Talk:NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–2007)/Archive 4

message: Should read:
California Democrat Nancy Pelosi acknowledged she was briefed. (24.136.71.67)
*changed - while protection is off you can DIY NPOV edits like that, anon. 207.172.134.175 17:03, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  California Democrat Nancy Pelosi also admitted to being briefed 

message: "Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), telecommunication companies may only cooperated if a warrant is issued, which was not the case." - are we sure?  defines various reasons why a communications provider might be able to voluntarily disclosure customer communications or records. Originally this was added by Title II of the Patriot Act, then it got repealed and replaced with more extensive legislation through the Homeland Security Act of 2002. - Ta bu shi da yu 13:19, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Er. Oops? FISA doesn't allow it, but the ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) does. - Ta bu shi da yu 13:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Warner, democratic ex-governor of Virginia, has said the legal code needs to be combed out. I caught that on a recent C-SPAN "road to the white house" program. FISA's five years in the slammer is rumored to have had DoJ attorneys consulting with private counsel. Metarhyme 00:18, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Telecommunication companies and disclosure of info 

message: If all the footnotes were >ref<ed there would be over 100. Congressional opposition is inappropriately titled - Roberts on Intel is gung-ho for Hayden. "I don't rightly know," is inadequate guidance for reorganizing the material. Splash suggested moving legal to territory immediately seized by POV pushers. Talk got archived; some article length input would be welcome. Metarhyme 00:45, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's very true that this article is way too long--cutting it down is its most urgent need.  Wikipedia guidelines suggest that it should be about one quarter of its current length.  It should be kept in mind that this is an encyclopedia article, intended to give an introductory overview of the subject.  Not every argument made by either side needs to be included, nor does the whole of each argument that is included need to appear.  I would urge anyone who thinks that they can show respect for each (or every) side's point of view to take a crack at cutting--it's not really a question of figuring out what should go, but of deciding what's the minimum that can stay.  If there are any sections that can be spun off into a separate article, now would be a good time to do so. Nareek 01:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: show respect for each (or every) side's point of view is easier said than done. Before you, as WilliamThweatt says below, "commence to guttin'," please reconsider discussing what you want to whack. I hope that you are "anxious to oblige." If not, please discuss what you think should stay. Metarhyme 06:20, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The main reason Wikipedia has been as successful as it has is the wiki process--that is to say, a process where people discuss changes by making them.  The wiki process can break down when you've got people trying to move the article in fundamentally different directions, which is why there's tags like the one at the top of this talk page. But discussing then changing is a markedly inferior way of editing compared to discussing by changing; if the people who have elected to work on this article don't have enough respect for each other's point of view to make the wiki work, that's to be regretted. It is a real challenge to improve an article without the wiki magic. Nareek 12:39, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am sorry that this article isn't inherently neutral. To me it seems to concern spying on secret government. It might be a Constitutional crisis. Due to its bulk and a great deal of effort it isn't marked as "NPOV disputed" at the moment. Chopping it in half and then doing that again and retaining the absence of the tag requires more than deleting the (in one's own view) repulsive 75%. When I suggested work to WilliamThweatt on a topic that dovetails with his point of view, which the article claims to cover but doesn't, he did not respond, maybe rightly thinking his work would be wasted. No one yet has been willing to edit war with screaming left Legality of warrantless surveillance, although I once forked in content. Referencing an NPOV article there in a summary here would trim this article 50%. Metarhyme 21:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

text: How about Legality of NSA warrantless surveillance for starters? Metarhyme 00:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: No. I'm suggesting that a nav template be created for a set of NSA warrantless articles, and that this nav box appear upper right on this article page and on a new "Legality of" initial spin off. NSA warrantless surveillance legality might work better - title to be agreed on but including "NSA" so as not to include all known and unknown government, private or in-between warrantless surveillance - limit it to this one Program. I'm not sure this is wiki proper, but I'd like to just ignore the existence of the POV fork, which condemns all warrantless surveillance without limiting itself with regard to who's doing it. Leave the POV fork to fate: Merge, BadJokes, AfD, eternal life, whatever. Metarhyme 20:36, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article Length 

message: Nareek, I'm not sure that our role is as a brief introduction.  Consider what this journalism professional wrote regarding Sago Mine disaster, another article on which  I am working:
"I continue to find myself amazed at how quickly things change in the media world. There is already a massive Wikipedia entry...As of this writing, there is also an extensive political analysis of the cause of the accident. Why does this matter? Because once the initial flurry of stories passes, this will be one of the lasting sources students will go to first for information about this event." (emphasis added)  Dr. Ralph E. Hanson, WVU journalism prof.
  
