Amash Responds to White House Concerns

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4th Amendment, Concerns, FACTS, Freedoms, Government Overreach, Intrusion, Invasive, Justin Amash, Stand Up, TRUTH

Myth v. Fact: Amash-Conyers Amendment

and NSA Surveillance

• MYTH 1: The Amash-Conyers amendment is a “blunt approach [and] is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.”—Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary
• Fact: The Amash-Conyers amendment is a modest proposal to rein in among the most troubling NSA surveillance that has been disclosed so far.

The Amash-Conyers amendment ends NSA’s blanket collection of Americans’ telephone records. It does this by requiring the FISA court under Sec. 215 to order the production of records that pertain only to a person under investigation.

The amendment does not defund NSA. It does not defund all NSA surveillance under the Patriot Act’s Sec. 215. It does not require a warrant for NSA to get Americans’ car reservations, hotel receipts, or telephone records. NSA does not even have to suspect that a crime has occurred. The amendment simply requires that there be a reasonable connection between the documents sought and the person under investigation. Far from blunt, the Amash-Conyers amendment is narrow and modest and is only a first step towards protecting Americans’ records from NSA surveillance.

There’s some irony in being criticized for not having an “informed, open, or deliberative” debate by the very people and groups who have obscured how NSA’s surveillance programs work. Over the last two months, the public and especially Congress have been given significant information about the activity at issue here: the suspicionless, blanket surveillance of ordinary Americans’ telephone records. NSA and the intelligence committees have hosted numerous classified and unclassified hearings, including an extraordinary four-hour seminar with NSA director Keith Alexander yesterday. Congress has been given ample opportunity to consider the question: Does Congress oppose the suspicionless collection of every American’s phone records?

• MYTH 2: The Amash-Conyers amendment prevents the bulk collection of data on foreigners.
• Fact: The Amash-Conyers amendment does not restrict the surveillance of foreign-to-foreign communications in any way.

FISA simply does not apply to the surveillance of purely foreign communications. See 50 U.S.C. § 1802. FISA court orders under Sec. 215 cover local telephone calls (wholly within the U.S.) and calls between the U.S. and abroad. In other words, NSA’s Sec. 215 phone surveillance program covers only calls in which at least one side of the conversation is in the U.S. Because foreign-to-foreign communications are beyond the scope of the Sec. 215 surveillance program, those communications are not addressed by the Amash-Conyers amendment.

• MYTH 3: The Amash-Conyers amendment raises constitutional concerns.
• Fact: The Amash-Conyers amendment is entirely constitutional, and despite allegations of “concerns,” no one really believes the amendment is unconstitutional. In fact, the Amash-Conyers amendment helps restore Fourth Amendment protections of Americans’ phone records.

The Amash-Conyers amendment allows NSA to execute FISA court orders only if the orders limit the collection of documents to those documents that pertain to a person under a Patriot Act investigation. The amendment does not place a mandate on the FISA court; the amendment couldn’t even if that was Mr. Amash’s intention because the FISA court is not funded through the Department of Defense appropriations bill.

Although the Amash-Conyers amendment does not require the FISA court to include specific language in its order, it is important to note that Sec. 215 already requires the FISA court to include at least five sets of specific limitations in its court orders. See 50 U.S.C. § 1861(c). Reading the current language in Sec. 215 reveals that this “constitutional concern” is wholly without merit.

• MYTH 4: Americans don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their telephone records.
• Fact: Americans do have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their telephone records, and the Supreme Court appears poised to rule definitively on that issue.

Proponents of NSA’s suspicionless surveillance like to say that Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their telephone records. The Fourth Amendment reads, in part: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . .” The collection of every American’s telephone records certainly is a “seizure” of those records. And ordinary Americans believe the intimate details of their phone calls are private.

Smith v. Maryland, a case the Supreme Court decided more than three decades ago, is not clearly applicable to NSA’s suspicionless surveillance. The person whose data was collected in that case was suspected of wrongdoing before the data collection, and the technology of that era did not allow for the type of mass record surveillance and retention that we have today. In United States v. Jones, a case from last year that held certain government GPS tracking unconstitutional, Supreme Court justices began to rethink privacy in the age of digital technology.
If proponents of NSA blanket surveillance are right, if Americans lose constitutional protections when they make a call or send an e-mail, then any data stored in “the cloud” is fair game for the government without a warrant. Do we think it’s good policy to have every iPhone picture stored in iCloud subject to warrantless government confiscation? Is that reasonable?

