Today?s faster communications allow enemy to exploit loopholes.

[Richpo64]

Opposing view: The threat is realToday?s faster communications allow enemy to exploit loopholes.
By Pete Hoekstra

Domestic law enforcement requires a court-issued warrant to listen to calls between fellow Americans if they are suspected of plotting crimes. However, should we extend that same right to foreign enemies?

Thirty years ago we faced a large, lethargic bureaucracy in the Soviet Union that moved slowly. Today we face an enemy that is able to take advantage of a telecommunications system that moves at lightning fast speed.

Intercepting communications among foreign enemies simply no longer allows for any type of delay, especially when terrorist organizations and rogue regimes such as North Korea, Syria and Iran are actively exploiting the system against us. Such enemies do not provide us with the luxury of time to find and stop them.

The consequences of missing such communications materialized on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and America responded by creating a terrorist surveillance program so that we were not caught blind again.

The program fit well within the parameters of the U.S. legal system, but its illegal disclosure and demagoguery by partisans who exploited it for political gain caused the administration to place the program before a special U.S. court. In essence, it gave legal protections to foreign enemies who would do us harm.

We provided al-Qaeda terrorists with the same protections as U.S. citizens and are denying our intelligence professionals the ability to collect the dots that we have asked them to connect.

It is a loophole that desperately needs to be fixed. The inconvenient truth is that this is not a bumper-sticker war. The threat is real.

The threats against us in 2007 are extraordinarily different than they were 30 years ago and require an extraordinarily different response. However, the civil liberties that we enjoyed 30 years ago have not, and should not, change for Americans.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan is the senior Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee.

[Plane]

  This might be a problem but it is less of a problem than is the dearth of translators.


We have several institutional disadvantages that make us rely on our Allies in ways we shouldn't.

[kimba1]

it`s a cultural thing
we`re quite negative about learning languages
even accents are frowned upon
west and east coast think each other sound mentally challenged.
I live in a extremely culturally diverse place and even here I don`t met that many multilingual people.
I speak afew languages ,but I get very little practice here.

[Lanya]

Kimba,
I never realized it until I took my son to a dental clinic there, but Columbus, Ohio, has a huge influx of immigrants from various Middle Eastern and African countries, and India.   And they don't speak any English at all, the ones I saw.  This was a dental clinic open to Medicaid patients.
There was one receptionist from a North African country, I think, who spoke about 7-8 languages, and I asked what happened if she wasn't there?  "They tell them to come back another day."

[Universe Prince]

We ... are denying our intelligence professionals the ability to collect the dots that we have asked them to connect.

Nonsense.

[Richpo64]

>>Nonsense.<<

Brilliant.

 

[Plane]

We ... are denying our intelligence professionals the ability to collect the dots that we have asked them to connect.

Nonsense.

This information has to be learned , it seems to me that tappin the phones of likely suspects is one of the least objectionable ways of learning what we ned to know.

[Universe Prince]

This information has to be learned , it seems to me that tappin the phones of likely suspects is one of the least objectionable ways of learning what we ned to know.

Perhaps that is so. That does not mean, however, that we should do away with court-issued warrants for listening to suspects' phone calls. It also does not mean that requiring court-issued warrants denies "our intelligence professionals the ability to collect the dots that we have asked them to connect." I know the popular notion is that without more power U.S. intelligence is unable to do anything to track or find or investigate terrorists, but I know of no reason to believe that is true. I don't say the terrorist threat is not real. I know it is, and I take it seriously. These magical terrorists that operate with the speed of summer lightening, on the other hand, I doubt their existence. And the helpless U.S. intelligence agency that supposedly is unreasonably hobbled by outdated concerns about civil liberties, I doubt the existence of that as well. We need a realistic assessment and realistic solutions, not fearful reactions and nonsense.

[sirs]

This information has to be learned , it seems to me that tappin the phones of likely suspects is one of the least objectionable ways of learning what we ned to know.

Perhaps that is so. That does not mean, however, that we should do away with court-issued warrants for listening to suspects' phone calls. It also does not mean that requiring court-issued warrants denies "our intelligence professionals the ability to collect the dots that we have asked them to connect." I know the popular notion is that without more power U.S. intelligence is unable to do anything to track or find or investigate terrorists, ......

Not "anything" Prince, just less than they could.  A subtle but important difference.  The former is not in dispute & never will be, though often used to critiqiue such efforts as tapping into suspected terrorists calls, and claimed to be a "popular notion" of "unable to do anything".  The latter is indeed important, and justifiable, since one can easily deduce that the time it'd take to get a warrant to intercept such a call, the call is long since ended.  But I'll endeavor to add, that such calls should eventually have a warrant on file, just not mandatory to be in place when the call is being detected

[The_Professor]

This information has to be learned , it seems to me that tappin the phones of likely suspects is one of the least objectionable ways of learning what we ned to know.

Perhaps that is so. That does not mean, however, that we should do away with court-issued warrants for listening to suspects' phone calls. It also does not mean that requiring court-issued warrants denies "our intelligence professionals the ability to collect the dots that we have asked them to connect." I know the popular notion is that without more power U.S. intelligence is unable to do anything to track or find or investigate terrorists, but I know of no reason to believe that is true. I don't say the terrorist threat is not real. I know it is, and I take it seriously. These magical terrorists that operate with the speed of summer lightening, on the other hand, I doubt their existence. And the helpless U.S. intelligence agency that supposedly is unreasonably hobbled by outdated concerns about civil liberties, I doubt the existence of that as well. We need a realistic assessment and realistic solutions, not fearful reactions and nonsense.

Isn't it still a balance then between the rights of the individual and ther rights of the State?

[Richpo64]

>>Isn't it still a balance then between the rights of the individual and ther rights of the State?<<

What it is is a balance between peace time and war time.

The idea that our government has tapped your phone is just more ridiculous Bush Derangement Syndrome. This is war, and our government is working to protect America. Now phone companies are afraid of leftist trail lawyers coming after them. Does that make us safer?

By the way, I seem to recall a couple of fascist leftists eavesdropping on a Newt Gingrich cell phone conversation. Was there outrage from the left then? Of course not. They're to big of hypocrites.

[Universe Prince]

Not "anything" Prince, just less than they could.  A subtle but important difference.

I'm not the one who suggested we were denying "our intelligence professionals the ability to collect the dots that we have asked them to connect." And "less than they could" is part of the point of having laws that require things like warrants in the first place.

[Universe Prince]

Isn't it still a balance then between the rights of the individual and ther rights of the State?

The answer to that all depends on what you mean by "rights of the individual" and "rights of the state". Personally, I think the state has no rights as such. Individuals have rights, and the state should exist as a means of individuals exercising and protecting those rights.

[Universe Prince]

The idea that our government has tapped your phone is just more ridiculous Bush Derangement Syndrome.

No one made that assertion in this thread.

[Richpo64]

>>These magical terrorists that operate with the speed of summer lightening, on the other hand, I doubt their existence. <<


You're making light of something that anyone willing to take the threat seriously knows to be true. Technology has changed the game. Time is of the essence, and sometimes, we need to act with the "speed of summer lighting"