Government Intrudes on Troops' Privacy
Absolutely disgusting. According to a new report from ABC, thanks to the Patriot Act, the government has been listening into phone calls from troops in the middle east, and passing clips of them around the office. Not just that, but the clips are of private moments between troops and their wives and girlfriends.
Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.
"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.Faulk said he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall's "smoke pit," but ended up feeling badly about his actions.
Oh, he felt badly? How about I start listening into the phone calls of NSA staff, and posting the best stuff on blogs, so we can all have a laugh.
Asked for comment about the ABC News report and accounts of intimate and private phone calls of military officers being passed around, a US intelligence official said "all employees of the US government" should expect that their telephone conversations could be monitored as part of an effort to safeguard security and "information assurance."
"They certainly didn't consent to having interceptions of their telephone sex conversations being passed around like some type of fraternity game," said Jonathon Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who has testified before Congress on the country's warrantless surveillance program.
Turley is right, and frankly, the response to ABC from the intelligence official is a disgrace.
Let me tell you something about being in a warzone. It's grueling, it's mentally taxing, it's hot, you see men blown up and losing limbs. For many, the one bit of calm they have is a brief moment when they thought of their wives or girlfriends back home, who they haven't seen for months.
But it was also agonizing. They could see them in their heads, but they couldn't touch them or smell them.
The best troops have is a brief telephone call sometimes. And, yes, it was as close to intimate as they can get. A tiny bit of good amidst the hell of war.
For the government to think that it was acceptable to listen in and pass around troops' most intimate moments, like some high-tech peeping toms, some satellite-powered voyeurs, is one of the greatest insults I can think of to those men and women in uniform sacrificing everything they have for their nation.
It's good that Senator Jay Rockefeller has started an investigation into this. I sincerely hope that he does not stop until everyone who let this happen is accounted for, and their heads roll. And I hope Republicans, who used to be all about limited government, and who swore to uphold our Constitution and Constitutional rights wake up and realize what's happening.
Our troops deserve a lot better from the government they're fighting for.
Crossposted at www.vetvoice.com
Follow Jon Soltz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jonsoltz
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
when a person volunteers fro the military.i
Absolutely not.
I hope somebody asks McMaverick what he places first: the solace of our troops or illegal wiretaps?
What a bunch of disgusting perverts. EVERYONE engaged in such actions should be dismissed and hauled into court.
I can't help but think that more than once they laughed at a call that wound up being the last two people ever shared....
Funny how warrantless wiretaps and eavesdropping was perfectly acceptable when it was done on us civilians for the past six years, but now has somehow become wrong now that it's being done to Our Valiant Military Heroes, God Bless Them For Simply Signing Up, isn't it? Johnny Rico's father was right: being a taxpayer should get you some say in how things are run.
My question has always been this. How does the government know to listen only to calls that are related to terrorist activities? The answer is, they listen to them ALL to find the ones targeted as terrorist conversation. This begs the question, how many potential threats have been put down as a result of all of this? We hear stories of intercepted activity from time to time, so why don't we ever hear about the fabulous results of this program as a justification for maintaining it? I have said all along that I would rather live with some risk rather than sacrifice all of my liberties guaranteed in the constitution. Living with some element of risk is part of freedom. I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything at all to halt terrorist activity, not at all. What I am saying simply is that put down everyone's freedom to put down terroriists. They always circumvent regulations; that is part of the nature of terrrorism. We can staunch it, but we will never stop it all.
What disturbs me most about this is that this program was bound to produce an abuse of power, and sure enough, here it is. It sickens me, frankly, that the NSA would listen to the entire conversation and then pass it around. These are some of the most intimate moments in people's lives. What the Bush administration is saying is that our lives have no value.
You want to lose your privacy? Join the government. Oh, wait, Cheney wants all "fellow prisoners", as McCain puts it, bugged, too, without warrants.
Welcome to Bush's gulag of the USSA - United Socialist States of America.
Big fat suprise. If ya think that's all, you're in for a real suprise. They have had the power to spy on ALL of us...and I bet you they have been. This is one of the MANY things that Dems need to investigate WHEN we take over in January. I only hope that when it all comes out that there are some prosecutions.
To listen in on these conversations and invading privacy is furthering the traumatic stress suffered by these soldiers. Cindy Mac says that PTSD is the result of not enough military training? I suppose having real human emotions, having to kill other human beings and see, day after day, the atrocities of war, has nothing to do with it.
