NSA PRISM How Far is Too Far?

By Tim Newton
The Guardian reports that the NSA has gone further in it's collection of private data in wide spread gathering, using a program called "PRISM" to collect private data from several top internet companies including Facebook, Yahoo, and Google.  To quote from their article:

 "The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers."
All of the companies involved claim that they have not willingly participated in this program, and have denied all knowledge of said program. This program again falls under the reauthorized Patriot Act provisions, which allow for this and similar types of monitoring as we saw with the collection of data from Verizon subscribers. 

President Obama today responded to these actions by saying “They make a difference in our capacity to anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity,” Obama said. He added that the programs are “under very strict supervision by all three branches of government and they do not involve listening to people’s phone calls, do not involve reading the e-mails of U.S. citizens and U.S. residents.” He also said “You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” Obama said. “We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”

The question each of us must be asking is was I part of this, and if so why was I included? A CNN poll taken shortly after the Boston Marathon Bombing shows that 49% of Americans are not willing to give up their civil liberties to fight terrorism, with 40% saying they would. Since the beginning of the institutions of governments by mankind we have had a constant struggle with balancing the rights of the individual and the protection of many. With the increasingly difficult blurry line in the global war on terror, including domestic terrorism it becomes difficult to see where our government won't go to "protect" us. I am not saying that we will soon see anything like "1984," or "V for Vendetta." I am however realistic in my view of government. It also begs the question is it necessary? Are acts of terrorism preventable by such means, and if so where is the line and who is watching the line of how far is too far? 

In 2007 a popular senator heavily criticized the same tactics employed today. "That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do nothing but protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient." Yes, that would be our current President who said that. Watch the full speech below.
 


Our country was founded, when men seeing that their rights were being abridged in the name of protection, became fed up with those actions and pulled away from their national government. In the Declaration of Independence it says:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "

Now mind you Jefferson did not specify all unalienable rights that we have inherently been endowed with, but he makes it clear that if a Government becomes destructive of the rights of man we must alter it in one form or another. I think the first step is to increase congressional oversight and accountability. Congress was trusted by the founders with more powers precisely because it takes longer for it to act, and by the slow movement through compromise the rights of individuals have a greater tendency to remain protected. Even our current president, when a member of congress could easily see that this was an overreach of power. Something within his greed and ambition seems to have blinded him from the fact that these actions are clearly overstepping his constitutional bounds, as he himself said then:

"To target and gather such data and expect the American people to just trust that the data will be kept and protected from abuses would mean we would basically have to forget about all of human history, which has shown that eventually when people are given power they will seek to abuse it. When first enacted, there was heavy concern by individuals in the nation that social security numbers would become a way of identifying and singling out individuals, so there was a guarantee that social security numbers would never be used as an identification method. Just one example how about the IRS targeting that we continue to learn more about? At hearing after hearing Lois Lerner and Steve Miller denied that such targeting was occurring, even as they new it was occurring. 

Again I'm not saying that government serves no purpose, but that government should be constrained and not left to roam free. We have an established constitution, which should be followed."



It seems after each of these questions people have asked so what should be done? My answer to that so what is this, let's focus on reigning in presidential power again, increase our checks and balances, and make sure that the government is held accountable by the people for actions that are violating our rights. Several of our founders thought that a bill of rights would be unnecessary because they never thought that such basic freedoms would be infringed upon because they had not granted power to the government to infringe upon them. It seems more important than ever for us to reestablish these rights as unacceptable to be infringed upon, and make sure that the government is aware of it. We need to speak out and make our voice heard. America is not the land of big brother government, but the land of the free and home of the brave, we will not be bullied by big government bureaucrats, and we will not be silenced. 

Boston Marathon Bombing.... Where Did We Go Wrong

By Jessica Keith

9/11, America is attacked, and we were violated.  We retaliated.  We got Saddam.  We got bin Laden.  We thought we were done being attacked, hurt, violated, rocked to the core, being taken advantage of. 

Monday April 15, 2013, Boston Massachusetts.  Everything changes.  This was supposed to be a regular day, minus it being Tax Day.  This was the day of the Boston Marathon.  A time honored tradition in Boston, where people from all over the world come to participate; to be a part of something bigger then themselves.

