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Originally Posted by Robbie
First sentence: You don't know or understand what or why masking is done on these conversations. READ THE CONSTITUTION. KNOW THE LAW. I'll leave it there for you because I'm going further in the next part of this post.
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Can you show me exactly where in the Constitution it uses the term "masking" or "unmasking"?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
Rochard, you can NOT "wire tap" a U.S. citizen without a FISA court order. A Judge has to issue that.
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No US citizen was wiretapped. This is where the term "incidental surveillance" comes into play.
The United States government (and all other governments) constantly monitor, listen in on, wire tap, intercept communications, of all foreign agents in the US and overseas. This has been done constantly since the end of WWII.
You understand it was the Russian ambassador that was wiretapped, right?
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Originally Posted by Robbie
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The "Masking" is required by law if a U.S. citizen is captured on audio during the spying. That U.S. citizen does NOT have a court order allowing him/her to be spied on.
According to what spy's have been saying on the news...this happens multitudes of times every hour on the hour.
Emails, phone calls, etc. all being captured by spy agencys. And yeah...YOU have been recorded most likely "incidentally". Could have been at any industry show you have been to when you spoke to anybody from another country.
Or at your work when you email or phone someone from any country.
All of that data is "masked" for the U.S. citizen. It is then ANALYZED by the agency that "collected" it (spied on you). Then IF it has any relevance to national security...a report of the analysis is sent up the chain of command with U.S. citizens names "masked".
THEN if the head of the agency decides it is important...it is sent to the other appropriate agencys.
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This is incorrect and you are making assumptions here.
If I call someone in Russia, and they determine it was a routine business call or a personal call they mask or hide my information. This information may or may not be passed to other agencies. Being as no crime has been committed, there is no reason to retain such information, and it would be an invasion of my privacy to have my private conversation and assigned to me for no reason.
However, if I call someone in Russia and plot against the United States government, they open up an investigation. They surely don't mask information at that point.
When routine surveillance takes place they mask names because no crimes have taken place. However, when surveillance leads to a crime, they open an investigation and no one's name is masked.
I did some
research on this....
IS IT ILLEGAL TO UNMASK AN AMERICAN'S NAME?
No.
"There is nothing inappropriate about unmasking when it is appropriate to unmask," said Benjamin Wittes, a senior Brookings Institution fellow and editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog.
In the context of the Flynn example, Wittes said, the U.S. is surveilling a foreign target ? in this case Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. The target, Kislyak, is contacted by an American who is the incoming national security adviser in the new administration ? Michael Flynn ? and that American is discussing the future administration's policy.
Wittes says it is easy to see where identifying this American is important to foreign intelligence.
"I don't think there's anything surprising that it got unmasked," Wittes said.
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Originally Posted by Robbie
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In these dozens of cases in question...that was NOT done. The names were left unmasked. And then the RAW data was sent out to all the agency's.
Totally ILLEGAL and unconstitutional.
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They wire tapped the Russian spy's phone and picked up multiple calls. If these calls were friendly and they only wished each other a Merry Christmas, the names would have been masked and thus forgotten. If they decide a crime has taken place they open up an investigation. They cannot have an investigation if they cannot reveal who they are investigating.
It's not illegal, and it's not unconstitutional.
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Originally Posted by Robbie
This is a major case of someone using our spy agency's to hurt their political opponent. Third world country shit.
It's very, very dangerous and there needs to be accountability for it.
And "no", it's not "whistle-blowing". There was nothing illegal in any of the transcripts that Nunes was allowed to see. EXCEPT the very fact that the reports existed and had unmasked names and were leaked to the media in the first place.
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No, this is not a case of someone using our spy agency to hurt their political opponent. There is no proof of this. You can try to argue Obama opened the flood gates before he left office, but in the same exact breath you can argue Obama believes our (then) future president worked with the Russian government to steal the election. Your argument doesn't even make sense - Trump is not a political opponent; He is the President.
No, it's not whistle blowing. It's an investigation.
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Originally Posted by Robbie
This is dangerous stuff Rochard. This is like handing over the inner workings of our intelligence agencys to our enemies.
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It's more like our government investigating into the highest office in the land has been handed over to our enemies.
If ANY of this is remotely true then the President of the United States has opened himself up to blackmail by a foreign power.