KEVIN DRUM: This should add even more excitement to Michael Hayden's confirmation hearings to run the CIA, shouldn't it?

The fact that NSA were unable to bully Qwest into cooperation and refused to go to FISA to test the legality pretty much tells the whole tale.

If the Dems don't grab this and run . . . .

Also, Haydens interpretation of the 4th Amendment at the National Press Club in January should reassure everyone.

I can't wait to see how the Bush apologists on this site spin this one.

Simply put, he lied. To everyone. Even those of you who imbibe the Kool-Aid.

This should add even more excitement to Michael Hayden's confirmation hearings to run the CIA, shouldn't it?

Yep. And the major question is why was Qwest so unpatriotic that it was willing to endanger the national security of our country by refusing to share the phone call records of suspected terrrorists with George W Bush? How many millions of American lives were endangered by their selfish, unpatriotic actions?

Wait a minute.

You are saying that Nacchio did the right thing? I'll be damned. Maybe I'll have to root for him in his upcoming trail.

Al, you're killing me. How do you manage to get in so early on *every* thread? Do you have some kind of kevin-drum-watching bot running somewhere?

The first wave of mass arrests will be pot smokers in swing states. The second smaller wave will be democratic contributers that utilize escort services.

Man...

Karl's so gonna miss looking at all that NSA data...

...once he's in Federal Prison.

Or, if pardoned, after Bush is impeached.

It could happen, Republicans. And you know it.

Bush. Crime. Family.

Reject them. Now. For America.

Agree that Quest should pick up customers; if our representatives won't stick up for us, at least our cell carrier will.

The UK is perfecting their CCTV.

This administration has taken newspeak to near perfection.

Now we hear they are building their total, all-embracing database.

Big Brother is almost here. Wait 'til we all get our sub-dermal chip.

Just wondering . . .
do they run an analysis on their own calls too? You know, just in case one of them is not as Rovish, Cheneyish or Rummy as they seem. I sure as hell would.

Under the USA PATRIOT act a warrant isn't required for pen/trace-trap for virtually any device, for "any investigation to gather foreign intelligence information". The only effective limitation is that it cannot be used "solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment".

However, this isn't "anyone", it's essentially "everyone", which renders any limitation effectively meaningless. That the NSA wasn't willing to go to the mat with Qwest and FISA is telling.

The Bin Laden family name was floating around back in Houston.

Back in the early '70s.

I'm just saying...follow the money...

Who was the Bush grandfather? What wars...have been in play?

Follow the money.

$400 million dollar bonus.

I am most concerned about the Islamic belt bombers finding me than the NSA, considering the insulting remarks I have made about Muhammed and his affair with his camel.

Connect the dots people.
They are doing this to blackmail elected officials and the media.
Can it be more obvious?
They have the tools.
They have the motive (power).
They have the lack of respect for the rule of law.
They get off on it.
Can anything be more obvious?

My question is "What if you are a patriotic American like Al, minding you own business when someone in Saudi Arabia places a call and misdials and connects to Al, who hangs-up. Since the call originated from overseas, does the NSA look at every call Al has made or received in his entire lifetime?" Al, that wouldn't bother you, would it?

This American Democracy can rise up and prove itself again.

In order to do this, we have to set the example for the world, and remove false power.

This is something that both Democrats and Republicans are starting to realize is above politics.

Impeachment is a tool of democracy. Not a curse on the village.

These fools have got to go. Yeah, it's that bad, everybody.

There is a simple solution. If the White House will allow all of us to listen to all of their calls, then they can listen to ours.

Seems fair and balanced to me.

If the NSA is listening to our overseas phone calls, then they should pay half the phone bill, its only fair.

I would not expect an article like this from USA Today. Thanks, and good job Leslie Cauley. Oh yeah, be very afraid.

You kind of have to admire the programming of the Al-bot. I didn't see how this news could be defended, but that Al software always manages to find a nugget of imaginary corn in the biggest piles of dung. Exemplary!

Tiggershark:

..."What if you are a patriotic American like Al, minding you own business when someone in Saudi Arabia places a call and misdials and connects to Al, who hangs-up."

...NSA believe Al has been given the call to action, descend on him with Special Forces. Next time Al wakes up he is in a brightly lit cell playing imams calling the faithful to prayer VERY loudly. After 3 years in solitary and telling them "useful information to the security of this country" he finds himself dropped of in the uplands of uzbekistan with no money, the same skivvies he was picked up in, two broken ribs, poor eyesight and a distended bladder.

