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The Public Doesn’t Believe the NSA … Knows What’s Really Going On With Mass Spying
72% of Likely U.S. Voters Know the NSA Has Monitored the Private Communications of Congress, Military Leaders and Judges
The government keeps on lying about how it's spying on Americans without authorization from a court.
It keeps lying about the scope of its spying.
It keeps lying about the need for mass surveillance (and here) and the way that the information gained from spying will really be used ... to harass political opponents.
Indeed, NSA whistleblower Russel Tice – a key source in the 2005 New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping –recently said that the NSA illegally spied on General Petraeus and other generals, Supreme Court Justice Alito and all of the other supreme court justices, the White House spokesman, Barack Obama, and many other top officials.
The mainstream media will not interview Tice about this explosive issue. (Tice made his revelations to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds - who has been deemed credible by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General, several senators [free subscription required], and a coalition of prominent conservative and liberal groups - and to James Corbett. Edmonds and Corbett have small, alternative media web-based radio shows.)
And yet - in very heartening news - a new poll by Rasmussen shows that the American public understands much of what is really going on:
Most voters think the National Security Agency is likely to have violated one of the country’s most cherished constitutional standards – the checks and balances between the three branches of government – by spying on the private communications of Congress and judges.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 72% of Likely U.S. Voters think it is at least somewhat likely that the NSA has monitored the private communications of Congress, military leaders and judges. That includes 45% who believe it is Very Likely.
Just 14% say it’s not likely that the Executive branch of the government monitored the private communications of the Legislative and Judicial branches. Another 14% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
This concern takes on even more significance given that 57% of voters believe it is likely the NSA data will be used by other government agencies to harass political opponents.
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Despite the president’s assurance that "nobody is listening to your telephone calls," 68% believe it is likely that "government agencies are listening in on private conversations of American citizens.”
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Currently, 33% of voters approve of the recently disclosed NSA program of monitoring Americans’ private phone and e-mail communications to fight terrorism. Fifty percent (50%) are opposed.
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The United States was founded on a belief that governments are created to protect certain unalienable rights. Today, however, more voters than ever (56%) view the federal government as a threat to individual rights rather than a protector of those rights.
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The US Constitution is not a living document, it died.
It used to be that people in other countries 'liked Americans' but disliked our government. That has to be changing at an accelerating rate with disclosures like this.
If we don't vote out a huge percentage of incumbents in the next election, we deserve the growing dislike and repecussions that come with it.
Anyone who still votes in this country is PART OF THE PROBLEM. Stop voting, stop participating, make the place ungovernable...
Pro voting statement make me laugh. 237 or so years of proof of the ineffectiveness of voting and to vote today is to participate in their criminality. i.e. if those of government are rouge and criminality ignoring the Constitution then the whole institution is criminal and to vote is to participate in that criminality.
The Four Rs
Rejection: Quit paying, quit obeying.
Revolution: They're preparing, so you should be as well.
Retribution: Is there really any place for these proven sociopaths in a restored civil and Constitutional society?!
Restoration: Of the Constitutional republic.
sharkbait
...and what, exactly, makes you think elections are real? Were you not paying attention in 2008 or 2012?
Sure, they'll allow subtle changes from blue to red and then back again, over and over. But some _actual_ American, like Ron Paul, is allowed no where near the top. Dude, elections are rigged. With the advent of electronic voting, this is fuckin child's play.
Jeez. I just can't make up my mind to vote for ..............boxers or briefs. Everything else is decided for me. Democracy has been turned inside out. Making the world safe for democracy (fascism) has become our rallying cry as our troops and drones move eastward first to surround Iran, and then Russia and China. We had to destroy the village / country to save it. Think we will have a vote on that? More USSA troops die from suicide than in battle. I, for one, don't condemn them for that. It seems, contrary to the teachings of some churches, their only ticket out of hell.
Re. your original question - Simple - Neither, Be free.
... go commando
votescam.org
Wake up.
We cannot vote ourselves into freedom.
What better way to control lying politicians, judges and generals than by having their entire digital record of manipulation and self seeking available on demand. My email and FB... pffft - but controlling the elected representatives - priceless.
