ALEXANDER: JOURNALISTS HAVE “NO STANDING” ON NATIONAL SECURITY
General Keith Alexander – the poster soldier for the incineration of your most fundamental American liberties – is at it again.
This time the head of the National Security Agency (NSA) is voicing his support for the suppression of the media’s First Amendment right. Specifically, he’s asking America to follow the lead of the United Kingdom in restricting what subjects the media is allowed to cover.
“Journalists have no standing when it comes to national security issues,” Alexander said of the British standard, which he wants to apply in America. “They don’t know how to weigh the fact of what they’re giving out and saying, is it in the nation’s interest to divulge this.”
Translation?
Government – and specifically the military operators of America’s Orwellian domestic spy program – should decide what reporters can (and cannot) write about.
This isn’t the first time Alexander has spoken out about his desire to silence the media. The architect of government’s “collect it all” spy state has repeatedly argued in favor of suppressing the First Amendment.
“We ought to come up with a way of stopping it,” he said last fall, referring to media coverage of the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden. “I don’t know how to do that. That’s more of the courts and the policymakers but, from my perspective, it’s wrong to allow this to go on.”
Really?
So it’s okay to spend billions of dollars secretly monitoring, intercepting and storing the confidential communications of American citizens … but question such a usurpation of freedom is “wrong?”
Wow … America has truly come full circle, hasn’t it?
“You don’t need to be a card-carrying member of the ACLU to see how dangerous this perspective is,” writes Michael Krieger of the Liberty Blitzkrieg blog. “To endorse this notion that ‘journalists have no standing when it comes to national security issues,’ is to effectively make illegal one of the most important free speech rights in any democracy. This sort of attitude represents the antithesis of American values.”
We concur …
This website has previously called for the incarceration of Alexander – who is a traitor of the first order.
“Keith Alexander and his fellow domestic spies are spending billions of dollars each year on blatantly unconstitutional domestic surveillance – while their civilian bosses lie to the American people about what they are doing,” we wrote. “He should be in jail.”
Or shot on sight …
Monitor that, asshole.
60 comments
Monitor that, asshole.
Don’t worry, I’m sure they monitor just about every asshole, and possibly, every asshole’s asshole.
Good one
If they pull their spy camera down and focus in on my asshole, all they will see is government cockroach dick in it
I agree. Shot On Sight!
Can’t trust elected officials, teachers, ministers, coaches, lawyers, judges. So why should we trust the press? ” I don’t trust anyone but my mother and sometimes I have to look at her twice “- Buddy Guy
They’re just like,God.The NSA has all the hairs on your head,and butt counted.
What a bunch of paranoid pussies,y’all are.Whatever ‘this website has previously called for’,doesn’t matter to any one but,’our founding editor’.Not only is he paranoid,but suffers from delusions of grandeur,too.
Funny how FITS is comfortable attacking a W male…but Obama is persecuting his political enemies like no president EVER…and FITS treads lightly if at all….so I guess you can say Obama succeeded…except FITS never cared about exposing Obamas corruption any way.
“Or shot on sight…”
What a stupid, immature, and irresponsible thing for a rational adult to say and publish in today’s world. You’ve appointed yourself above the SCOTUS and gone straight to the death penalty with none of the due process you claim to love so much; judge, jury, and executioner, as they say. This goes well beyond the bounds of reasonable discourse.
Oh, he tosses the constitution when he wants. Typical of the extreme righties = Tout and toss the constitution as the situation requires.
Breaking news. We “righties” are the ones trying to keep the Constitution.
Breaking news. Only when the interpretation suits.
It appears to me both the Left and Right interpret to suit and they don’t have to be extreme.
Now, now…the far left does the exact same thing.
I agree with that assessment.
We agree again…weeeeeeeird…
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” – Thomas Jefferson
There were people who said similar things about the author of this statement, back in the day.
I believe they were known as Tories.
Friend, you know better than that. The Tory – USG official conducting (currently) legal activities analogy doesn’t fly. If SCOTUS grows a nut and shuts them down yet they continue, then maybe your stretch will reach. It’s a political dispute at this point. We have representation and we have legal recourse.
Aye, better to wait until they have you disarmed, bound hand and foot, and THEN, decide to fight.
Got it.
