Talk:George W. Bush's domestic spying

Finally! The Drudge Report comes up with something of real substance!

Drudge points out that the December 15, 2005, New York Times' James Risen and Eric Lichtblau "ground-breaking" story "Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say" shares front-page coverage with Risen's new book "State of War. The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration."

So, did the Times hold back the story? Risen? or both? to promote a book?

Just asking. Artificial Intelligence 09:02, 17 Dec 2005 (EST)

"This is a real case study in how total falsehoods are disseminated by a single right-wing blogger who is then linked to and approvingly cited by large, highly partisan bloggers, which then cause the outright falsehoods to be bestowed with credibility and take on the status of a conventionally accepted talking point in defense of the Administration." http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/purposely-misquoting-fisa-to-defend.html

Swopa/Needlenose, December 19, 2005:

Compare and contrast this quote from secretary of state Condoliezza Rice, as quoted by the International Herald Tribune today ...


 * "We simply can't be in a situation in which the president is not responding to this different kind of war on terrorism."

... with this line from the neo-fascist U.S. president in the 1935 cautionary novel It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, as cited today in the Boston Globe (via Laura Rozen):


 * "The Executive has got to have a freer hand and be able to move quick in an emergency, and not be tied down by dumb shyster lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates."

Silly, naive, under-educated me -- I thought Orwell's 1984 was the only instruction manual they were using ...

John Aravosis of AMERICAblog live-blogged Bush's speech/press conference, in which Bush kept repeating ... "This new threat required us to think and act differently." ... "I uh, I uh, right after Sept 11, I asked people in my administration to analyze how best to do the job... blah blah blah. Came up with the current program, enables us to move faster and quicker. We have to be fast on our feet." ... "Sometimes we have to move very very quickly." ...

The student/Mao "little red book" story was a hoax.
 * Aaron Nicodemus, "Federal Agents' Visit Was a Hoax. Student Admits He Lied About Mao Book," The Standard Times (New Bedford, Massachusetts) (Common Dreams), December 24, 2005.
 * Aaron Nicodemus, "Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior," The Standard Times, December 17, 2005.
 * Matthew Rothschild, "UMass Dartmouth Investigates Report of Snooping on Student," The Progressive, December 19, 2005.

NSA Cookies
Technically, and practically, this issue doesn't belong with the "domestic spying" article. Domestic spying is an active, generally targeted, intrusion into peoples privacy in lots of different ways like monitoring their correspondences. Website cookies are a passive activity which accomplishes *nothing more than* knowing when a visitor last viewed some other page on the same site.. It just tracks a user's path through a website; which information is already available in the webserver traffic logs. Furthermore, the use of cookies by the NSA website was not likely to have been implemented at the direction of George W. Bush, or even done with his knowledge or for that matter was/is website administration a responsibility of the U.S. President. --Maynard 15:39, 30 Dec 2005 (EST)


 * portal for data mining = domestic spying


 * characterizes the nature of BushCo domestic spying = casts wide net that does NOT necessarily pinpoint anyone but targets everyone


 * how can anyone -- short of Bush's inner circle -- know Bush's intent? SW spies?

Relocated to NSA, which would have been more appropriate in the first place. Artificial Intelligence 08:15, 31 Dec 2005 (EST)

Also see SW's internet surveillance for spying function of "cookies" and recent news links re White House "cookies".

"SCREEECH! Apologies again, readers," Hoffmania! blog posted January 23, 2006. "The 'Terrorist Surveillace Program'? That's so cute! Kinda like an 'After School Program' or a 'Hurricane Assistance Program' or a 'Healthcare Program' - but without any benefit for Americans! Very nice. It's still 'Wiretapping.' Moving on."