FARK.com: (7440393) While the Petraeus investigation hasn't revealed a crime, it has shown the extent of the FBI's electronic surveillance capabilities. "You ask them for e-mails relevant to the investigation, but they let you look at everything"

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		While the Petraeus investigation hasn't revealed a crime, it has shown the extent of the FBI's electronic surveillance capabilities. "You ask them for e-mails relevant to the investigation, but they let you look at everything" (washingtonpost.com)		20
		More: Interesting, CIA Director David H. Petraeus, FBI, investigation, u.s. wars, Rebecca Jarvis, J. Edgar Hoover, capability management, e-mails

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frankmanhog		2012-11-18 09:14:40 AM

3 votes:

Well, a Democrat is in the White House, so that means it's open season on Congressional Investigations of everything Executive. We'll be back into "Executive Power should not be subject to the whims of Congress" season as soon as we have another Republican president.

ZAZ		2012-11-18 09:45:33 AM

2 votes:

We got the Video Privacy Protection Act after somebody important had his video rental records published. Maybe we'll get the Google Mail Protection Act out of this.

Probably not.

Jim_Callahan		2012-11-18 09:31:39 AM

2 votes:

... yes, work e-mail servers generally keeping indexable backups is definitely evidence of a sinister FBI doom conspiracy and not industry standard for the last two decades for literally every industry in existence.

incendi		2012-11-18 09:14:19 AM

2 votes:

sammyk: The Director of the CIA is a civilian position. UCMJ does not apply.

(a) The following persons are subject to this chapter:

(1) Members of a regular component of the armed forces, including those awaiting discharge after expiration of their terms of enlistment; volunteers from the time of their muster or acceptance into the armed forces; inductees from the time of their actual induction into the armed forces; and other persons lawfully called or ordered into, or to duty in or for training in the armed forces, from the dates when they are required by the terms of the call or order to obey it.

(2) Cadets, aviation cadets, and midshipman.

(3) Members of a reserve component while on inactive-duty training, but in the case of members of the Army National Guard of the United States or the Air National Guard of the United States only when in Federal Service.

(4) Retired members of a regular component of the armed forces who are entitled to pay.

(5) Retired members of a reserve component who are receiving hospitalization from an armed force.

(6) Members of the Fleet Reserve and Fleet Marine Corps Reserve.

(7) Persons in custody of the armed forces serving a sentence imposed by a court-martial.

(8) Members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Public Health Service, and other organizations, when assigned to and serving with the armed forces.

(9) Prisoners of war in custody of the armed forces.

(10) In time of war, persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field.

(11) Subject to any treaty or agreement which the United States is or may be a party to any accepted rule of international law, persons serving with, employed by, or accompanying the armed forces outside the United States and outside the Canal Zone, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.

(12) Subject to any treaty or agreement t which the United States is or may be a party to any accepted rule of international law, persons within an area leased by or otherwise reserved or acquired for use of the United States which is under the control of the Secretary concerned and which is outside the United States and outside the Canal Zone, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.

sammyk		2012-11-18 09:03:38 AM

2 votes:

The Director of the CIA is a civilian position. UCMJ does not apply.

BullBearMS		2012-11-19 02:59:05 AM

1 votes:

newspaper revelations last week about the "kill list" showed the Obama administration defines a militant as any military-age male in the strike zone when its drone attacks. That has raised the hackles of many who saw Obama as somehow more sophisticated on terrorism issues than his predecessor, George W Bush. But Guiora does not view it that way. He sees Obama as the same as Bush, just much more enthusiastic when it comes to waging drone war. "If Bush did what Obama has been doing, then journalists would have been all over it," he said.

But the "kill list" and rapidly expanded drone programme are just two of many aspects of Obama's national security policy that seem at odds with the expectations of many supporters in 2008. Having come to office on a powerful message of breaking with Bush, Obama has in fact built on his predecessor's national security tactics.

Obama has presided over a massive expansion of secret surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency. He has launched a ferocious and unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. He has made more government documents classified than any previous president. He has broken his promise to close down the controversial Guantánamo Bay prison and pressed on with prosecutions via secretive military tribunals, rather than civilian courts. He has preserved CIA renditions. He has tried to grab broad new powers on what defines a terrorist or a terrorist supporter and what can be done with them, often without recourse to legal process.

Aaron David Miller, a long-term Middle East policy adviser to both Republican and Democratic administrations, delivered a damning verdict in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine. He wrote bluntly: "Barack Obama has become George W Bush on steroids."