Dude,seriously. Your tin foil is showing…
I am armed to the teeth, and know the legal system like the back of my hand (since leaving the international door-kicking business 8 years ago I’ve been teaching Con Law as a side gig, which is scary even to my good friends). The goofy, do-nothing federal government doesn’t scare me a lick because I’ve seen it from the inside. If you genuinely think it’s time to start SHOOTING PEOPLE in an extra-legal revolutionary / insurrectionist context I just can’t can’t take you seriously. I’ve read your stuff on here, though, and don’t think you really believe that. It’s one thing to make wiseass cracks, it’s another thing entirely to call out to an internet full of uneducated, Call of Duty-addicted, mouth breathers for someone’s murder. Even viewed in the light most favorable to Will, his assed-up comment surely flirted with that. I’ve had to kill people (legally, mind you) and it really sucks, so I just don’t toss crap like this around. It could theoretically come to fighting our own government again one day, that much I believe is at least possible, but today’s not the day.
It could theoretically come to fighting our own government again one day, that much I believe is at least possible, but today’s not the day.
!00% agreement with the above statement.
The question is:
What would it take for you to say “Today is the day.”?
*TBG invokes Poe’s Law and veers off into some Reducio ad Hitlereom….*
In the case of Nazi Germany most will agree that Col Stauffenberg’s attempted assassination of Hitler in 1944 was valiant, noble, heroic…timely.
Yet had Hitler been assassinated before Sept 1, 1939 –he would have likely gone down in history as Germany’s greatest leader and his assassins would have been vilified.
Since we know how the story ended, even BigT?GrandTango would probably favor aborting Hitler in the womb. But to a German, in the early 1940s, when was The Day?
Excellent points as usual my Native American/southern/Jewish amigo, and an excellent question. There is a long drawn out answer from someone much smarter than I am (I’m sure), but I would just say this: Liken it, if you will, to SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart’s famous “…but I know it when I see it” line he used to describe his threshold for obscenity versus art in Jacobellis v Ohio (1964). We have problems, that much is certain, but I still think the courts (and hopefully the electorate) can fix them. Serious grownups don’t go around casually calling for the illegal killing of gov’t officials. That’s what I think Will did. The founding fathers never did that; they fully understood the grave nature of their endeavor, and justified their actions in some of the greatest governmental writing ever published. Will’s writing can be slightly entertaining at times, but his last name will never be Madison, Jefferson, Jay, or Hamilton…
By the way… “Reductio ad Hitlerum?” That’s good stuff.
While I took Will’s comment more as flippant hyperbole than a literal call to do such a thing, I do believe that having to push back has become something that should be considered by any free man in this day and time. The so-called avenues of legal recourse are increasingly visible as the sham they have become. The vote has become a sham and probably has been for at least a decade and only recently have things such as the Richland County scandal come into view for the average person. The judges, at all levels, dance to the tune their masters tell them to. This is not tinfoil hat stuff. We are slowly and increasingly being disarmed (or attempts made) and bound, hand in foot, so that by the time the day of decision is here, we will be impotent.
Signs of push back can be seen in the state of Connecticut, where gun owners are refusing to register their AR’s and AK’s. The police (the ones who would be treasonous enough to enforce such) are being put on notice that they are taking their lives into their own hands if they go door to door to confiscate of jail the resistors. Just because a judge, dancing to his or her master’s tune, calls an extra-legal usurpation of Constitutionally guaranteed rights legal, it does not make it so. Viewing a lot of Constitutionally illegal and dangerous activities and the people behind them as “harmless” is akin to burying your head in the sand while the lion bears down on you.
I guess we’ll just have to do the old “agree to disagree,” and stay on good terms. Voter fraud exists (always has, always will) but isn’t nearly as rampant as most believe. Study after study shows this to be true, and internet mythology aside, there have been exceedingly few cases of real, widespread voter fraud. As for the disarming of America, gun ownership is about as high as it’s ever been, and is actually increasing for self-identified Democratic households (it staying fairly steady for self-identified Republican households). The recent trend (especially at the state level) has been generally pro-gun in red state areas. There is no “door to door” effort to confiscate guns; there’s just not. You can always find one or two morons (in ANY field) to go TV or the web and spout stupidity, just like the mystery NSA military officer musing about whacking Snowden. That doesn’t make a trend, or even a reality. Of course no state police agency is going to publicly state that they will ignore a lawful order to enforce a law- asking them that is akin to the tired old “When did you stop beating your wife” question. Connecticut can pass any law they like, but no state statute can EVER supersede the Fourth Amendment. Ever. They can’t go “door to door” and come get your guns without a valid search warrant containing particular probable cause not only that you bought or possessed the gun at some point in the past, but that it is currently in the residence. I know that’s not as sexy as the conspiracy theories, but it’s the law. I’m a Second Amendment dude, I own guns, and I don’t plan on giving them up. I’m just not as worried as you are at this time. I hate that some folks are so worked up about this, but I don’t hate those folks. I just disagree, that’s all.