"...Al, that wouldn't bother you, would it?"

Posted by: Tigershark on May 11, 2006 at 2:17 AM | PERMALINK

Oh, I can dream, can't I?

NewsMaxFan:

you forgot to add who got flown out of the country pronto following 11th September.

TIA. Poindexter got his panopticon. So, when the Democrats take the White House, the NSA will keep the database intact, won't it? Actually, I think the Al-bot exists to collect IP addresses from responders.

Anyway, the timing on this is interesting, isn't it? It chimes with the hints of other extralegal surveillance and data collection from the Gonzales hearing. So won't it be nice to get him and Hayden together, under oath, in front of both the Judiciary and Intel committees?

Because if the Dems participate confirmation hearings before this is dealt with, then they can fuck right off.

Interesting that the talks between Qwest and the NSA apparently went on for 3 years before Qwest "pulled the plug". For a matter purportedly so important to national security, it's incredulous that during that entire time the administration could not or would not find a way to address Qwest's concerns.

Are we sure this wasn't a Quest infomorercial?

has407

the inference is that Qwest's legal advice was not to cooperate, particularly as NSA could not define where the info would go and how it would be used, and they could be liable for dissemnating same information. Equally, NSA was not willing to risk an adverse FISA verdict.

Seems like only Qwest got the correct advice and hasd the balls not to be intmidated by typical fascist bullying (Got a better disciption?) from NSA. Doesn't say much about the other corporates.

The freshly aroused American people will now roust themselves and rally behind the natural leader who stood up to the bunch of bullies...just like they did with Boxer, Feingold and Murtha...oh wait.

Hit them again Osama.

notthere -- Right... it seems that it either wasn't important enough for the NSA to provide safeguards sufficient to allay Qwest's concerns, which brings into question the "necessary for national security" justification; or if the NSA felt there was legal justification, then why did it not bring the full force of the law to bear to protect our national security? And if there was no legal justification, and the other telecom's did break the law, then it appears that there was a conspiracy to do so at the behest of the US government.

Shorter: (1) the NSA isn't serious about national security; (2) the NSA broke the law; or (3) both.

Let me try that again...

(1) this surveillance isn't important to national security; or (2) the NSA doesn't care about national security; or (3) the NSA broke the law; or (4) a combination of the previous.

The article only briefly mentions the non-profit civil rights in technology group- the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF is suing AT&T for breaking the rules. (Verizon chose not to play with the NSA in part because it would be breaking the law.)

Of course, the feds are trying to squelch the lawsuit by throwing "states secret" at it.

Because the EFF started the lawsuit, it gave a reason for the AT&T technician to come forward, and his evidence gave the entire case more traction and much more press coverage.

Since the EFF works at the intersection of technological change with civil rights, the importance of what they do isn't always easy to explain. A tiny box sitting on a network isn't as obvious as a policeman doing an illegal search. But then a case like this comes along...

Technology allows one administration to authorize one box that breaks the 4th amendment millions of times a day.

Check out everything the EFF is doing:
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/

and has done:
http://www.eff.org/legal/victories/

I'm a long-time supporter with friends at the EFF, and I know their big limitation is money- the more members, the more they can do. If you like most of what they do, consider donating.

(I write "most" because an effective civil-rights organization will always have one or two cases that seem too strongly focused on the org's core topic [free speech, say]. They won't 'tone it down' for PR. And with the EFF, taking technology cases means that they don't get the most sympathetic defendants- a government trying to get new powers goes after the least likeable defendants first. But if one skips the unsympathetic, then by the time the government is going after the angels, all the precedents have been set. So if you like most of what the EFF does, consider joining.)

Well what did USAToday think "acces to the daytona database" means ;-)

This is precisely the accusation in the EFF lawsuit and third New york times article. We knew all this already (except for maybe the Qwest part).
(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?ex=1293080400&en=016edb46b79bde83&ei=5090)

And it has been clear since the first new york times article that this traffic data is most likely the only way to get the thousands of "dirty phone numbers" that are even a little bit more interesting than the average phone number. More interesting than average seems to be the "reasonable belief" test that is used for listening in on international traffic. But since only phone numbers are learned this way, not names and indentities, getting a warrant, even a FISA one, is impossible.

