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suthdj wrote:I love this, like she has room to speak.
http://news.yahoo.com/us-spy-programs-r ... 49299.html

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee and supports the surveillance, accused Snowden of committing an "act of treason" and said he should be prosecuted.

Anyone in Congress who supports this blatant violation of the Constitution that they swore an oath to uphold is more of a traitor than a guy exposing the violation of the Constitution. Feinstein is a despicable lying pathological communist.

The Annoyed Man wrote:

mojo84 wrote:Developing the spiderweb of connections can be very dangerous to our Liberty and Freedom. Based upon the 6 degrees of separation theory, we may all be connected to some nefarious characters that are up to no good even though we do not have direct contact with them. Very scary slippery slope if you ask me, which of course you didn't. ;)

No "can be" about it. It IS dangerous to our liberty and freedom.

I honestly cannot believe that this is the country I live in. We used to hold this kind of stuff up as examples of why the USSR was an "evil empire." Now, we have to consider that THIS is what we are in the midst of becoming......not an empire, necessarily, but burdened with an evil government. Suddenly, we're only marginally different than China or Russia. When our guns are outlawed, there will be NO difference......

"We can still travel freely," one might say. I say, "have you ever tried to come back into the country?" I say, "not without having to deal with TSA at airports, train stations, and bus stations, including highway checkpoints within 100 miles of the border." I say, "so what. The Chinese can travel too." "At least we don't have to show our papers to move about," one might say. I say, "you haven't traveled in the last 10 years, have you?"

My son speaks Chinese and studied, lived, and worked in China for over two years. He went back and forth several times. On one entry to the country customs hadn't opened yet and he just walked from the plane, got his luggage, and walked out of the airport --no questions asked. He traveled freely wherever he wanted to go in China, and he didn't have to show any papers. He cruised the internet without problem. He met and dated Chinese women and made Chinese friends without interference. There is almost nothing he can do in the US that he couldn't do in China except have a gun. China has a lot of laws and rules that most people just ignore without any consequences. I'm not saying China is "more free" than the US and it quite clearly has a lot of problems, but most people just going about their business and not in conflict with the regime wouldn't be able to feel much of a difference in "freedom" in their day-to-day existence.

Note though that the NYT sneakily changed the editorial from "Obama has lost all credibility" to "Obama has lost all credibility on this issue."

tomtexan wrote:

Abraham wrote:I pity the poor government worker bees stunned into boredom listening to all that chatter...yes, I found the cutest shoes, yep, I just chopped out a stump with my old axe, well mother-in-law is such a...blah, blah, blah...

They are not listening to the conversation itself, just "data" about the calls.

The data being collected includes which phone numbers are dialing and receiving each call, the time of day when each call is made, how long it lasts and other identifying information, but not the content of the calls themselves.

Yeah right!

No, they're not listening to all these calls, but in addition to the metadata they are recording the content, and they can go back and look it up. There is nothing innocuous about this at all, even if they aren't recording calls. They can create a tree of every person you've called and every person they've called. Thinking about protesting some new and outrageous government violation of citizen's rights --they can roll you and everyone you talk to about it up at the press of a button. But I don't even think that's as serious as some of the other possibilities. Say conservative Senator so and so, you sure you want to vote yes on that Bill? Even after all those calls you made to one Mary Jane Mistress....we sure wouldn't want your wife to find out.