“What a stupid, immature, and irresponsible thing for a rational adult to say and publish in today’s world. You’ve appointed yourself above the SCOTUS and gone straight to the death penalty with none of the due process you claim to love so much; judge, jury, and executioner.”
Too bad the boys over at the NSA don’t agree with you Mike:
“In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself,” a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed. “A lot of people share this sentiment.”- in regard to Snowden
I know plenty of folks at the NSA, and they don’t talk to BuzzFeed, nor do they say things that stupid. NSA people are computer dorks for the most part; my people used to carry their people places to do their thing and they were usually scared to death the whole time. Most of them looked to me like they lived in their Momma’s basement. They may hack into your laptop one day, but they won’t be physically creeping up to you to vent your skull. That’s a different crew entirely (and unlike on TV, rarely happens). Just because something’s on the the intergoogle doesn’t make it so.
“One Army intelligence officer even offered BuzzFeed a chillingly detailed fantasy.
“I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” he said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.”
Here’s a really chilling fantasy: There could come a day when reporters (or anyone with $50 bucks to start a website) could wield genuinely outsized influence upon public opinion due to a combination of factors, including a general dumbing-down of public discourse, a generally lack of class and civility in the populace at large, and a borderline irrational belief that if a claim appears on the web it is, therefore, true. Whoa, wait a minute…too late. Here we are! This is what passes for journalism these days, and I don’t see it getting better any time soon.
To wit, a single military officer *allegedly* makes an inane comment about his Tom Clancy fantasy version of a hit on Snowden (admittedly made up), does so anonymously to a “social news and entertainment website,” and this somehow indicates that the NSA is an out of control rogue agency bent on killing people? Wow. I’ll stick with my personal experience in the counter-terrorism game and the large helping of common sense I won in the genetic lottery (primarily donated to me by my dear departed old man).
“There could come a day when reporters (or anyone with $50 bucks to start a website) could wield genuinely outsized influence upon public opinion due to a combination of factors, including a general dumbing-down of public discourse, a generally lack of class and civility in the populace at large, and a borderline irrational belief that if a claim appears on the web it is, therefore, true.”
Were you just describing the Founding Editor’s seemingly endless love affair with everything Nikki Haley and T-TRav?
Could be, right?!
“This is what passes for journalism these days, and I don’t see it getting better any time soon.”
So you liked the old days better eh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Was that personal experience wanting to go back to the good ole days or your genetic helping of common sense?
No matter I guess, it’s gonna be tough to rewind the clock as you noted. Freedom is certainly more dangerous to the state than control.
Hypocrite they name is…Troll.
Mike ATB – FITS’s comment is as stupid and indefensible as the NSA chiefs, the scary thing is that FITS is a powerless blogger whose salary I dont pay only mildly ensures my right to a decent headline. I dont expect much from FITS, apparently I now owe the NSA my blind loyalty, Im a lot more disappointed and scared of the NSA than FITS
I hear you, brother, but I never said a thing about blind loyalty. I just don’t think it’s quiiiiiiiiiiiite time to be calling for (or at least endorsing) extrajudicial killings of USG officials. That’s what Will did, and it’s absolutely indefensible. It’s easy to look at these people as caricatures, but they are real people. I get the distinction, too, between a private group and the gov’t, but imagine this. Will is a public person and no doubt gets his share of loony shit from people. What if one of those people (say some right-wing flake) posted on here that his endorsement of candidate/position/legislation “X” represented a clear and present danger and existential threat to our well being, and wrote that he should “shot on sight.” I know Will’s not the USG, but that’s just bullshit that very few people deserve. You’re right, Will doesn’t scare me, but neither does the NSA. I’m slightly pissed, but not scared. Agree to disagree, maybe? I rambled on even worse down below in my chat with Corruption (he disagrees with me too). It’s all good.
