furrbear | Huge Surprise... NOT!!! FISA, Revisited

http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/2ZnviNVh6Es/625288

I know mcjoan already covered this, but it's just such a surprise, such a shocker that I really want to bring it up again:

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia. [...]

"These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA's Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."

She said US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and "collected on" as they called their offices or homes in the United States.

Yes, what a surprise. I especially like the part of the story where Jay Rockefeller, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, finds this "disturbing". Um... hello? Senator? This was pretty much what we were all telling you was happening, when you last rammed through new lax surveillance laws in opposition to other members of your own party.

Jackass.

Here's the thing. The story says "despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary": that's a wasted sentence. It's a waste of damn ink and/or electrons. George W. Bush lies about everything, all the time, and without compunction. Big things, little things, provable things and unprovable things. He has spent his entire administration lying about everything from war to the economy to his own advisors' activities to surveillance to the plain meaning of laws to everything else, and he's staffed his government and his Justice Department with unapologetic liars as well. Anyone who hasn't realized this at this point is beyond the help of reason or medical science.

Big surprise. The government is routinely spying on innocent Americans, whether businessmen, soldiers, students or whatever, because getting "probable cause" was too much a bother for President Halfass Bumblethud.

This is what we get for having an administration staffed by carnival barkers. Maybe someday we'll learn.