Jello Jay Rockefeller: Associational Database Is “Core Governmental Function”
I’m watching the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats, and will have more to say about the Snowden fear-mongering later.
But I wanted to point to Jello Jay Rockefeller’s remarkable campaign in favor of the status quo for the dragnet.
He argued against the telecoms taking the data, because their interest is not in protecting privacy (yet they’re playing with our data all the time).
He then said the phone dragnet — a database of all the phone-based relationships in the US in the last 5 years — was a “core governmental function.”
There you have it. Having an associational database of the entire US is a core governmental function, the oversight people think.
Sigh. Can’t he go back to writing letters to put in his safe? At least he did less harm then.
With hearings like this going on, what’s there to do but allow Mel Brooks to summarize it for all to see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTmfwklFM-M
Core governmental functions like: “The alleged cover-ups included keeping quiet separate IG investigations that found that members of then-Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton’s security detail had engaged hookers and that the U.S. ambassador to Belgium solicited underage prostitutes. These were among a string of investigations by the service, responsible for protecting dignitaries and investigating crimes within the Department, that were allegedly derailed by senior officials, including one instance of interference by Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills.”
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/01/29/state-dept-whistleblower-email-hacked-and-laptops-stolen-from-lawyers-office/
And our Serious Statespeople are shocked and wonder why the reality based community doesn’t believe a word they say or trust a thing they do. Led by narcissistic sociopaths and fools.
Also too this from the Brits: “In a 32-page opinion, the leading public law barrister Jemima Stratford QC raises a series of concerns about the legality and proportionality of GCHQ’s work, and the lack of safeguards for protecting privacy.”
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/28/gchq-mass-surveillance-spying-law-lawyer
Drip, drip, drip. Rich people, we (you and us proles) need new leaders, do something.
Is there an easy way we can fire the lot of them and get newer, more honest people in critical jobs?
@phred: “At least he did less [ ] then.”
More accurate.
Collecting a monumental haystack of citizen phone call metadata is a “core governmental function”? A function which did not even exist until a handful of years ago?
That said, his comment could be taken to imply that the latest incarnation of the phone dragnet is merely a more sweeping and powerful version of something that has been going on for much, much longer.
@P J Evans: how many times have dems re-elected jello jay and difi??? It is mind-boggling to hear people rail against these dems who have spent a lifetime working in congress to undermine freedom for American Citizens, yet WHO votes for these cretins?