Instead, this turned into tragedy, which ended with the deaths of four innocent people. 

There are a lot of questions that are still unanswered, and for the questions that we get an answer to, there are ten new questions being asked. 

I would like to take you back to the early 2000s.  A family from Dagestan by the name of Tsarnaev comes to America claiming asylum from their homeland.  They bring with them four small children, two boys and two girls.  This family is immediately given assistance from the government.  They receive welfare (cash money for people with young and dependent children) and food stamps.  The father did not have a job and the mother did home facials.  If we fast forward a couple of years, this family had made trips back to the homeland they were allegedly fleeing from.  I am not sure about you, but if, hypothetically speaking, I was seeking asylum from another country, I would not be traveling back to said country. FOR ANYTHING.

This is where the questions begin.  Were these people really in need of political refuge?  Why, if they were in such desperate need of freedom, did they return home?  Should this have been given a second look? 

As time went on and the family remained in America, the children were able to get an education here, be provided for, with assistance from Massachusetts, and really have all the freedoms they claimed they were being persecuted for back in Dagestan.

While living in Boston the mother of these two bombers was caught shop lifting from a Lord & Taylor store.  This is mighty ironic, seeing as how her sons were identified off a camera at a Lord & Taylor store in the days following the bombing.  (Mama Tsarnaev has outstanding larceny charges against her.) 

Eventually, post theft, the parents decide to return to Dagestan.  Which again begs the question, why the need to claim political asylum?

Enter Mother Russia.  Our comrades in the frozen tundra of the former Soviet Union gave us a ring and informed us they were concerned that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, bombing brother number one, had some radical terroristic tendencies and should be watched. So the FBI does a little investigation and can’t seem to come up with anything to warrant any concern.  So in 2011 Tamerlan decides to take a six month trip to the homeland. RED FLAG. RED FLAG. RED FLAG.  Does no one else seem to see the problem with this.  Mother Russia made a call, we don’t usually chat with the Soviets.  Our relationship would be classified as “it’s complicated”, so if they are taking the time to warn us about this guy, we should probably take it seriously.

The FBI put Tamerlan and his mother on a terror watch list, called Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE for short.  So bomber number one was on a watch list here, on the radar of Mother Russia for possible ties to terrorist organizations, yet he somehow takes a six month trip to a terrorist hotbed region of the world and nobody notices? Not only were they added to TIDE, but the Russians have a recorded conversation between Tamerlan and Mama Tsarneav, where Tamerlan talked about jihad.  Now there are reports coming out that the Saudi’s warned us of possible terrorist tendencies from Tamerlan.

So Tamerlan comes to America, gets on welfare, travels back to the country he was allegedly fleeing from, gets put on a terrorist watch list, is being watched by not one, but three countries, and yet, still travels freely in and out of the United States.  Does anyone else see the problem here?

Our younger suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarneav is a different story, one that is still unfolding.  He was a kid when the family came here.  He was part of school sports teams, and was just a party kid; pot smoking, booze drinking, college kid.  As he is living in America, partaking of all the greatness she has to offer, he decides to become an American citizen; on September 11, 2012.  Oh the irony.  Dzhokhar had every advantage afforded to him, yet he killed 4 innocent people, and injured hundreds. 

There are so many questions that still need to be answered.  The ones that are sticking out in my mind all surround why these people were even allowed to stay in this country, when clearly, they were not really seeking political asylum when they were traveling back and forth, as if it were a normal everyday thing.  Another question is what did our intelligence community know?  Did they drop the ball?  What is the purpose of all these national security precautions that were put in place post 9/11?   Why did someone with known terrorist tendencies get what seems like a free pass, yet grandma Betty is stripped searched in the middle of the airport by TSA?

Where did we go wrong?  Who gets held accountable to the proverbial dropping of the ball?  Do we need more precautions put in place to stop something like this from happening again?  Where were all the precautions that were supposed to be there?

Did we jump the gun in not classifying Dzhokhar as an enemy combatant?  Are there more people involved?  Could there be international ties? 

Like I said, there are too many questions that need to be answered, and we deserve the answers to these questions.