Comments on: CIA Monitors YouTube For Intelligence – Goodluck!

By: Timothy A. Ruane

Timothy A. Ruane — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:37:45 +0000

You know this question of whether U.S. intelligence entities can legally spy on U.S. civilians (phone calls, e-mails, faxes–i.e., every means of human communication), essentially, as I understand it, a Fourth Amendment issue, and it is really prickly. It all hangs on the word “unreasonable.” What constitutes “unreasonable searches and seizures”? I think there’s a lot of room for fighting on this one. For instance, if I were president I would like to spy on everything . . . no, I guess not.
I once worked with this gent, a journalist, and a damned good journalist at that, who spent a good chunk of his career in Moscow, USSR. I happened to ask this gent one day how many Russian spies were there in Moscow. He replied, and I quote: “There were tens of thousands of them, and they were all spying on each other.” I took the man to be numerically exacting and not at all hyperbolic. So I say, the question is: What kind of society do we want? Do we want a Big Brother looking over our shoulders, morphing into some sort of spying spasm that our not-so-hotsee-totsee friends the Russians employ, as it inevitably would?
I think the answer is clearly not. We want a society where–as the God-damned genius Founding Fathers put it–”The right of the people” is “to be secure in their persons, houses and effects.” Ah! A virtuous and upright civilization. There you have it.
If the Bushies know that a U.S. citizen is contacting a known al Qaeda personage in, say, Afghanistan or Pakistan or Lebaon and what have you, then by all means let them, the Bushies, seek a warrant and spy away. But this blanket spying, this Adm. Poindexter baby, which I have yet to hear President Bush rebut or refute or say is not happening, is not the direction we want to be heading in.
This whole thing reminds me of the Miranda law when it was gestating. The police were screaming that the Miranda law would make their jobs that much tougher, but in the end we all know the Miranda ruling made for better police and better police work. The U.S. police (call ‘em cops, if you like) rose to the occasion and made themselves better. I should trust that the U.S. intelligence and the Bush administration have the guts to do the same.

By: chad

chad — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 20:44:24 +0000

@IAN

Intelligence reports back from project “Pixelated Video”

1. Reporter chicks give good head
2. Terrorists Enjoy Pepsi
3. ??????
4. Profit

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:58:46 +0000

@Chad: I’m sure the CIA will include that opinion in her “unofficial” dossier file. “Hmmm…looks like she sucks a mean dick, according to her file I have here in my hand…”

On a serious note, how dumb would you be to actually post an incriminating terrorist video on YouTube? “Oh yes, and as you can see here at our secret terrorist hideout, we have a mad stash of Pepsi MAXX imported from Europe to keep our terrorist stamina high.” And the sad thing is, if that actually did happen, the CIA official above would most likely write “Hmm…terrorists prefer Pepsi MAXX…interesting…”

By: chad

chad — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:28:37 +0000

the irony here is that just yesterday I was saying if human intelligence was based on Digg and Youtube comments we’d be fucked overall IQ scores would plummet.

They might find some useful videos or something…. but there will be no intelligence found ;)

p.s. the reason for this conversation happening. I was watching a video on waterboarding to try and learn more about it… and the 3rd comment (with zero negative votes might I add) was someone saying “I bet that girl sucks a mean dick”

point proven