"Obama wiretapped Trump Tower - well, just kidding, dunno really"

[Proteus_MST]

All I'm doing is repeating myself over and over here. THE GOVERNMENT CAN NOT SPY ON YOU BECAUSE YOU TALKED TO A RUSSIAN SPY! MOST DEFINITELY NOT IF YOU ARE POLITICAL OPPOSITION.

And the government didn't sy on he members of the Trump Team. None of the phones of the Trump Team were wiretapped.
It spied on the russian spies (and had wiretapped their phones).

If you have 2 persons, A and B ... and have wiretapped As phone ... you spy on A ... and not on B, not even if B has a conversation with A and you are able to make a trancript of the conversation due to having wiretapped A
(but of course the recorded conversation with A may also have consequences on B (just as it is the case with the Trump team, as there is an ongoing investigation of the FBI covering those))

[BeBMan]

THE GOVERNMENT CAN NOT SPY ON YOU BECAUSE YOU TALKED TO A RUSSIAN SPY!

"Hey Russian spies! I'm an US citizen and want to sell you secret stuff for some gazillion USD! But don't worry about any negative consequences for you or me! I have basically immunity because the gov can never spy on anyone who talks to foreign spies! So let's talk about the details of your payment soon"

[Kidlicious]

And the government didn't sy on he members of the Trump Team. None of the phones of the Trump Team were wiretapped.
It spied on the russian spies (and had wiretapped their phones).

If you have 2 persons, A and B ... and have wiretapped As phone ... you spy on A ... and not on B, not even if B has a conversation with A and you are able to make a trancript of the conversation due to having wiretapped A
(but of course the recorded conversation with A may also have consequences on B (just as it is the case with the Trump team, as there is an ongoing investigation of the FBI covering those))

Again I am repeating myself. They unmasked the names of US citizens (the political opposition). That is a violation of privacy rights in principle.

[Kidlicious]

"Hey Russian spies! I'm an US citizen and want to sell you secret stuff for some gazillion USD! But don't worry about any negative consequences for you or me! I have basically immunity because the gov can never spy on anyone who talks to foreign spies! So let's talk about the details of your payment soon"

This is why people vote for republicans. You are extremely authoritarian. You lack common decency.

[BeBMan]

Kid supports treason

[Kidlicious]

Kid supports treason

I don't judge people without any evidence because authoritarian leftist fake news has a nutjob conspiracy theory you authoritarian schmuck.

[BeBMan]

Treason is unamerican, Kid

[Proteus_MST]

Kid would have been an extremly useful help for KGB spying activities, during the times of the cold war

[Kidlicious]

Kid would have been an extremly useful help for KGB spying activities, during the times of the cold war

No one did anything like this during the Cold War except Nixon.

[Kidlicious]

Here, it is critical to bear in mind something that can easily be forgotten. The sole purpose of foreign intelligence collection is to understand the actions and intentions of foreign powers and their operatives. If the government’s purpose is to understand the actions and intentions of American citizens, there are two proper ways to go about that: (a) conduct a criminal investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance based on probable cause of a crime, or (b) conduct a FISA investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance based on probable cause that they are acting as agents of a foreign power.

If neither of those two alternatives is chosen, then the American citizens are not supposed to be the subject of the intelligence collection effort — they are supposed to be protected. The snooping to which they are subjected is an incidental byproduct (i.e., an unintentional albeit inevitable consequence) of snooping on foreign powers. The incidental snooping deprives them of privacy protections rooted in law — the requirement that the government obtain a judicial warrant before seizing and eavesdropping on their communications. The law allows this to happen, but only if post hoc safeguards are applied.

So with all this gray area, how do we know whether unmasking is a massive abuse of power or a perfectly appropriate exercise of discretion? We apply common sense.

Was the questionable unmasking a single, isolated instance, or was it part of a pattern?

Did the communications in question have real foreign intelligence value, or were they just blather in which Americans participated or were mentioned — such that it might appear that unmasking the Americans was the objective of the collection effort, not something that was “incidental”?

Was there a series of unmaskings of a particular American or group of Americans? After all, it would not seem very “incidental” to collect and unmask the very same people again and again — that would look more like targeting.

Were standards applied consistently: Was the same unmasking protocol applied to all Americans with equal rigor, or does it appear that some Americans — like maybe . . . Americans connected to Trump — were given less protection than others?

While the unmasking was going on, was an unprecedented presidential decision made to disseminate intelligence information very widely across the “community” of 17 intelligence agencies, including to officials with no obvious need to know?

And while that was going on, were administration officials (including some former ones, like Evelyn Farkas, who left the administration to join the Clinton campaign), pressuring Congress to seek as much disclosure from intelligence community as possible regarding Trump?

Whether we are dealing with a major abuse-of-power scandal or not depends on the answers to those questions. Contrary to Susan Rice’s latest version of events, it has little or nothing to do with whether laws were broken.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446456/susan-rice-unmasking-michael-flynn-legal-abuse-power-intelligence-foreign-targets

[BeBMan]

If the government’s purpose is to understand the actions and intentions of American citizens, there are two proper ways to go about that: (a) conduct a criminal investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance based on probable cause of a crime, or (b) conduct a FISA investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance based on probable cause that they are acting as agents of a foreign power.

