Spying & Spies in the USA (merged thread)

[walrus]

The issue is, as has been proved a thousand times in a thousand different jurisdictions, is that these "leakages" of information are invariably eventually abused by those in power.

And for those who think I am a bleeding heart Liberal, I must add that it doesn't matter which party is in power. The basic issue is that Administrations will use threats regarding "security" to justify any and all intrusions, and this issue is at least 400 years old, it was recognised in the British Common Law as well as the American Constitution.

To put it another way, are you happy to perhaps see Hilary Clinton trolling through your email and sharing details with LEO's?

Sad to see it being revisited, but there you go.....

[shark11]

This whole thing stinks....sounds like the Gunny and his cronies who include a few colonels really thought they were doing something very patriotic but I would like to know what this Gunny was doing for the Marines of I MEF downrange in Iraq he should have been doing intelligence work for. I'm glad this ring of clowns was caught but I wonder how many people in the U.S. are passing controlled material to people other than LEO's.

Calling this case a spy ring is a bit extreme. I don't know if spying involves passing information to the same government.... this is more of a security violation than anything else.

Maybe the Posse Comitatus act wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

[SWJED]

... for anyone who might think the Gunny as a "uber-patriot", his downfall was the discovery of a cache of war loot he had stolen.