And the later stories about the FBI investigating thousands of leads without finding anything suspicious suggest that the NSA is as good at "datamining", or what used to be called traffic analysis when the NSA did it dacades ago on soviet traffic, as everbody else.

And most of the sources are still telco people. There is no way NSA people talk publicly about "the largest database in the world". This is someone who thinks his employer has been bumped of the #1 spot in the publicly known database size top-25 list. Not someone who actually knows how big NSA databases are, and have been.

The standard inteligence targeting misnomer applies. Inteligence agencies don`t just target terrorist, they target radicals, for example, islamic radicals.

I am sure there has been a renewed interest in clinic bombers and weather underground type groups since 9/11 as well. But with the "only Al qaida" white house line they may have been safe from the NSA. Then again, Al qaida has been redefined from Osama`s and friend to islamic radicalism in general... No doubt becouse Al qaida got more scared responces in the focus groups.

In other words, they target a group for its political believes, and then try and find the violent people in that group.... And then they might act, or just wait and gather more information.

Also, since telephone traffic data is about which phone connects to which phone it would be more accurate to talk about traffic analysis rather than social network analysis. Its a minor detail, until you end up in court where it matters what person was actually holding the horn when a call was made.

Traffic data analysis isn`t just an inteligence tool, law enforment and criminal inteligence groups have been using it as well. And it has been such a succes that they have been looking for access to much more data since well before 9/11. Just ask the Europeans who recently ended up with legislation because the UK figured pushing it thourgh the EU was easier than pushing it through in just the UK.... (http://cryptome.sabotage.org/ncis-carnivore.htm)

This is clearly a violation of our Constitutional guarantees of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. 19 suicidal men in hijacked airplanes does not justify this outrageous and egregious fascist and unAmerican program.

Damn! I knew I shouldn't have used the name "Osama" that time I sent out for pizza!

If I could give all of my telecom dollars to Qwest I would...but all of this traverse the telecom backbone and unless the traffic stays within the Qwest network, I would assume this would not matter. Am I mistaken?

Yep. And the major question is why was Qwest so unpatriotic that it was willing to endanger the national security of our country by refusing to share the phone call records of suspected terrrorists with George W Bush? How many millions of American lives were endangered by their selfish, unpatriotic actions?

I nominate the for Al parody of the year!!! An absolute classic!!! Two thumbs up!!!!

If the NSA is listening to our overseas phone call

Just to clarify, the article states this is related to every single call made by the customers of these companies, regardless of source or destination location.

Despite the wonders of computerland, I find it difficult to believe that it wouldn't take every single person in the NSA just to monitor the calls my bi-polar daughter makes every day! None are "international" as far as is known...but she COULD branch out...very needy and having to be constantly connected to SOMEONE SOMEWHERE! I say if that's all they can find to do with their time/personnel...no wonder we shouldn't feel safer!

If I could give all of my telecom dollars to Qwest I would...but all of this traverse the telecom backbone and unless the traffic stays within the Qwest network, I would assume this would not matter. Am I mistaken?

I am trying to determine the same thing at this very moment. Certainly your long-distance calls are fair game, since Qwest only provides local service (if I'm not mistaken). But even your local calls would go over the AT&T network. So that's the question.

This makes me literally sick at my stomach, for more reasons than I want to get into here.

Think of the potential economic value of this database. I wonder if the NSA sells the information concerning your telephone habits to advertizers.

Actually, it seems that Bush authorized the NSA to wiretap Americans pre-9/11, AND, the NSA approached U.S. carriers for their cooperation in this 'data-mining' operation in early 2001.

This was all going on before September 11, 2001.

Is everybody in Congress:

1.) Cynical, corrupt, stupid, on the take?

2.) Forgetful and just doesn't remember that 9/11 had nothing to do with Bush's illegal spying on Americans and the NSA's grandiose democracy-shattering/Constitution-dissolving program?

3.) in bed with dead women and/or little boys?

"If the NSA is listening to our overseas phone calls, then they should pay half the phone bill, its only fair."

I will ask again: why are WE PAYING to have these goons spy on us?

Isn't it about time the idea that Bush's responses to 9/11, like his lack of vigilance beforehand, are basically incompetent? The FBI was concerned about the flight school antics of the hijackers. If memory serves me right, two of the hijackers were already on terrorism watch lists. 9/11 wouldn't have happened if Bush had been exercising even basic vigilance instead of dreaming up war plans for Iraq.

