The Patriot Act Must Die...

[MURACU]

What is imho pitifull is this is coming from the administration who has no problem when it is them who leak the information. Just like when they leaked the information on a serving CIA operative just to discredit her husband for disagreeing with their position on the iraq war. Of course if the NYT is sanctioned for printing the story it will be a sad day for the US and the result will be that in future the stories will be run by forign papers.

IMHO I dont believe the New York Times should be held accountable for treason. I do how ever beleive the US government and Department of Homeland Security should be held accountable for their incompatance in securing their program. If the data was secure, which it is not, the world would have never known about what they were doing.

spamdies how did you want them to secure the information? They are working with an international company in Belgium. I'm surprised it wasn't leaked before afterall they have been running the program since just after 9/11.

[genXer]

For some reason, this does not feel like the same government I volunteered to defend, so many years ago now. Maybe it was always this way, just not as blatant.

I understand the need to fight terrorism and at times, our own morals and values, along with civil liberties, get put on hold, or just swept aside in the pursuit of national security. However, if this is our future, then we are no longer following the principles of a democracy or republic, but that of fascism. And while I continually hear and see rationalizations from this current administration, fascism, continues to echo in my head.

So now, as a citizen body, do we continue like the sheep we are, or follow our democratic process to replace our government? I no longer buy the 2 party system, both are, at least at the federal level are corrupt and no longer represent the will of the people, that much is evident to me; and at this point, it is only the opinion of an enraged patriot.

I would suggest anarchy at this point, but like communism, humans, as a group, tend to distort the true meanings of those philosophies... so let's just pry our collective heads out of the sand, become more educated and aware and start getting involved, otherwise our nation is doomed... or worse bought and sold... and in parts that has already happened.

[nihil]

Well I don't think that the NYT did anything wrong. They are a newspaper and what they reported was in the public interest.

Terrorists are NOT fools, if they were they would be easily apprehended and we ALL know that that is not the case?

I personally do not have any great issue with this sort of monitoring. Surely everyone realises that it has been going on for many years, and has just got progressively more sophisticated.

The main aim of this monitoring is the war against DRUGS and organised crime. There is a "bonus ball" in that it also catches people evading taxation. "Anti-Terrorism", "Homeland Security"......... I firmly believe that these are just excuses to justify more funding and to involve other parties at no cost to the government

Drugs and organised crime are bad...............you will get sympathetic noises, but when you throw terrorism into the formula you will get the support of outfits like SWIFT and other pan-national institutions.

Crime generates large quantities of money, terrorism does not. Actually, terrorism isn't that expensive to run, so it is unlikely to be detected by these methods? My point is that VOLUME is crime and fraud............... unusual directions and repetitiveness is more likely to reveal terrorist activity................. but they know that

My closing observation is only that criminals are ordinary people with a somewhat "different" way of earning a living (all the politicians jobs had gone ) ...............they will buy houses and cars, take out loans, use credit cards and so on.................... Terrorists are a completely different sort of animal. I can only hope and pray that your administration realsies this.

[RoadClosed]

So should the NY Times be held accountable for treason?

MURACU any time the NY Times prints anything you might as well get out your Wellies. It's deep in there. This story isn't really related to what I am yammering about. Outside of the USA, in international waters, I don't care if they monitor funds coming and going. I see a need to try and understand where Al Qaeda gets it's money. It does get it from somewhere they cannot operate as long and as skillful as they do without a funding source. And I wager it's huge. Call me selfish. Internal I see the mass monitoring of EVERY citizens financial business wrong as hell. External, I don't care. Its outside US. If England wants to check my pint charges at a pub it's their business. Chances are good we aren't the only one's doing it right now. And I bet France is front and center.

There is only one reason the NY Times would print that. Get them Wellies. Bush needs his own pair but the NY Times is the other extreme. It wasn't leaked before because it was making arrests. So who does the times help, especially within the article you posted it is stated that congress knew about. Seriously on one hand they need to back off. On the other, those people who keep leaking this stuff should get a clue and I wouldn't mind punching them personally. These things aren't watergate, the left tries to make them seem like it. They are selling us out and I would like to give a personal "thanks".

genx. I vote replace the government. But you watch... I predict Kenneddy will stay. Along with Murtha, Boxer, Kerry, Edwards and all the right wing corpolitic *******s as well. We know Bush is out, Cheney is out... but what about Rice and everyone else? New RC word. corpolitic - corporate life long politician who only see the value of his office through what monetary and power gains he can recieve. One who plays the people and the media like they would a business deal.

[dalek]

corporate life long politician who only see the value of his office through what monetary and power gains he can recieve. One who plays the people and the media like they would a business deal.

That sounds like what we have now...it's getting harder to uproot the hangers on then it was before, it's like it is entrenched in their own little world of rules...or somewhere in their job descriptions...

For the funds for the Al Qaeda, we allready know where OBL was getting his funds (family interests in Saudi Arabia) I am sure a lot of the funds entering the states are piggy backed through diplomatic channels, your right in a sense this should have been classified under the principle of "loose lips sinks ships" byword, too many coincidences when it comes to this information suddenly appearing or conveniently "leaked"at the doorsteps of news media, how come they don't leak it to O'Reilly at Fox News, surely he wouldn't blab or would he?

[RoadClosed]

OBL had a fortune as a child of the Saudi elite. But he has been getting money from all over. There were islamic based charity groups here who were funneling millions. Assets have been siezed all over the planet. The Saudi's freezed OBL accounts a long time ago. But obviously he had support there and many places like Afganistan, Jordan, the Sudan, Yemen, dear I say interests within Iraq, Egypt, Iran etc.