It is all good Mike ATB, I am actually in the same camp as yourself. I don’t think Will’s hyperbolic rhetoric adds much to the debate – BUT I am getting more and more pissed about the NSA issues and the $20 Billion dollar facility recently built in my humble opinion for very extra legal purposes. Like yourself I am a former fed, former law enforcement and attorney. I think we are much younger country than your European friends and friends in many other parts of the world who understand the reason why domestic spying is much more poo-pooed than it appears to be here currently. Back in the late 1940’s depiste the clear and present danger and palpable fear of the US from the Red scare, we still wanted the CIA to operate overseas and do so against foreign nationals and not target our own citizenary. I fear we are making a grevious error as we get too comfortable with our present system and the threat of encroachment into our private lives by the govrnement. Everyone who says “I got nothing to hide” forget two things – 1 they are paying for the spying – while we borrow millions a day to keep our democratic experiement a float 2 Everybody SAYS that, but when you get an after hours search warrant and show up at their house at 2:00 AM no one says “hey honey, its the cops/feds/marhsals et cetera – we got nothing to hide – throw some coffee on for the boys in blue!” I am glad you comment here Mike ATB.
Good points, and I agree. My beef was primarily with Will’s response. As he so often does, he smashed an otherwise valid point by burying it with his nitwittery.
This guy is a four star general. I think he took the same oath as this old Sargent : to protect and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies both foreign and domestic. Sounds like treason to me. Him and Kerry, brick wall, firing squad. I’m on so many lists now what is one more ?
If you will ever channel flip during the news, you will see that all the news organizations have comericals at the same time and that all of the news channels talk about the same event or subject within seconds of each other and almost in the exact same verbage
I think it is dangerous when the Military goes to thinking and speaking this way!
Gee Golly — I think I discovered how to find the comments, and maybe even post this……
Let me get this right. The British spy agencies keeps their secrets. How quaint. Whoever heard of a spy agency keeping secrets.
Perhaps the first thing we should be limiting is the military’s role in the NSA. Why is a general running this thing anyway?
??? Maybe you should educate yourself on this “thing”.
Maybe you should educate yourself on the history of how many general think.
They all have been Military.
Alexander was appointed by George W. Bush based on qualifications as a career intel officer.
Really, qualifications, of course and I’m sure if Alexander didn’t agree with Bush on the Patriot Act he would not have been appointed.
NSA is a combat support agency and component of the DoD. More than half of NSA’s personnel are military. Most of its collection is done by the military from military bases and platforms (ships, planes, outposts, etc.).
Much of the metadata issue relates to cell phone use by terrorist groups IN COMBAT ZONES to include those that use phones to detonate IEDs.
So many lies in a single post. Proof that ignorance reigns. Alexander’s point is the revelation of sensitive sources and methods that give our.adversaries an advantage. Intelligence is delicate. Alexander isn’t proposing “unconstitutional domestic surveillance,” but rather more guarded exposure of state secrets. He is doing his job in calling for protection of information used to support troops in combat, decision makers and creators of national policy. Just as journalists need to protect sources, the intelligence community must do likewise, possibly, it can be argued, to a greater extent.
The assholes in this debate aren’t those trying to protect the country – like Gen. Alexander – but those so myopic, so naive and ignorant that they prefer the sensational lie to the unglamorous truth.
“Alexander isn’t proposing “unconstitutional domestic surveillance,” but rather more guarded exposure of state secrets.”
The little fly in your ointment is that all this talk came about as a result of the Snowden leaks, WHICH SHOWED UNCONSTITUTIONAL SPYING on our own citizens by our glorious government.
I suppose you can try to make a case otherwise, but it’s a far fetched case relying solely on obfuscation.(not that the powers that be aren’t trying anyway)
The “leaks” did no such thing. First, what has been published are selective pieces from “millions” of documents stolen by a Russian agent. The programs highlighted were not all implemented, some didn’t even exist. Collection programs are vetted by armies of attorneys at NSA, DoD, DNI, DoJ and Congress.
Because of the debate created, Americans are justifiably questioning what their government is doing. That these thefts occurred during the Obama Administration only adds to the fears.
