From The Raw Story:
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a “walk in the park,” according to an interview published in the New Yorker’s print edition today.
Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”
McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.
“Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search,” author Lawrence Wright pens.
“Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said,” Wright adds. “Giorgio warned me, ‘We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'”
…snip…
McConnell has been an advocate for computer-network defense, which has previously not been the province of any intelligence agency.
According to a 2007 conversation in the Oval Office, McConnell told President Bush, “If the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single US bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order of magnitude greater impact on the US economy.”
Bush turned to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asking him if it was true; Paulson said that it was. Bush then asked to McConnell to come up with a network security strategy.
…snip…
The infrastructure to tap into Americans’ email and web search history may already be in place.
In November, a former technician at AT&T alleged that the telecom forwarded virtually all of its Internet traffic into a “secret room” to facilitate government spying.
Whistleblower Mark Klein said that a copy of all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company’s San Francisco office — to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access — via a cable splitting device.
…snip…
“We’re talking about domestic traffic as well as international traffic,” Klein said. Previous Bush administration claims that only international communications were being intercepted aren’t accurate, he added.
Tip of the hat 
to MLDB, Bent Liberal, and watercarrier4diogenes over at DailyKos for the inspiration.
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
Hell, those F’ers can’t keep track of their own emails.
Hmm,, I don’t like the thought of my internet traffic being monitored any more than the next guy. There are those who will say, “if you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about?”
I do acknowledge the need to monitor for security purposes… but I don’t want my privacy infringed…
This is a tough one, I feel with no one perfect answer… to blindly choose a side on this one would suggest to me that you are not taking the whole “problem” into consideration…
Fred Thompson ’08
TRM, “security” is one of those words which gets flung out as though anyone can actually guarantee security. Of course bad things can happen online. Bad things can happen when two people sit down in someone’s living room and chat. Does that mean we should have cameras and listening devices in everyone’s house? Should we be monitoring what people listen to and talk about in their cars? Should we have them monitoring our phones? Should there be cameras on the street with listening devices recording everything that everyone might say?
Infringing on privacy is a very slippery slope, especially with the bizarre bunch we have running things now doing the infringing. Life is risky, there are no guarantees, and eventually we all die whether we want to or not. I’d rather they kept their damned noses and security scans out of my business. I know it’s risky, but I’m willing to take that risk.
And then there’s that little thing we like to call the Constitution. I know it’s become more like toilet paper than a founding document with principles, but I’d still like it to be honored. This country was based on freedom. Let it be.
It might be an ‘old wives tale’ but, I heard that if you can hear a mosquito buzzing, it isn’t the kind that stings. How stupid would a terrorist have to be to make plans on the innertube or even a phone? Any way, the amount of information that flies around daily is more like trying to drink from a waterfall than a firehose. It sounds like more Administration phony protection. There isn’t much privacy left, credit reporting agencies and insurance companies, among others, have and sell people’s personal information, routinely. The IRS has contracted out their tax prep services and collections. All business done electronicly leaves a cyber footprint. Everytime you use plastic there is a record generated of what you have purchased and where. If someone wants to find out about you, badly enough, they can and will. There are sites on line where, for a fee, a great deal of personal information is available. I googled my name one time and was surprised to find my last three addresses. If I had paid the fee and supplied my ssi#, there would have, probably, been plenty more.
Well, I don’t like this one either….
but I will never openly “agree” outright with any of you out of conservative principal 🙂
I like you, TRM. You are almost as hard headed as me.
Jeepers, creepers!
Where’d you get those peepers?
Jeepers, peepers!
Where’d you get them SPIES?
http://tinyurl.com/yprqtn
I’m with you on this, gotta. Dear Mike and Dubya: Bug off! Butt out! Mind your own beeswax! Quit being so nebby! Keep your nose out of my business!
fotc, I agree that we don’t want to waste our time with far-fetched issues. Respectfully, however…
My first concern with this is that we are even talking about it at all! In this country! The democracy! The one with a Constitution!
The second thing is that if we don’t stop this right here, right now, and with great enthusiasm, it WILL come to pass! If this goes through, high tech companies will be falling all over themselves to see that it does. Companies like Diebold…
BTW, Diebold CAN get things right. “Why” their voting machines are so unreliable is highly suspicious. Diebold makes ATMs and other baking systems that can accurately track billions of transactions to one tenth of a penny around the world 24/7. So, why do their relatively simple voting machines consistently fail?
This quote is from the DKos article nonnie mentioned:
One proposal of McConnell’s Cyber-Security Policy, which is still in the draft stage, is to reduce the access points between government computers and the Internet from two thousand to fifty.