This administration and those with the same ideology on either side, must be brainwashed also. We are living in a much more inhumane world now, thanks to the current administration and it's unconstitutional policies. It is a huge, huge disgrace to our nation. I really don't how they sleep at night, but they do. I can never understand and never want to understand this kind of hatred, racist, war mentality and greed. These people talk about faith? They can't have faith, for if they did, they would not be so fearful and have the need to go to war. They would spend "our" money and the wonderful energy of our troops helping "our" people instead of lining their own pockets. It is the rest of us, not in control, who have to pray and/or meditate everyday to keep our sanity, our homes, jobs and feed our children and hope the military doesn't knock down our doors in the middle of the night. and yes.... even pray for these same powerful people to stop this madness and wake up before it's too late for all of us.
im shocked!!! my dad's letters from italy were routinely sliced up---i just cant believe in this day and age the military just doesnt let everything go thru--whetehr electronic or written!!! i mena...my dad could have let my grandparents know what had happened to his bomb group on their latest mission...
We need to let our military communicate UNFETTERED with ANYONE i nthe world they wish to communicate with!!! dont we have "freedom of speech"??APPARENTLY NOT!!! What kind iof country do we live in ---??? the USA?? Venezuela??
See Eric Schmeltzer's Profile
Read the piece. It's not that they're monitoring communications - it's that NSA took clips that have NOTHING to do with security and passed them around the office for a laugh. But, you know, that's cool. Post your phone number so we can take clips of your phone calls with your significant other, and all have a good laugh here at HuffPost.
Sorry to tell you this, but I don't believe it ends when you leave the military. My husband is a retired Army NCO and worked in telecommunications. There were many times during long phone conversations with him that we could tell that someone had "patched in" to our line. Generally, he would let them know that he was aware that we were being listened to and they would jump out. Perhaps they have targeted us because he was stationed in the Middle East at one time, as well as South Korea (not unusual tours by any stretch).
I have no doubt that average citizens are being subjected to surveillance as well. 1984 is here, and Big Brother is alive and well.
Obama/Biden 08'
The troops who have been stationed in the Middle East and South Korea are getting special attention because they have been engaged, one way or another, with the enemy. The authorities are probably concerned about the "Stockholm Syndrome".
I'm so sorry. This is a disgrace. Those calls are so precious and yet so hard.
Is that the same Patriotic Act approved by the Democrats?
Yes because they and most people believed the scare tactic lies GWB told them about 9/11. FYI, The Patriot Act was written before 9-11-2001.
Yes. In the Republican controlled congress, with Rumsfeld changing the threat level every three hours, news conferences all spoke of "Credible Terror threats" every day.
It was all bull to slam this end run around the Constitution through.
Most Senators and Congresspersons actually admitted later that they did not even read the whole thing!!!!
Bad all the way around!
I do hate to burst anyone's bubble but a few facts are in order here. I have been deployed many times to areas in the middle east. Virtually every phone in the installations I worked in was clearly marked "Subject to Monitoring". Every computer system I use was clearly identified as being "Subject to Monitoring".
In short nobody in a war zone should be surprised that their calls were sometimes intercepted.
That being said if folks with the 'big ear' are getting their jolly's off listening to phone calls that are clearly of a private personal nature and worse yet sharing the recordings with their co workers then that should be clearly investigated and those people should be shown the door and asked to find a different line of work.
See Eric Schmeltzer's Profile
That's all the piece says - that those who allowed this frat behavior to happen should all be rounded up and held accountable.
This is what you get when you reelected Bush.
Should anyone feel sorry for you?
Re-selected
Amen to that. The military routinely ALWAYS supports Republicans in power. So I do not feel a bit sorry for any of them. You get what you vote for.,And they will soon be supporting the feeble minded and grossly ignorant McCain Pslin duo. So whine not!
Duh.
This is what those of us who did that kind of thing for a living said would happen if we broke our own rules, sacrificed our own citizens' rights, and started listening to our people and innocent civilians instead of focusing on the enemy.
But we were the same ones saying that torture doesn't work (just because it results in bad or no information over 99% of the time),
and that attacking Iraq would destroy our credibility, our military capacity, our soldiers, and our chance of catching the real terrorists,
and that our nation would suffer in innumerable ways (from merely becoming a laughingstock to tragically destroying the civil rights of our people and all others) for failing to impeach a president who had committed several types of treason against the soldiers he commanded, savaged civil rights, flushed the Constitution, and destroyed the checks and balances central to our government's efectiveness.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly--we are the experts--we've been right on every count.
And experts were removed from the President's earshot in 2001!
Experts tell you when your wrong, and Dubya could not have any of that.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