Many disillusioned supporters would agree. Jesselyn Radack was a justice department ethics adviser under Bush who became a whistleblower over violations of the legal rights of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Now Radack works for the Government Accountability Project, defending fellow whistleblowers. She campaigned for Obama, donated money and voted for him. Now she has watched his administration - which promised transparency and whistleblower protection - crack down on national security whistleblowers.

It has used the Espionage Act - an obscure first world war anti-spy law - six times. That is more such uses in three years than all previous presidents combined.

Cases include John Kiriakou, a CIA agent who leaked details of waterboarding, and Thomas Drake, who revealed the inflated costs of an NSA data collection project that had been contracted out. "We did not see this coming. Obama has led the most brutal crackdown on whistleblowers ever," Radack said.

"We are seeing the reversal of the proper flow of information between the government and the governed. It is probably the fundamental civil liberties issue of our time," said Elizabeth Goitein, a national security expert at the Brennan Centre for Justice. "The national security establishment is getting bigger and bigger."

One astonishing example of this lies high in the mountain deserts of Utah. This is the innocuously named Utah Data Centre being built for the NSA near a tiny town called Bluffdale. When completed next year, the heavily fortified $2bn building, which is self-sufficient with its own power plant, will be five times the size of the US Capitol in Washington DC. It will house gigantic servers that will store vast amounts of data from ordinary Americans that will be sifted and mined for intelligence clues. It will cover everything from phone calls to emails to credit card receipts.

Obama's record on Civil Liberties is much, much worse than that of Bush. It's a shame any of the politics tab tards would even be willing to try to make excuses for this.

BullBearMS		2012-11-18 05:53:48 PM

1 votes:

Also, it's worth mentioning that the Obama administration not only prevented the British victims of American rendition from having their day in court in the US (by invoking the State Secrets doctrine he claimed to find offensive when used by Bush, naturally).

He also worked to prevent victims from having their day in a British court by threatening to withhold intelligence information from our British allies, if the British government refused to conceal evidence.

This is frankly despicable behavior. We're not just talking about waterboarding here.

Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.

BullBearMS		2012-11-18 04:56:43 PM

1 votes:

Civil libertarians have long had a dysfunctional relationship with the Democratic Party, which treats them as a captive voting bloc with nowhere else to turn in elections. Not even this history, however, prepared civil libertarians for Obama. After the George W. Bush years, they were ready to fight to regain ground lost after Sept. 11. Historically, this country has tended to correct periods of heightened police powers with a pendulum swing back toward greater individual rights. Many were questioning the extreme measures taken by the Bush administration, especially after the disclosure of abuses and illegalities. Candidate Obama capitalized on this swing and portrayed himself as the champion of civil liberties.

However, President Obama not only retained the controversial Bush policies, he expanded on them. The earliest, and most startling, move came quickly. Soon after his election, various military and political figures reported that Obama reportedly promised Bush officials in private that no one would be investigated or prosecuted for torture. In his first year, Obama made good on that promise, announcing that no CIA employee would be prosecuted for torture. Later, his administration refused to prosecute any of the Bush officials responsible for ordering or justifying the program and embraced the "just following orders" defense for other officials, the very defense rejected by the United States at the Nuremberg trials after World War II.

However, this is a bit off. While Obama did refuse to hold anyone who ordered, or carried out torture under Bush responsible for their actions, one person has been put into prison.

The CIA agent who blew the whistle on America's illegal use of torture.

jso2897		2012-11-18 12:00:00 PM

1 votes:

BullBearMS: Kibbler: This About That: Thing: Who the f*** is so slow they don't assume that the FBI can intercept anything - anything - that goes over the Internet both in history and in real time? The FBI can easily penetrate the military, however slightly.

It used to be illegal, to just trawl everything all the time, and do with it whatever you like. Does this mean it wasn't done before? No. But it was illegal.

All Hail Our Modern Police State

The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans' e-mail stored in the cloud.

Thanks, Obama.

That's not a good idea. I can understand the reluctance to deny the intelligence community what it wants in the midst of the kind of conflict we are in, but I have to part company with the Administration on this. It's just not the direction we want to be moving in. I'm off to fire off an email to the WH, and my congresscritter.

BullBearMS		2012-11-18 11:42:06 AM

1 votes:

Kibbler: This About That: Thing: Who the f*** is so slow they don't assume that the FBI can intercept anything - anything - that goes over the Internet both in history and in real time? The FBI can easily penetrate the military, however slightly.

It used to be illegal, to just trawl everything all the time, and do with it whatever you like. Does this mean it wasn't done before? No. But it was illegal.

All Hail Our Modern Police State

The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans' e-mail stored in the cloud.