THE GOVERNMENT CAN NOT SPY ON YOU BECAUSE YOU TALKED TO A RUSSIAN SPY! Oh wait, it could do so if it is authorized by a court.


(Whether this is the case here is another q').

[Kidlicious]

THE GOVERNMENT CAN NOT SPY ON YOU BECAUSE YOU TALKED TO A RUSSIAN SPY! Oh wait, it could do so if it is authorized by a court.


(Whether this is the case here is another q').

This is nonsense. A court rules on the law. It doesn't create the law.

[Kidlicious]

The intelligence reports at the center of the Susan Rice unmasking controversy were detailed, and almost resembled a private investigator’s file, according to a Republican congressman familiar with the documents.

"This is information about their everyday lives," Rep. Peter King of New York, a member of the House Intelligence committee said. "Sort of like in a divorce case where lawyers are hired, investigators are hired just to find out what the other person is doing from morning until night and then you try to piece it together later on.”

On the House Intelligence Committee, only the Republican chairman, Devin Nunes of California, and the ranking Democrat Adam Schiff, also of California, have personally reviewed the intelligence reports. Some members were given broad outlines.

Nunes has consistently stated that the files caused him deep concern because the unmasking went beyond the former national security adviser Mike Flynn, and the information was not related to Moscow.

Schiff said in a statement, “I cannot comment on the content of these materials or any other classified documents, and nothing should be inferred from the fact that I am treating classified materials the way they should be treated - by refusing to comment on them. Only the Administration has the power to declassify the information and make it available to the public."

Former National Security Adviser Rice is under scrutiny after allegations she sought to unmask the identities of Trump associates caught up in surveillance - such as phone calls between foreign intelligence targets. Rice denies ever having sought such information for political purposes and has defended her requests as routine.

But the most recent government data shows that unmasking or identifying Americans happens in a limited number of cases. The Office for the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the 17 intelligence agencies, said "...in 2015, NSA disseminated 4,290 FAA Section 702 intelligence reports that included U.S. person information. Of those 4,290 reports, the U.S. person information was masked in 3,168 reports and unmasked in 1,122 reports."

The report said "NSA is allowed to unmask the identity for the specific requesting recipient only under certain conditions and where specific additional controls are in place" and those conditions were met for "654 U.S. person identities" in 2015.

That means Americans were identified in 26 percent of the cases, or roughly one in four intelligence reports.

During his March 20 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers said only 20 individuals within the agency are authorized to approve those requests.

“They receive specific training, there are specific controls put in place in terms of our ability to disseminate information out of the databases associated with U.S. persons,” Rogers said at the time. What it appears to suggest is that the NSA itself agreed that the instances in which Rice requested unmasking warranted that action.

FBI Director James Comey was less direct. "I don't know for sure. As I sit here, surely more, given the nature of the FBI's work," he testified.

"It would be nice to know the universe of people who have the power to unmask a U.S. citizen's name," South Carolina Republican congressman Trey Gowdy pressed. "Because that might provide something of a roadmap to investigate who might've actually disseminated a masked U.S. citizen's name."

Rice told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell that the reports were requested by the Obama administration, which announced a probe into the Russian election hacking in early December. Two months earlier in October, before the election, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Homeland Security Department put out a joint statement about Moscow's interference.

Rice told Mitchell, "Fulfilling the president's request for such a report, they went back and scrubbed more reports. They began to provide more such reports to American officials, including myself."

Given the late fall timeline, it is not clear the intelligence reports Rice discussed during the NBC interview, are the same files reviewed by Nunes and Schiff.

Speaking to Fox News Wednesday, President Trump said he believed the former national security adviser may have committed a crime when she sought the identities of the Trump team members. The allegation was first reported by the New York Times.

While not commenting on the individual case, a former senior intelligence official explained the request must be approved by the NSA. Rice would have understood that there is an extensive government paper trail, that can be audited within the NSA, that shows who requested the unmasking, on what basis, and whether it was granted. This raises more questions about Rice, her motivation and whether it was authorized higher up, offering cover.

If approved, the former senior intelligence official said, only the requester, in this case Rice, would receive the information. Based on Fox News’ reporting, the information was shared beyond Rice, but it is not clear if those who received it had a “need to know.”

A spokeswoman for Rice, Erin Pelton, said in an email to the New York Times on Wednesday, “I’m not going to dignify the president’s ludicrous charge with a comment.” Pelton works for Mercury LLC, a crisis management firm.

At the height of the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack fallout, and questions about whether Rice and a former senior intelligence official had misled Congress about the role of an internet video in the deaths of four Americans, Mercury LLC was also tasked with handling the Fox News media inquiries.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017...day-lives.html

Most of the time there is no unmasking.

[BeBMan]

This is nonsense. A court rules on the law. It doesn't create the law.

there are two proper ways to go about that: (a) conduct a criminal investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance based on probable cause of a crime, or (b) conduct a FISA investigation in which the American citizens can be targeted for court-authorized surveillance

"The gov can't spy on you for X!"

"Here's an article detailing circumstances under which it can though!".

[Ming]

Gee... conservative media is painting her as a criminal, and liberal media is stating she did nothing illegal. What a surprise

Kid, for every conservative or alt-right nut job media outlet you copy and paste from, there are a multiple number of media outlets that disagree she did anything wrong.

So I think I will wait until all the facts are out before jumping to conclusions and rushing to judgement.