Re: [privacy] U.S. Says Wiretapping Helped Foil Terror Plot in Germany

["Brian Loe" <knobdy () gmail com>]

On 9/11/07, Joel R. Helgeson <joel () helgeson com> wrote:

> So, I could see that this story is accurate, that a call from a terror
> supporter communicates with a sleeper cell in the USA - leading to the
> discovery of a plot.
>
> Joel

The argument was always that they only "tapped" calls going overseas -
to either known suspects or countries that are perceived to support
terrorists. This is what has been stopped and prompted the fury to
pass a new law expanding the government's ability to spy on US
citizens (unintended consequence, I'm sure, as any new law will likely
go well beyond what they were doing).

As for the NSA, or CIA or any other group that's not the FBI, they
could always spy on another country. Its not a matter of legality, its
spying. The old tinfoil hat theory was that there are agreements
between several countries to promote this spying. Australia, for
instance, would spy on Americans and in return we would spy on
Australians. Any information gathered would then be shared. No laws
were broken because the Australian government wasn't spying on
Australians and the NSA/CIA wasn't working domestically. One wonders
if there was any truth to this conspiracy theory but if you consider
what has happened on the domestic spying front you would have to guess
not. Why fix something that ain't broken and is secret? Perhaps the
agreed upon spying wasn't involved enough to discover terrorist cells
already here... who knows. I just know I won't like anything that
comes of any new laws on this front.
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