• MYTH 5: The Amash-Conyers amendment would take away a tool that has proved effective in fighting terrorism.
• Fact: Proponents of NSA’s blanket collection of Americans’ telephone records have not put forward publicly a single, solid example of a “success” under the program.

The amendment does not take away a tool that has proved effective in the fight against terrorism. The administration claims that surveillance conducted under FISA Sec. 702, including the PRISM program, has disrupted terrorist plots, including the New York subway plot. The Amash-Conyers amendment does not address FISA Sec. 702 in any way. The amendment concerns Patriot Act Sec. 215 alone, not Sec. 702. The administration’s one and only public example of a Sec. 215 “success” is the conviction of a taxi driver for sending money to a Somali group. Reports suggest that the Somali group posed no direct threat to the U.S., the investigation did not uncover an imminent threat, and the data could have been obtained without Sec. 215. For that “success,” the government has collected billions of Americans’ records.

TO SUPPORT AMASH-CONYERS AMENDMENT CLICK HERE FOR YOUR HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE’S PHONE NUMBER.

When LIARS lead…

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Bill of Rights, Cold War, Constitution, Don, Don't Tread on Me, East Germany, Fascism, Freedom, German Democratic Republic - East Germany, Germany, History, Lying Unacceptable, Patriot, Politics of Germany, Tea Party, TRUTH, United State

If the truth is what sets us free, what does it mean to live in a society where truth is absent?

The danger to America is not a single politician with ill intent. Or even a group of them. The most dangerous thing any nation faces is a citizenry capable of trusting a liar to lead them.

“Almost all current events in the affairs of governments and nations have their parallels and precedents in the past,” American President Harry Truman wrote, “without an understanding of history, we are doomed to repeat our collective past.” Has any leader’s lies from the past dramatically shaped people’s destiny?

The Nazi’s, who comprised less than 10% of the German population, compelled millions of people to head for gas chambers in a docile manner. 10 MILLION PEOPLE! How did they do THAT? The Nazis were overwhelmingly outnumbered. They could easily have been overpowered. Why didn’t people resist?

The answer is breathtakingly simple. It is a method still being used by some elected leaders to achieve various goals today.

THEY LIED.

Adolf Eichmann, known as “The Master”, set about implementing the “Final Solution” as if he were the president of a multinational corporation. His intricate stories, were designed to ensure the cooperation of the condemned (but unknowing) Jews. Accompanied by an entourage of no more than thirty local men — mostly unarmed -Eichmann would address the crowd in a strong, clear voice.

This is what he said:

“Jews: At last, it can be reported to you that the Russians are advancing on our eastern front. I apologize for the hasty way we brought you into our protection. Unfortunately, there was little time to explain. You have nothing to worry about. We want only the best for you. You will leave here shortly and be sent to very fine places indeed. You will work there, your wives will stay at home, and your children will go to school. You will have wonderful lives. We will all be terrible crowded on the trains, but the journey is short. Men? Please keep your families together and board the railcars in an orderly manner. Quickly now, my friends, we must hurry!”

Auschwitz concentration camp, arrival of Hungarian Jews, Summer 1944 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Jewish husbands and fathers were relieved by the explanation and comforted by the fact that there weren’t more armed soldiers. Fear of “heinous Russian Communists” had been pounded over the media to the masses for months. Relieved that the authorities were looking out for their best interests, grown, strong men, who could have resisted, instead trustingly helped their families into the rail cars. The containers, designed to transport eight cows, were each packed with a minimum of one hundred human beings and quickly padlocked.

At that moment, they were lost.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,” said Thomas Jefferson, “. . . . The people cannot be safe without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”

History shows that any people who are sheep-like in following their leadership (so long as their personal self-interests are satisfied) may one day awaken to find that their nation has changed in dramatic ways.

-Do YOU think lying to get elected is acceptable? Especially when you believe the candidate’s intention is to get elected to do GOOD WORKS?

-Who are the “good guys” and who are the “bad guys”?

-Would truth be a starting point for telling the difference?

-What is our nation’s course? Do you believe that one can determine a probable destination by examining the direction in which we are traveling? Where are we headed?

The only way to know a person who aspires to lead us is to listen to what he says and watch what he does. Frankly, what I think of any current or past leader of the United States is irrelevant. The questions most important to YOU in regard to this subject should be: What criteria do YOU use?

It doesn’t take MANY people to lead a nation in a direction that has serious repercussions on the liberty of OTHERS. Indeed, it has happened, here, in the United States. We have given up liberties for various reasons. WE MAY NEVER GET THEM BACK. And, things could turn even WORSE very rapidly.

Is SOMEONE lying to our country right now?

YOU get to answer that for yourself. My point is that each of us must STOP blindly believing everything someone with an agenda says.

