowing programs that spy on Americans = prosecution

[Kuya]

Some might remember the NSA's illegal wiretapping that let the NSA hear practically any private conversation in America, it was ruled illegal by three separate federal judges:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2...rrantless.html

http://mobile.salon.com/opinion/gree...nsa/index.html

http://static1.firedoglake.com/28/fi...main-Order.pdf

Which has as a punishment 5 years in prison and a 10,000 dollar fine for each offense.

There were no prosecutions or indictments for this.

Yet Thomas Drake, a whistlerblower who revealed to Siobhan Gorman that:

WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency developed a pilot program in the late 1990s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze massive amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it shelved the project -- not because it failed to work -- but because of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden White House expansion of the agency's surveillance powers, according to several intelligence officials.

The agency opted instead to adopt only one component of the program, which produced a far less capable and rigorous program. It remains the backbone of the NSA's warrantless surveillance efforts, tracking domestic and overseas communications from a vast databank of information, and monitoring selected calls.

And also revealed that:

01-29) 04:00 PST Washington — 2006-01-29 04:00:00 PST Washington -- A program that was supposed to help the National Security Agency identify electronic data crucial to the nation's safety is not up and running more than six years and $1.2 billion after it was launched, according to current and former government officials.

The classified project, code-named Trailblazer, was promoted as the NSA's state-of-the art tool for sifting through an ocean of modern-day digital communications and uncovering key nuggets to protect the nation against an ever-changing collection of enemies.

The NSA initiative, which was designed to spot and analyze such information, has resulted in little more than detailed schematic drawings filling almost an entire wall, according to intelligence experts familiar with the program. After an estimated $1.2 billion in development costs, only a few isolated analytical and technical tools have been produced, said an intelligence expert with extensive knowledge of the program.

Trailblazer is "the biggest boondoggle going on now in the intelligence community," said Matthew Aid, who has advised three recent federal commissions and panels that investigated the Sept. 11 intelligence failures.

Well Drake has been prosecuted, the man who revealed the amount of waste and illegality of an already illegal program has been prosecuted while the people who planned and enacted the illegal program have not even been indicted. Here is a link and quotes on the prosecution:

A federal grand jury in the District of Maryland has returned a 10-count indictment charging former National Security Agency (NSA) senior executive Thomas A. Drake with the willful retention of classified information, obstruction of justice and making false statements, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division.

Whistblowers should be punished if caught, but why should they be punished when the law is not applied equaly? This is not a small issue, there has been an illegal war, torture, and illegal spying and yet nobody involved there has been prosecuted, so why should the whistleblower be prosecuted when nobody else is?

[Egon]

There is a song you should listen to. It's called "I'm Afraid of Americans."

[Kuya]

No idea what your post meant.

[Feedmenow]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle...Protection_Act

Or is the problem that it's "Classified" information that got whistleblowed?

[Kuya]

It was probably clasified.

edit: it involved the NSA and almost every breath they take is clasified, especially when they're doing illegal shit

[Khamsin]

I've never believed in the idea that if you can't punish everyone equally, punish no one at all. One person getting away with something doesn't mean that all other criminals should get away with it, too. That doesn't make our country safer.

Punish who you can, when you can, even if some occasionally are wrongly convicted, or others occasionally are favored or escape justice altogether.

My attitude would be to try to get the NSA punished, not try to get this guy free.

[Alderaan]

NSA won't get punished, they've been doing this since the Cold War ended. They're part of the UKUSA intelligence community which has been using the "Echelon" program not only to spy on it's own people but also to commit international economic espionage.

I'd personally like to see Cheney get the chair rather than this guy get prosecuted, but it's not gonna happen. In fact, i'd like to use this program to bury both Bush and Cheney for every illegal action during their administration.

[Dimmauk]

Snitches get stitches. Its that simple.

[Athas]

WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency developed a pilot program in the late 1990s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze massive amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it shelved the project -- not because it failed to work -- but because of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden White House expansion of the agency's surveillance powers, according to several intelligence officials.

The agency opted instead to adopt only one component of the program, which produced a far less capable and rigorous program. It remains the backbone of the NSA's warrantless surveillance efforts, tracking domestic and overseas communications from a vast databank of information, and monitoring selected calls.

This just annoys me. That had something that would work better and faster without being illegal but since Bush expanded their powers so much they didn't bother with it?

[Kuya]

I've never believed in the idea that if you can't punish everyone equally, punish no one at all. One person getting away with something doesn't mean that all other criminals should get away with it, too. That doesn't make our country safer.

Punish who you can, when you can, even if some occasionally are wrongly convicted, or others occasionally are favored or escape justice altogether.

My attitude would be to try to get the NSA punished, not try to get this guy free.

You're making a mockery out of the situation. Your first statement is just you being flippant. We're not talking about everyone (as if we were talking about normal every day people) being treated equally or even one person getting away with it. We're talking about massive perversions of the rule of law by dozens of people in the higher eschelons of government, including the justice department. This is no small matter, regardless of the way your post seems to want to paint it as such.