My point is that there is far too much inclination to assume NSA at its worse. Read my post “Mind Games” at thewatchlog.com. In the Age of Putin, China and cyberwar, people need to look carefully at who has the most to gain by what Snowden has done and the timing of his deeds.
“The ‘leaks’ did no such thing.”
Pure bullshit on your part, per wiki:
” The first program to be revealed was PRISM, with reports from both The Washington Post and The Guardian published an hour apart. PRISM allows for a court-approved, front-door access to Americans’ Google and Yahoo accounts”
“Reports also revealed details of Tempora, a British black-ops surveillance program run by the NSA’s British partner, GCHQ.[138][139] The initial reports included details about NSA call database, Boundless Informant, and of a secret court order requiring Verizon to hand the NSA millions of Americans’ phone records daily”
“The NSA was shown to be “secretly” tapping into Yahoo and Google data centers to collect information from “hundreds of millions” of account holders worldwide by tapping undersea cables using the MUSCULAR program”
and finally, the “Russian agent” as you laughably coin him has just stated this:
“Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK’s GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers.”
Let us all remember that the NSA also initially denied all of the above(not including Snowden’s recent comments).
The NSA has no credibility and you are nothing more then a meaningless shill in that context.
You’re quoting Wikipedia as authority? People are dumber than I thought. Wiki also says Alexander redesigned his office to resemble the bridge if the Star Trek Enterprise. I’ve been in that office dozens of times. It’s quite unremarkable, especially for a four star General.
And you also quoted SNOWDEN to make your point? That’s worse than dumb. As for being a meaningless skill, you’re half right; I’m no shill, I just happen to know the truth. Since I suspect you have not spent time at NSA or the intelligence community, that would suggest you and your ideas about the subject would be much less than worthless.
“Since I suspect you have not spent time at NSA or the intelligence community, that would suggest you and your ideas about the subject would be much less than worthless.”
And I suspect that your opinion is much less than worthless as well given the track record of honesty and ‘intelligence’ within the “intelligence” community itself.
Not only did you bumpkins manage to let a “college dropout” run bots through your network and then skate off with millions of pages of sensitive data, you can’t even keep your lies straight about what you’re guilty of and how you’ve done it.
Very obviously, Wikipedia is FAR more accurate and reliable than you boys. You must be very proud.
Let’s look at one more Snowden quote showing how your ilk can’t even keep your lies straight, like your “Russian agent” comment:
““I would also add, for the record, that the United States government has repeatedly acknowledged that there is no evidence at all of any relationship between myself and the Russian intelligence service,”
So sorry for you.
Dude, save your breath. “You cannot reason a man out of a position he did not reason himself into.” (Jonathan Smith / Ben Franklin / apocryphal)
“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” (Ben Franklin)
*smiles*
Yet another valid point by old Ben (one of my favorite Founding Fathers). This particular quote, though, doesn’t negate the points in contention here. Will’s coverage of the whole NSA thing has been full of ridiculous hyperbole and outright stupidity, including actually calling for (or at the very least endorsing) the murder of gov’t officials (!). I don’t know if it’s because he’s hanging out with Ravenel too much or having weird erotic dreams about Ron Paul, but it’s this kind of over the top rhetoric that renders him non-serious. No fair minded, intellectually capable person can make the case that we’re “surrendering freedom” at a rate or in a manner that means it’s time to start shooting people, or even worse, using fucking Wikipedia as reference during intellectual discourse (first year students at a SC tech school aren’t even allowed to do that, but I guess FITS isn’t quite up to that level yet – but we’re working on it). Of course there are issues with the NSA programs – who doesn’t get that? But they’re not an existential threat to our freedom; you dela with these through the courts and legislation. Our idiotic Congress could stop it. Tomorrow, if they wanted. If I had to choose whether to have my Verizon metadata stored so that it COULD BE subject to a WARRANT for review at a later date, or find myself subject to a 100% implementation of the ACA, I’ll take the metadata beef all day. The ACA takes much more freedom (both personal and economic) than the NSA ever will. That’s a much more complex issue, though, and most of the folks who are running around talking about getting their guns grabbed or shooting NSA folks aren’t evidently bright enough to understand it. That’s my point, not that there’s nothing to the NSA gripes.
Don’t be sorry for me, be sorry for yourself and the agency that let the whole country down.
Suspected Russian spyware Turla targets Europe, United States http://pulse.me/s/TiYKH
shades of scooter