I would suggest, so that information and work is not lost, that the article be organized with reference to related sub-articles as necessary.  As this is an emerging issue, we shouldn't be rash.  Writing by editing is not efficient when it results in edit wars and reverts.
--Beth Wellington 23:24, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about Legality of NSA warrantless surveillance for starters? Metarhyme 00:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

text: No. I'm suggesting that a nav template be created for a set of NSA warrantless articles, and that this nav box appear upper right on this article page and on a new "Legality of" initial spin off. NSA warrantless surveillance legality might work better - title to be agreed on but including "NSA" so as not to include all known and unknown government, private or in-between warrantless surveillance - limit it to this one Program. I'm not sure this is wiki proper, but I'd like to just ignore the existence of the POV fork, which condemns all warrantless surveillance without limiting itself with regard to who's doing it. Leave the POV fork to fate: Merge, BadJokes, AfD, eternal life, whatever. Metarhyme 20:36, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: My two cents

message: "Our position is, is that the authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following September 11th, constitutes that other authorization, that other statute by Congress, to engage in this kind of signals intelligence," seems better than Hayden's inarticulate statement, but you furnished no source for your edit. Who said it - Gonzalez? The article uses a system that makes footnotes automagical. Most of them use templates:
:
: 
:
Metarhyme 01:08, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added the reference on the NSA spying page as per your request. --Ryan Utt 14:46, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

text: *Thanks for adding the verification. I added that Gonzales said it December 19 and templated the references. I'm copying this to the article's Talk page. Metarhyme 17:40, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Yeah, I guess he didn't say it 19 December 2006. Thanks for catching that. Metarhyme 23:21, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Looks good to me.  --Mr. Billion 20:31, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I made the change. Metarhyme 06:42, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NSA lead rewrite 

message: I embedded scope of program in News reporting, renamed from NYT reports. Other domestic programs are more scandalous - Gonzales indicated them by the way he characterized his testimony about The Program, however this is an article about The Program. Since the other programs seem to me to be akin to the terrorist attacks on the world trade center - the guys wouldn't give up until they got it - I compromised by shifting the section to the bottom of the article. There is no article on US domestic surveillance, although putting that in search pulls up plenty. Metarhyme 11:14, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent changes rearranged 

message: Of course, this is yet another silly source, but I had to share it with you:
:Civil liberties organisations expressed outrage yesterday after it was reported that the database of terrorist suspects kept by the US authorities now holds 325,000 names, a fourfold increase in two and a half years.
 Nomen Nescio 00:54, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The size of NSA's database is drawing staff complaints - they're not sure how they'll be able to continue to store it all. Sorry I can't reference that without going back through a lot of stuff. If those names were produced by the Program, then it's highly processed final output. Since the Courts and Congress would view NSA's thing from which data is mined as a potential instrument of political control, which it is, operational details need to be kept hidden. The enemy is the demoncrats and republican crypto-demoncrats. Metarhyme 02:45, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Another partisan "spin"

message: Roberts got the White House to agree to oversight by a subcommittee of Senate Intel in exchange for the full committee's not prying into the history of the Program. Unless the Senate votes against the agreement, it would resolve the issue of Congressional oversight. If cutting the judiciary out bothers the Courts, eventually they will say. Unless someone beats me to it, I'll fix the committe misspellings next update. Metarhyme 07:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Senate deal

message: The argument reported by this friend of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court section is premised on the type of surveillance being done as being entirely suitable for warrants from the court. The Post article, Surveillance Net Yields Few Suspects, reveals that this is not so, and appeared well before the CNNS-TCP brief went to FISC. If the argument were entirely sound, the statements in this section would be neutral, but since the premise doesn't take the reality of a data mining operation into account, I think this section does not reflect a neutral point of view. It also probably belongs in the FISC section above the court cases section where it was placed. It would be kind of nice if someone looked at the brief and at the Post article to see if I'm correct about the premise. Metarhyme 09:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Center for National Security Studies and The Constitution Project