LOGO: Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines. A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.  
November 22, 2009
Log in / Register

 Choose a size
Text Size

Most Read

Intelligentsia Against Intelligence

Throw the Money Changers Out of the Temple

Obama's Job Approval Slips Below 50 Percent

Battlefield in the War of Ideas

Yuletide Weirdness With Your Host, Bob Dylan

Most Comments
Most Emailed

Reports
Enough G-2 Talk Already
Despite Subsidies, Class Sizes Rise in California Schools

Ear to the Ground

A/V Booth

Arts & Culture
Freedom’s Fight: Part II

Digs
Financial Meltdown 101
Vetting Sarah Palin

Truthdig Bazaar
Head Cases

Head Cases

By Michael Paul Mason
$16.50

more items

 
Ear to the Ground

Report: NSA Listened In on Americans’ Phone Sex

Email this item Email    Print this item Print   
Posted on Oct 9, 2008
Pillow Talk
thirdphaze.com

“Pillow Talk”: Fun with the NSA!

Just what kind of interpretation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would allow U.S. National Security Agency linguists to eavesdrop on Americans’, er, pillow talk? That’s the charge being leveled by more than one such NSA interpreter who worked at an NSA listening station at Fort Gordon, Ga.


CNN.com:

A terrorist surveillance program instituted by the Bush administration allows the intelligence community to monitor phone calls between the United States and overseas without a court order—as long as one party to the call is a terror suspect.

Adrienne Kinne, a former U.S. Army Reserves Arab linguist, told ABC News the NSA was listening to the phone calls of U.S. military officers, journalists and aid workers overseas who were talking about “personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism.”

David Murfee Faulk, a former U.S. Navy Arab linguist, said in the news report that he and his colleagues were listening to the conversations of military officers in Iraq who were talking with their spouses or girlfriends in the United States.

According to Faulk, they would often share the contents of some of the more salacious calls stored on their computers, listening to what he called “phone sex” and “pillow talk.”

Read more

More Below the Ad

Advertisement


Elsewhere: .

Comments

Are you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.

By dihey, October 11, 2008 at 11:17 am #

Answer to the first sentence: because “pillow talk” is the ideal medium for hatching secret terrorist plans!

Report this

By Outraged, October 11, 2008 at 1:16 am #

Had a “close encounter of the third kind” today again.  Hmmm… local yokels.  Somebody’s paying attention…  But we all know, they have to LIE and CHEAT to “win” don’t they…?

Yep… they certainly do at that.  Well,  that is what “less than desirables” do, isn’t it?  I mean CHEAT and LIE…of course.

Report this

By jcbrap, October 10, 2008 at 10:15 am #

Yea, this really speaks to what our country has become.  Nothing but a fascist state.  Laws don’t matter to these people. They can do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want, for whatever reason they want.  NO ACCOUNTABILITY, except of course for us unimportant worms who pay for it all.  WE get to bear ALL the burdens.  Those at the top get all the rewards.

Revolution anyone?

Report this

By wildflower, October 10, 2008 at 1:08 am #

Re: P.T.

Do you think the NSA would share with us what Keating meant when he wrote McCain that letter and said “You can call me anything, write anything or do anything. I’m yours till death do us part?“ Surely, NSA has the scoop by now:

“The Washington Times reports that in 1986, John McCain wrote a note on House stationery to Charles Keating, chairman of a failed savings and loan association who went to prison in the late 1980s.

In the letter, McCain apologized for listing Keating as part of his Senate campaign finance committee.

Keating wrote in response: “You can call me anything, write anything or do anything. I’m yours till death do us part“ . . .”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/09/mccain-keating-letter/

Report this

By Outraged, October 10, 2008 at 12:49 am #

Article comment: “Bamford told CNN the accounts from the whistle-blowers demonstrate the NSA was listening to the private conversations of Americans, transcribing them and keeping them.

“They don’t delete them,” he said.”