TODAY WITH THE ADVENT OF THE INTERNET’S SEARCH ENGINES, it is simple to verify a politicians voting record, see videos of the politician on youtube to check out the politician’s consistency and whether or not he or she keeps his or her promises.

We MUST do our best to change our country’s direction and to put the best people possible in office. People who will DO what they believe is RIGHT and TRUE.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we MUST DO. ~Leonardo DeVinci

Your life, the lives of your children and the lives of your grandchildren may depend upon you demanding THE TRUTH and NOTHING LESS.

Related articles

• Why Do We Let Politicians Get Away With Lying? (outsidethebeltway.com)
• A Tidal Wave of Political Liars Lying (jonrappoport.wordpress.com)
• Partisan Politics: Dems and Reps Both Say It’s OK For Their Politicians to Lie to Get Elected (reason.com)
• The Propaganda Society (mike10613.wordpress.com)
• HR 5736 – A Bill to Establish An Orwellian Truth Ministry (independentsentinel.com)
• Astonishing Parallels: Nazi Rhetoric and James Dobson (biblethumpingliberal.com)
• Russian Journalist Exposes Propaganda Lies about Houla Massacre (sjlendman.blogspot.com)
• Why Don’t the Corrupt Players On Wall Street and In D.C. Show Remorse for Their Destructive Actions … And Why Don’t We Stop Them? (washingtonsblog.com)

American Media: Weapons of Mass Disinformation

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2012 Election, ABC, Advertising, BBC, Bill Clinton, Bolshevik, Breaking, Broadcast, CBS, Controlled, Coverage, Federal Reserve System, Fox, Government, Internet, Lie, LIES, Mainstream Media, MSNBC, NBC, Network, News, Newspaper, Nightline, Politics, Propaganda, Radio, Reporter, Richard Nixon, Soviet Union, Television, TRUTH, United States

In the old Soviet Union, the government controlled the media. Not a word of substance could be published without prior approval from the Bolshevik commissars.

Today in the United States, the situation is starkly similar. BUT, MOST AMERICANS DON’T KNOW IT.

In fact, most Americans know VERY LITTLE about what is going on in the world. The Time Magazine issue pictured below illustrates why. The Time magazine’s (issue 178, no.22) lead story for people living abroad was called “Revolution Redux” and featured a cover with a dramatic picture of an Arab rebel wearing a gas mask. In America, we got “Why anxiety is good for you”.

The Business Insider article LINKED HERE shows issue after issue of Time magazine “watering down”news meant for American readers.

Do you believe the mainstream media tells you the truth without bias? And that they tell you EVERYTHING?

In America today, a select handful of super-rich families and tightly-knit financial interests–a plutocratic elite–owns “mainstream media” and controls the government through their ownership of it…every single one of the major media outlets is controlled by this powerful interlocking combination.

Behind the scenes these shadowy owners and corporate power brokers dictate what you will (or will not) see in your daily newspaper or on the daily news.

– The shadowy media controllers decide which politicians are “in” and which politicians are “out”. (They made Bill Clinton overnight. They also broke Richard Nixon overnight.)

– The ‘controllers’ decide which issues can–or can not–be debated. (Imagine a public debate over the Federal Reserve system on Nightline. It will never happen!)

-The ‘controllers’ also decide which are “good wars” and which are “bad wars.”

In contrast to the standard conception of the media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their “search for truth” and their “independence of authority”, the reality is that modern “journalists” serve a “societal purpose,” but NOT ONE of providing the public with the information needed for the intelligent discharge of political and social responsibilities. On the contrary, despite the unprecedented access 21st-century people could have to news about real events, political parties, corporations, and nations at war FLOOD THE AIRWAVES with spin, selective reporting, and even disinformation.

That disinformation not only threatens our insight into the workings of our world; it makes us vulnerable to fear, misunderstanding, and doubt: all things that lead to destruction. Good people have been indoctrinated  into committing terrible atrocities against others, or even against themselves.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill

Will telling the “truth” solve all a nation’s problems? Of course not. But, it is a beginning. Knowing the “correct facts” should be least we require before making any decision of consequence. If our media is ignorant, reckless and corrupt, that is because we tolerate their ignorance, recklessness and corruption.

Without a concerted and organized effort to diffuse mass-produced lies, the future can be bleak indeed. History has shown us time and again that a nation of fools (how could they be otherwise without factual information) is doomed.

Related articles

• Disinformation: How It Works (zerohedge.com)
• Ruling America Through Lies, Farbrication and Disinformation (chasvoice.blogspot.com)