The problem with this is that information of illegal activity (of which they probably already have a ton) will never be used on the "too big to jail's" nor anyone with influence and connections. This lack of "rule of law" to the law of the (current) rulers is what makes this monitoring so insidious. That and the fact that much of our infrastructure now seems to be controlled by private companies with no accountability to the citizens makes it even more concerning. Heck, I could see the possibility of a political trading system developing where people trade NSA captured secrets for favorable votes on bills. That seems a lot more plausible with our government than any corrupt politician or powerful individual going to jail...except of course if that info shed a negative light on a person like Ron Paul who desires to restrain the growing beast and re-implement the rule of law. Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised if they slip through a bill that exempts all of Congress from this monitoring just as they did to exempt themselves from the laws of insider trading.
On the plus side, if rules and laws ever become more important than influence and connections, the NSA should have a lot of evidence stored up to put a lot of corrupt influential people away (if they're not already dead by then) and strip away all their ill gotten gains but I have more faith in the rapture occurring.
The confluence of our rapid devolution into cultural and moral relativism with the explosive advances in internet and surveillance capabiity does not bode well for the survival of our republic. Civilized society cannot exist without trust, and this poll clearly shows how little we trust and respect our leaders and institutions. I don't see a way forward from here.
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...and yet, like everything else in Vichy DC, sold to the highest bidder.
I'd bet my eye-teeth that's why Feinstein is so rabid about this shit. Just like the mob makes sure they have the goods on your first "hit" just to keep you in line. I bet you they've got her dead-to-rights on all kinds of criminal/unethical activity. In other words, "If we go down - you go down."
I have already started going back to paper and pen for important correspondence, hand delivered of course.
Those who have nothing to hide. Have fun in your new world, where you will be instructed which door to enter and when.
This has gone too far, I am waiting for the inevitable, where a victim of this "spying" pulls out a gun or worse and uses it against those who made his or her life intolerable.
This kind of stuff creates "terrorism" of the self defense kind.
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...which can lead to "terrorism" of the Lexington and Concord kind.
Currently, 33% of voters approve of the recently disclosed NSA program of monitoring Americans’ private phone and e-mail communications to fight terrorism. Fifty percent (50%) are opposed.
The 50% of Americans that oppose being spied upon (and having their freedoms unknowingly highjacked away from them by the Stasi-State) have now woken up to a country they no longer recognize...
Obama to all Americans... "You are either with ME and the owners of the United States of Secret Security... or you are with the Traitors like Snowden (who merely seek to inform Americans of our treachery and treason against both them and The Constitution)..."
This is NOT about gleaning information from Al Qaeda's FaceBook, email and Twitter accounts....
Nor do the Russians and the Chinese think Snowden possesses important information that they don't already know...
This IS about the NSA finding out everything about everyone they can. And then using that information as THEY see fit.
The lines drawn could not be clearer.
Here are wise words from Ron Paul on the Snowden Affair and why Security State Amerika is the real enemy...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHBw-h1XGIU&NR=1&feature=endscreen
Looks like many of us at ZH could be spending a lot of time with known terrorist supporter and traitor Ron Paul in a FEMA camp in the not-to-distant future if Cheney/Obama have their way...
So, stop wasting your time in the voting lines and vote from the rooftops instead.
Want to see what the government is REALLY all about? Threaten their legitimacy, threaten their narcissism, threaten their corrupt revolving door system, threaten their unlimited free lunches... and see the reaction first hand. No REAL change has EVER happened in the US without FORCING it. And yes, this means blood on the streets.
Looks like the sheep might be starting to wake up.
Too bad they didn't manage it prior to being corralled into the abattoir.
Brings this to mind -
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
No - they didn't fight because they were slavic mongolized russians with a century of conditioning living under the Czar system.
They rolled over and hit the snooze button again.
BigJim I gave you BOTH your up votes.
It seems I get to give two up arrows every time I vote!
Must be an American designed voting system...
:c)
Boil frog is sometime to create spontaneous gas bubble, but is not actual living.