Rand Paul: NSA Routinely Monitors Americans’ Communications Without Warrants

As I explained, this happens everywhere, not just in government agencies. That is why no reasonable person would have expected a public discussion prior to implementation.

> Not true. The muslim watch list was created after 9/11 and was not shut down until late in Barack Obama's first term.

We were discussing the Muslim registry that Trump wanted to implement, which goes far beyond NSEERS. He has at times ramblingly suggested that he wants all Muslims to be registered, not just some foreigners visiting the US as in NSEERS.

I just read them again. There is clearly a great effort being made to embellish the evidence so that it seems like state actor caliber work.

I think we can safely assume that the US and Russia conduct steady amounts of mischief toward each-other, and that it's largely out of the public view. Some of it likely includes hacking attempts, etc.

But the very documents you link say that while the groups in question were not previously linked to the Russian government, there is suddenly reason to believe they are (namely the release of the DNC emails).

So for some reason previous JARs had not felt it worthwhile to speculate about state actors being involved, suddenly this link to the Russian state became the most relevant aspect. Hmm.

I think it's quite plausible that Russia pays several groups of hackers a few million dollars a year to conduct mischief. For all we know the US pays similar (or even the same) groups to do mischief.

We're told that there is an arbitrary code execution vulnerability that was responsible for the DNC hack, but we're also told that a user fell victim to a phishing email. While both might be true, which of these pieces of evidence can we attribute to the DNC hack?

It was revealed previously that the server at the DNC was not patched and was likely vulnerable for many months. Any number of actors could have gained access to it, installed rootkits, etc.

With all the leaks and embarrassing revelations coming out about US intelligence agencies, I think it's best to remain highly skeptical of any information revealed that has a political impact.

A few months ago people were angry that James Comey handed the election to Donald Trump, now the same people are certain that the best explanation for the DNC email leaks is a Russian state-sponsored attack.

The truth is likely somewhere in the middle. Sure, Russia probably has a constant mischief campaign (as does, quite likely, the US), but within 24 hours of the DNC email leaks there were loud accusations of Russian involvement before Crowdstrike had done any analysis.

Reading the actual emails reveals an organizational culture that was extremely technically inept and that did not take it security seriously at all.

To put this in perspective, any serious state actor would have owned a vulnerable server being used by a major US political figure within hours after the server became vulnerable, and no trail would have been left. US intelligence warned the HRC about the vulnerable server multiple times because the US, a state actor, is on top of it.

How difficult is it to periodically scan the list of a few hundred IP addresses used by top officials for known vulnerabilities. This is by far the most plausible explanation for how a state actor would handle the situation.

If anything the FancyBear group and other similar groups are just hackers for hire who periodically sell some results to the Russian government.

I think it's important to consider that if you have the budget of a state actor you don't do many of the things that are used as evidence in this narrative.

Did you forget that this metadata collection ended? Did you forget that when it was collected, the only way to query it was to find anonymized IDs of contacts to issue court orders to deanonymize? I explained both of these earlier in this very conversation. Or do you think that Trump doesn't understand these nuances and thinks he has the the ability to spy on anybody?

> Obama wanted a Muslim registry and utilized it for several years as well.

Did you forget that NSEERS isn't a Muslim registry but a registry of visiting foreigners from specific dominantly Muslim countries, as I just explained in my previous post, which is different from an actual Muslim registry that Trump has suggested he supports?

> Right, it's a risk mitigation strategy not a law-compliance strategy.

Whatever you call it, this happens everywhere, so it's amazing to me that you would think public debate would be necessary before implementing those programs.

LOL. That's absurd on its face. His deference to Russia and Putin is complete and it's not just his public rhetoric, but backchannel nods that were not intended to be revealed for public shock or otherwise, and favorable RNC platform changes and beyond.

And, all of this in the context of Russian election interference, designed to rig the election in his favor. He long-denied that rigging, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. But, even he was finally forced to admit the intelligence agencies had it right. Still, here you are.

Sorry. Real things happened that can't be dismissed as pot-stirring rhetoric.

>not to (stupidly) telegraph

One would think it would be stupid, but then, here you are trying to shill for him in spite of it.

>I am not making the claim as my own view...

In one sense, that's probably the most accurate thing you've said.

But, you seem to have thoroughly confused yourself here vis-a-vis your original asinine assertion, which was that Clinton likely would have responded militarily to Russia's election-meddling. Now, you're throwing in stuff about later cyber-attacks on infrastructure, etc. that would precipitate such a response. BTW, that "Clinton would have started WW3" rhetoric is exactly the fear-mongering coming out of Russia during the campaign. Funny how you are in complete lock-step with Russian propaganda.

>I think you overlook the decades long strategy the US...

I don't. I just look at what's happening now.

Most Americans actually want an investigation. But, even those who don't aren't so starkly anti-American/pro-Russian as you.

>This is a silly comment

I would say more corny than silly, but I just wanted to help you understand how most Americans feel about our country, since you don't seem to be familiar with that.

>I figured you represented the right-wing view

By "right-thinking", I meant correct or clear, not politically right. It's a figure-of-speech. I'm hardly a hawk. But, the real question is what are you, exactly?

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