They don’t delete them…. so what do you think they do with them…hmmm… you know how it goes… nobody really cares about information that isn’t “sensitive” right…. what would anyone want with someone else’s private phone calls…  OR… maybe the more revealing question is, WHY DO THEY WANT INFORMATION FROM YOUR PRIVATE PHONE CALLS…?

The next question would be, WHAT DO THEY PROPOSE TO DO WITH THIS INFORMATION?  Think about it… is it “ok” with you that a secretive dept. of this felonious administration is recording AND keeping, your phone conversations.

See, I think they give this “unimportant” information to crooked business groups, less than trustworthy organizations and of course keep the more useful “pertinent” info they keep for themselves, these things come in handy…ya’ know.

Call me paranoid… but I know they’ve messed with me…. well that’s because I tend to be somewhat BLUNT concerning “strange goings ons”.

Remember a while back when I went to stay with my elderly mother, well… I took my 10 year old fishing, he rarely gets this opportunity.  We rowed this itty bitty boat a short way from shore(we didn’t have a motor), and I was showing him how to row and fish, all that good stuff.  Anyway, as soon as I dropped anchor to fish, a boat out near the point immediately starts its engine and heads our way.

It was a decent size boat with a decent sized motor.  We were fishing in about 3 1/2 feet of water, just for panfish, so my son would have “good luck” fishing…you know.  So this boat comes swinging in towards us, into the weeds, past us.. and into the shallows in LESS than 3 ft of water.  I grew up with a boat about that size and about that size motor, and this is a no-no.  You DON’T drive the way they did (3 men in a boat) in the shallows, in the weeds, if you give a rat’s ass about your boat, or at least your prop.

They then swing around us and cut their motor.  My back is to them, I don’t turn around.  We sit there like that for a minute or so, my son watching them… with a questioning look on his face.  Three guys…2 middle-agedish and one I would guess in his 30’s.  Tough guys…I was curious how they ended up on the detail of stalking an ol’ lady with a kid…what, are they biggest fuck ups ever…?  Only an idiot would sent their top guys for this job and given the fact that 2 of them were 40ish?, it makes you wonder.  Real tough guys, real tough..yep..they must be top o’ the line…you betcha.

Back to the story, they engage their motor, swing around in the shallows and speed off toward the resort (this is what we call a northwoods resort, no luxuries).  Well…when you do that, it creates “big waves”...you know…so it damn near topples our little boat…but we were in the shallows so it wasn’t life threatening or anything.  Pissed me off though, my little guy could’ve lost all his fishin’ stuff…and he doesn’t have much.  So this is what tough guys do… pick on little kids and oldish ladies.  Makes me sick.  The fucks.  Degenerates….sleazy, head up someones ass, degenerates.

Although, it does confer that they followed me to my mother’s place and they follow me at home.  I believe they are private goons, but who knows…if our tax dollars pay for this, are they “private”.

The local yokels follow me too.  You can’t get safer than me if…well…that is IF you could trust your local “boys/girls in blue”.  Nope you surely could not.  Kinda gets you wondering who’s side, “who” is on…?

Report this

By P. T., October 9, 2008 at 11:23 pm #

I hope all the members of Congress who voted for this are being spied on.

Report this

By RickinSF, October 9, 2008 at 10:27 pm #

Is it possible that anybody is actually surprised by this?

Not counting the stupid ones, of course.

Report this

By wildflower, October 9, 2008 at 10:22 pm #

Good grief . . . so this is what our official NSA Executive Branch snoopers were doing while that six term Republican Representative Mark Foley was sending all those sexually explicit messages to underage male pages?

Report this

Add Your Comment

Posts by unregistered readers are moderated. Posts by members
are published immediately. Why wait? Register today!







Number of characters remaining: 4000

Notify you when others comment on this article?


Are you a human?
Retype the word you see here.


Please read and abide by our comment policy.
By submitting this comment, you agree to this site's terms and conditions.

 
 

 
Join the Liberal Blog Advertising Network
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.