Furthermore, the law is not supposed to be about punishing who you can when you can, but about punishing those who break the law, if people who have clearly broken the law are not punished, it calls into question whether the rule of law is based on justice or even the pretense of equal treatment. How can anyone trust in the system of law when there is such an obvious two tiered system of justice?

Your attitude should be to ask why the NSA agent is the only one being punished, and how do i make it so the law is supposed to do what it was meant to, being applied equally. Otherwise, this is just another example on the desintegration of even the slightest notion of the rule of law.

[Meresgi]

If the guy broke classified information and got caught...then yeah snitches get stitches like Dimmauk said. You can't honestly expect to prosecute the NSA though, if you prosecute them, no matter how much you have against them it would open a huge ass can of worms. In the future you might see that the people who signed off on the program, now that it has made light have been given a nice pension and sent on their way. That's how shit happens in the US of A.

[Kuya]

People should probably take note of something: Unless you work for the NSA, you should probably be rooting for the snitches. It makes little sense to argue against your own interests, and in this case, you could use more snitches like this guy.

[Feedmenow]

I don't think you really want a government that supports "Snitches need stitches" on almost any level.

[Yugl]

You're making a mockery out of the situation. Your first statement is just you being flippant. We're not talking about everyone (as if we were talking about normal every day people) being treated equally or even one person getting away with it. We're talking about massive perversions of the rule of law by dozens of people in the higher eschelons of government, including the justice department. This is no small matter, regardless of the way your post seems to want to paint it as such.

Furthermore, the law is not supposed to be about punishing who you can when you can, but about punishing those who break the law, if people who have clearly broken the law are not punished, it calls into question whether the rule of law is based on justice or even the pretense of equal treatment. How can anyone trust in the system of law when there is such an obvious two tiered system of justice?

Your attitude should be to ask why the NSA agent is the only one being punished, and how do i make it so the law is supposed to do what it was meant to, being applied equally. Otherwise, this is just another example on the desintegration of even the slightest notion of the rule of law.

Ironically, I made about this type of behavior in another thread. I've also had a similar situation happen (However, this was in the confines of an institution, which meant they could manipulate all the rules) as well. It's absolutely disgusting when it happens (In fact, another example of this in the real world would be police that violate search and seizure principles), but the difficulty then becomes how do we fight it?

[Kuya]

For starters, being agitated is a good place to begin, something which seems to lack in a lot of people now a days.

[Yugl]

Then we might want to ask ourselves why people are not agitated.

[Kuya]

Some people might put on blinders and completely ignore what is going on here.

Note what is going on: People who are part of the government and do illegal things like spy on Americans or torture enemy prisoners are being protected from the system of justice. People who reveal that the governmetn is doing illegal things are getting prosecuted. If the whistleblowers who reveal to you, the average American, that the government whom you are responsible for is doing illegal things notice that they will likely get prosecuted with little or no public support, then they have even less motivation to reveal things the government keeps secret from you, because they are illegal and against your interests.

In other words, the government protects people who do illegal things for it, and attacks people who reveal the illegal things it does, and thus less illegal things will be revealed. In other words, what is being engaged here is a strategy to imunize itself from public scrutiny. It is meant to hide what it does and scare people who fight for your interest. It is not about the justice system trying to prosecute who it can, it is a specific strategy being used by the executive branch of government.

[Yugl]

Exactly. The trouble I'm having is figuring out what can be done about this. You suggest that one of the reasons people do not care is that they're blind or ignorant to the problem. Does that mean people will be antagonized once they do learn of the truth?

The question that follows is, assuming the public does become antagonized, what can the public do? The legal system is typically insulated for this very purpose. If a solution can be found, then that is the approach to take.

[Kuya]

What i have heard, is that alot of people (liberals namely) seem to have assumed that they could let the Obama administration do what they thought he would do. Apparently, some people got the impression he was the most liberal person ever.

If that is the case, then the best thing people can do is write, protest, or organize to preassure Obama and his aides in the Justice department to actually enforce the rule of law and force investigations into warrantless wiretapping, torture and the illegality of the Iraq War. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has been actually defending the government and previous government from responsability for the wiretapping issue, and they have claimed an attitude of "look forward, not backward" for the whole torture issue and Iraq war fiasco. I am not sure if putting preassure on him will actually work, because it seems that now a days, only shrill right wingers can even get a reaction from the government, while leftists are simply assumed to fall in line without even paying them attention.

The other option would be apathy. Until the next right wing government comes and inevitably takes things up a notch.

edit: usually how it works is like this: right wing government takes things too far, left wing government arrives and does nothing about it and sometimes even co-opts some of the things the previous government did making it seem like bipartisan consensus. Next right-wing government arrives, noticing that nothing happened to the previous one, goes even farther than the last one until it thinks people might actually give a shit.

[Vacht]

nom nom nom