Obama used Britich intelligence to wiretap Trump?

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by me again, Mar 14, 2017.

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  1. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    The House Intelligence Committee gave the Justice Department more time to gather evidence related to President Trump's claim that former President Obama ordered wiretaps on Trump Tower's phones.

    Normally, the law allows a sitting president to order the surveillance of any person in the United States:
    - without suspicion
    - probable cause
    - or a warrant
    - but it leaves "fingerprints"

    Judge Andrew Napolitano said that there may not be a way to prove the Obama administration spied on Trump. The surveillance was reportedly ordered in a way that left no record.

    Three intelligence sources disclosed that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the NSA, CIA, FBI or the DOJ. Instead, Obama used GCHQ, a British intelligence organization that has 24-7 access to the NSA database.

    "There's no American fingerprints on this. The guy who ordered this resigned three days after Donald Trump was inaugurated."


    GCHQ British intelligence website:
    https://www.gchq.gov.uk/

    Source:
    Judge Nap: Obama 'Went Outside Chain of Command,' Used British Spy Agency to Surveil Trump | Fox News Insider
     
  2. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    No, he actually used planet Nibiru intelligence service. That's because he was not able to have good enough relations with Russia who would do stuff like this for good friends.
     
  3. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Enough of this anti-Nibiru hate rhetoric!
     
  4. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    Anyone who is anti-Nibiru is a racist.
     
  5. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    As I've written before, I am instinctively doubtful about stories in the news media that rely on unnamed "sources". Unless the sources are identified, there's no way to judge the provenance of the information they provide. (I do have the greatest respect for judge Napolitano.)

    But I also want to say that while I have no way of knowing if this really happened, let alone whether Obama had anything to do with ordering it, it does sound plausible to me. That's because I believe that this is a common practice.

    The NSA is forbidden by law from gathering the communications of American citizens. The Snowden revelations showed how flexibly they and their federal court facilitators interpret that. (While they can't collect the data from your phone calls, they can collect all the numbers you call and all the numbers that call you, and they apparently do this routinely all the time to everybody on a massive scale.) So they would only need to tap a few computer keys to get complete dossiers on who Trump and his associates were talking to, even if they didn't have the actual conversations.

    But if the NSA does desire to collect an American's phone conversations, I'm told that their practice is simply to ask the British GCHQ to do it for them. Being British, the GCHQ doesn't operate under any restrictions regarding listening in on Americans. And if the GCHQ wants communications intercepts from somewhere where it's difficult for them to acquire them, they simply ask the NSA to do it for them. Each agency has access to (most) of the other's files, right there on their computers.

    It isn't just the US and UK. Australia, New Zealand and (yes) Canada are part of similar arrangements too and mutually surveil each other's citizens. Together their scope covers the entire world.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

    So while it's easy to make jokes, I think that privacy from incessant government surveillance is a huge and growing problem. The Snowden revelations just blew the lid off of it.

    I should add that this has been a huge political issue in Europe (where Angela Merkel's phone calls were intercepted). It's arisen in Canada as well, where in 2013 Canadian judge Richard Moseley issued a scathing condemnation of how the Canadian CSIS and CSE outsource communications surveillance of Canadian citizens to the NSA in violation of Canadian law. Edward Snowden provided many details on how these various intelligence agencies, operating in concert, seemingly circumvent the laws in each of their home countries.

    So the idea of highly placed individuals within the US government turning to a foreign intelligence agency to provide them with signals intelligence on a US citizen of interest isn't outlandish at all. I believe that it's a common practice among the spooks.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 15, 2017
  6. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    If your thesis is ever proven -- and if it is ever sufficiently exposed to the public -- then a court challenge should find it to be an illegal practice under American "color of authority." As you describe it, American agents (clandestine spooks) are circumventing legal and Constitutional protections that citizens are supposed to have under American jurisprudence.

    In an age of cyber-electronic and waved surveillance (not cameras) by spooks, "Constitutional privacy" (and any rights associated with it) needs to be more defined, clarified, implemented and monitored.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 15, 2017

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