Thanks, Obama.

angryjd		2012-11-18 10:07:51 AM

1 votes:

Adultery is not only a crime under the UCMJ, it is a crime in the Commonwealth of Virginia

Summoner101		2012-11-18 09:56:58 AM

1 votes:

AtlanticCoast63: Petraeus was on active duty when he started boinking Ms. Broadwell. IN THEORY, he could be recalled to active duty and be court-martialed for adultery, but it's damned unlikely - the number of people liable to UCMJ action under that line of reasoning could reach into the tens of thousands.

I don't think Petraeus has the level of political enemies required to make that come to fruition. Then again, the GOP have almost completely turned on him.

Abox		2012-11-18 09:48:32 AM

1 votes:

Mean Daddy: not a peep out of the liberal first amendment lover Larry Flynt.

Larry Flynt is more of a hypocrisy hater and I don't remember Petraeus building a career on fake family values.

incendi		2012-11-18 09:40:55 AM

1 votes:

Mean Daddy: The media laps it up, a film maker goes to jail and not a peep out of the liberal first amendment lover Larry Flynt.

Blatant violation of the terms of one's probation on the international stage is not a first amendment issue.

incendi		2012-11-18 09:30:10 AM

1 votes:

LazarusLong42: He's not being paid by the military

For more detail, here's just how much he's still getting paid by the military, and will continue to get paid until he dies.

LazarusLong42		2012-11-18 09:22:17 AM

1 votes:

incendi: sammyk: The Director of the CIA is a civilian position. UCMJ does not apply.

(a) The following persons are subject to this chapter:

(1) Members of a regular component of the armed forces, including those awaiting discharge after expiration of their terms of enlistment; volunteers from the time of their muster or acceptance into the armed forces; inductees from the time of their actual induction into the armed forces; and other persons lawfully called or ordered into, or to duty in or for training in the armed forces, from the dates when they are required by the terms of the call or order to obey it.

(2) Cadets, aviation cadets, and midshipman.

(3) Members of a reserve component while on inactive-duty training, but in the case of members of the Army National Guard of the United States or the Air National Guard of the United States only when in Federal Service.

(4) Retired members of a regular component of the armed forces who are entitled to pay.

(5) Retired members of a reserve component who are receiving hospitalization from an armed force.

(6) Members of the Fleet Reserve and Fleet Marine Corps Reserve.

(7) Persons in custody of the armed forces serving a sentence imposed by a court-martial.

(8) Members of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Public Health Service, and other organizations, when assigned to and serving with the armed forces.

(9) Prisoners of war in custody of the armed forces.

(10) In time of war, persons serving with or accompanying an armed force in the field.

(11) Subject to any treaty or agreement which the United States is or may be a party to any accepted rule of international law, persons serving with, employed by, or accompanying the armed forces outside the United States and outside the Canal Zone, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.

(12) Subject to any treaty or agreement t which the United States is or may be a party to any accepted rule of international law, persons within an area leased by or otherwise reserved or acquired for use of the United States which is under the control of the Secretary concerned and which is outside the United States and outside the Canal Zone, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.

He's not being paid by the military. CIA is not a military organization.

That said, affairs like this can kill your security clearance.

XveryYpettyZ		2012-11-18 09:19:37 AM

1 votes:

incendi: (4) Retired members of a regular component of the armed forces who are entitled to pay.

Can you cite a single case in the last 20 years of a retired officer on a pension being brought up on charges under the the UCMJ?

incendi		2012-11-18 09:18:48 AM

1 votes:

frankmanhog: Well, a Democrat is in the White House, so that means it's open season on Congressional Investigations of everything Executive. We'll be back into "Executive Power should not be subject to the whims of Congress" season as soon as we have another Republican president.

My prediction is that we won't have a two-term democrat with a republican house majority who is not impeached during his second term during my lifetime (1987- ).

HotIgneous Intruder		2012-11-18 09:13:23 AM

1 votes:

It's awesome to see the state surveillance apparatus directed up its own ass, isn't it?

This About That		2012-11-18 09:00:19 AM

1 votes:

Thing: Damned near anything can be stated in such a way that it appears to violate the vague but all-encompassing UCMJ.

Thing: Who the f*** is so slow they don't assume that the FBI can intercept anything - anything - that goes over the Internet both in history and in real time? The FBI can easily penetrate the military, however slightly.

Thing: I'll bet you an internet Gen. Petraeus did not knowingly violate any laws and is guilty, if at all, of bad judgement in his personal life. So shut up unless he gets convicted of something, will ya.

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