One reason banking systems are so fast and reliable is that there are limited “channels” or “traffic lanes” or “access points” or whatever the correct geeky term is. So, this proposal alone, if passed, would simplify monitoring.
IMHO, we should be insisting on solutions to all those privacy problems you listed. We need to roll back the clock on this one. It makes my skin crawl. It could be solved and it would be solved if billions were spent on insuring our privacy instead of reducing it.
nonnie, I dig the poster and the B/W photo! I wish I had your talent and creativity.
This topic is so important because so many Americans are not paying attention…never have been…to any of the important stuff.
fotc, I don’t mean you. Or you, TRM. You examined the situation and formed an opinion – or you will at some point. Then, you are likely to fight for what you think is right. Great.
But, too many people are too “busy” watching TV, worrying about gays, infidels, and feminists, and waiting for the rapture. Ignorance may be bliss now, but there’s going to be hell to pay someday for us, our children, our children’s children, our children’s children’s children…
I didn’t mean to minimize the roll of governmental snooping in our lives. The point that I was trying to make, is that the cat is already out of the bag on personal information. The machine is already in place, no one is secure in their, “papers”. The deregulation of AT&T and other mega corporations, giving corporations the rights that were once reserved for individuals and the propaganda that passes for news, are facts. I am willing to fight back, I always have been but, where to start pushing back, I don’t know.
Yea, fotc, I know what you mean.
The Bush Administration has created a high speed Whack-a-Mole game that seems impossible to beat. Hit one problem, up pops another. And so on, and so on… It’s so exhausting and frustrating!
I hope I didn’t offend you.
Heck no, I’m a lot harder to offend than that. 🙂
Damn! I forgot my 😀
Fotc, I think TRM knows by now that we like him. We’d have given him a nuclear wedgie and sent him on his way by now if we didn’t. Of course, there’s always tomorrow….. ;p
i am so proud of trm. i think he is growing up! 😥
i wonder if this whole mess is going to wind up at the supreme court. you know, the place where they don’t allow cameras– i guess, because they like their privacy? 😯
Wexler called for an impeachment investigation of Cheney on the floor of the House, tonight. Maybe, some push back is comming. Better late than never.
let’s hope so, fotc. i am not holding my breath, though.
Wexler, the pig nose commie, can call for all he wants, Bush & Cheney will chew him up and spit him out…
just sayin 🙂
I’ll grant you the pig nose, TRM, but “commie?” I’m afraid you’ll have to elaborate, I’ve heard nothing that would indicate he is anywhere near being a “commie.”
As for Bush and Cheney, I’m still hoping to see them in the Hague, and their little dog Rumsfeld, too…..
wexler has a pignose? apparently, you guys have not seen him, as he is very handsome. i’ve seen him up close and talked to him, and he is very smart as well as hunky.
trm, put down the caffeine-laced drink, hon, and maybe slap yourself a couple of times. you are not still defending chimpy and cheney, are you? hell, even pat buchanan has admitted that they are poison. ever hear any of the rethug candidates mention the disastrous duo? have any of them asked them for an endorsement? has john mcliebercain hugged chimpy lately? wonder why.
I agree Wexler is handsome, nonnie, he has a big nose, and it’s remotely piggish, but I happen to like big noses. I don’t get the hunky vibe off of him, but I’ve never seen him up close and personal, so it just may not translate well on TV. But his politics, his fight for justice, and his willingness to push for impeachment hearings by the most corrupt pair of asshats to ever come down the pike makes him ever so attractive…..
are you sure you are thinking about robert wexler, gotta? are you mixing him up with henry waxman? wexler’s nose is not even remotely piggish.
anyway, take it from me, he is very handsome in person! i had a very nice conversation with him.
No, Waxman definitely has a pig nose. All turned up on the end. Actually, he kind of reminds me of the DoorMouse in the old Alice in Wonderland books.
I think the vague porcine resemblance I see in Wexler is due to the length of his nose and his eyes being so close set. But I don’t find that unattractive, I like a man who is interesting-looking and not a thing of perfection. And I’m sure in person he’s much better looking than the bad camera angles we get of him on the floor of the House indicate. Charisma is a lovely thing, and I think he has that.
I bet TRM is confused, though. I sense confusion there, as he’s such a partisan rethug (My God, Grandpa Fred!) yet he hangs out with us…..
I stand corrected , it was Waxman I was thinking of.. not Wexler,,, see, us conservatives can admit when we are wrong instead of placing some spin on it… 🙂
soooo’ I re-state,,,
Bush and Cheney will chew him up and spit him out,,, the force is strong in Cheney,,,
I don’t agree with everything Bush does, I am a much bigger Cheney fan,,, any one who wants to whup ass as much as him is alright in my book
I stand by my party always,,, be she right or wrong, still my party….
the conservative vision for the future of America is a much better one than the socialist utopia the dems would have us die in…
you guys are fun that s why I hang out,,,
I am currently working on a post dedicated especially to HR’s…. nonnie who are your most dedicated posters besides FOTC, GaG and NOwl???
Cheney is a traitor, he has committed treason, and he should be punished accordingly. I think impeachment is too good for him. He should be locked in a jail cell for the rest of his life at the very least.
You definitely lose points for admiring a traitor, TRM, and for blindly standing by your party as they take us straight into the crapper. I’m not sure what wonders you see in the conservative vision, but I’d suggest you get a new set of glasses, something with lenses in a different shade other than “rose”.
How is he a traitor?
Hey, we ARE important if TRM is writing a post about us! He had better remember to be nice, though… 😀
The better question would be how is he NOT a traitor. He manipulated data to get us into a war in a country that posed no threat to us which drew our valuable military resources away from a place where the threat actually was residing, thus allowing those that truly did mean us harm to regroup and are rising up as I type this to wreak havoc in a country that has harbored the original instigators of terrorist activity and it’s neighbor country that actually DOES have nuclear armament and WMD. He instigated the outing of a covert CIA operative solely because her husband had the temerity to point out that the manipulations used to promote said unnecessary war was total bullshit, thus compromising not just one covert operative, but all those that worked with her as well as operations necessary to secure accurate intel. Those significant assets are lost to us now. This is, by definition of law, treason. But let me go further. He considers himself above the law, and has said as much on more than one occasion. He has been lining his pockets and those of his friends (can you say Halliburton and Blackwater) with money made from the deaths of our soldiers in said unnecessary war. He has stated on more than one occasion that he thinks what this country needs is a king, not the three equal branches of government that have been laid out in our precious Constitution, and he has gone about the business of trying to achieve just such a situation. I can go on and on and on and on listing the criminal behavior of this stain on our democracy, but it won’t all fit in one comment. He is evil, a traitor and he should be punished accordingly.
If it were you or I, TRM, who had behaved in the manner that this man has done, we’d be living in Gitmo right now, or trial for our lives in the Hague. And rightly so.
Don’t get too excited, nightowl, I have the feeling it won’t be all that flattering…. 😉
TRM, call me a loonatic frindger, moonbat, dirty hippie, peace monger,etc. but, please, NOT a commie. I can be fired for being a commie. The only organization that I belong to is the Democratic Party. I am interested in ending the current Administration, not overthrowing the government. I realize that it is the same thing to the Bush Gang but, there is an important difference. Either way, I will not name names. 😉
Settle down gotta… Regardless of what Cheney has or hasn’t done, the republican vision is one I can stand behind and feel good about, the dem party, in my opinion, has always been the traitors…
FOTC, okay,,,, you moonbat!! LOL 🙂 <—– See?!
trm, i am quite flattered that you will devote an entire post to hr. as to dedicated commenters, you have named them all, except for one–you! 😆 of course, there are others who leave comments on a less regular basis as well.
gotta, i am sorry that i have to correct you after you have so righteously ranted. according to cheney, there are 4 branches of govt: executive, judicial, legislative, and dick cheney.
Believe me, the posting will not be flattering 🙂 <— devilish grin…
I’m not simmering, TRM, just responding to your question, which I’m sure will be used as evidence of some sort of…..something. You know you can always count on me for a good rant.
nonnie, I hadn’t forgotten about old ForthBranch, I was just trying not to lend any credence to his preposterous assertion. But I’ll take correction from you any day. Not TRM, who I’m fairly sure is unbalanced in some fundamental way, but always you…. 😉
trm, didn’t you mother ever tell you if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all? that said, trash me all you want, but leave my peeps alone!
by the way, you don’t know how to be devilish. i do! 😈
gotta, good idea not to give the evil one any credence. if you do, you wind up with credence for a pisswater revival.
LOL!!! Credence Pisswater Revival is exactly what you get from all of these “Fortunate Sons”…… 🙂
What the hell is a frindger ? “Friend of the court” ??
the bigger question is why, me, are you suddenly noticing a misspelling 8 months after it was made? 😆
that said, welcome to the raisin. 😀