Cumbersome, paranoid programs like this one send a dual message: It reinforces the idea that no one could have anticipated and prevented 9/11 -- a notion that increasingly seems absurd, geven the Bush Administration's conspicuous incompetence -- and yet it also reinforces the idea that, having been caught napping at the switch, Bush had no idea how to fight terrorism. The clown show that is the Bush Administration makes loyal Americans long for good governance.

Who is this Al guy who wants to surrender his rights under the bill of rights because he's scared of terrorists? Why does the right wing attach so little value to the rights Americans have fought for over more than two centuries? Why are they scared off by a ragtag group of terrorists that doesn't even have an army, navy, or airforce?

I'm just shaking with rage.

Cue the Republican defense meme:

1. This report is not true.
2. Even if it is true, it's perfectly legal.
3. Even if it's not legal, the law is outdated and needs to be changed.
4. And in any event the President can ignore the law because of his inherent powers as kin- er Commander-in-Chief.
5. And this is a vital program necessary to protect the United States from terrorists who have the power to destroy life as we know it.
6. Democrats are pussies!

Did I get that right?

I will only feel truly safe once the government has installed cameras in my house to watch me 24 hours a day. That way I can be absolutely sure I'm not a threat to America! They will also be impressed with how many times a day I say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Wait just a minute here. You're not suggesting that Bush lied or anything are you?

You stupid liberals! You can't enjoy your capital gains tax cut when you're dead!

It occurred to me last night why Bill Niskanen's study for the Cato Institute found, contrary to the conservative "starve the beast" theory, that tax cuts were in fact associated with INCREASES in government spending.

It's because people obsessed with big government and tax cuts are also obsessed with the "war on terror" and having a "strong defense."

Grover Norquist's "drown the government in the bathtub and then drown it again" theory sounds like quaint, little old lady Republican sentiment from a bygone era in the face of the Bush-Cheney terror- and Iraq-driven spending onslaught.

Remind me again -- who is it who believes in big government???

Who Watches the Watchman?

Sorry about being repetive but this recent story is even more relevant here.

The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

The NSA is above oversight and decides who and when anyone will review allegations of wrongdoing even when those allegations involve attorneys at the Department of Justice?

Sources within the DNC say that that organization is illegally obtaining SS#'s and address's and registering them as Democrats in strategic areas an attempt to bolster their poll results in the up-coming election. These sources state that this is a concerted effort by the DNC leadership to win the next election at any cost.

It's amazing what sources will tell you.

If anybody has information about switching from SBC to Qwest DSL, please post it here. I predict the AT&T/SBC folks are scurrying around right now discussing strategies to prevent a huge loss of customers to Qwest. If I signed up for 12 months, can I get out of it by pointing out they have breached their contract protecting my privacy?

"I'm all shook up ah a huh" - Elvis and shortstop.

Good for Qwest. Not sure it's reason enough to switch from Working Assets, but good for them...

They ought to invite someone from Qwest to the hearing and let them explain how they told the NSA and WH to screw off.

That certainly settles the debate we were having a few threads ago on whether or not the administration was engaging in domestic spying - doesn't it?

They were massively. Anyone want to bet now that they're not looking at their political enemies.

If there ever were a time to filibuster on a nomination and demand a full briefing on what's going on - now would be it. Feingold's right on this one - it's a huge potential winner because it could get the base cranked up like no-one's business.

"Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely....

"Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

George Orwell, "1984"

I'm now sure that Al is not real. Nobody can be that clueless and jobless at the same time.

I think Al is Kevin Drum's alter ego. Just saying!!!

When will the Democrats demand the NSA program be terminated??

Yep. And the major question is why was Qwest so unpatriotic that it was willing to endanger the national security of our country by refusing to share the phone call records of suspected terrrorists with George W Bush? How many millions of American lives were endangered by their selfish, unpatriotic actions?

I get it now!! Al just doesn't drink the "kool-aid" he receives enemas with the stuff!!!!!

Wasn't there a movie about how someone wanted to make all the phones in the world ring at once? Maybe that is the real plot behind this, and it has nothing to do with terrorists.
signed,
Lawnmowerman

Don't get to excited, Kevin. As you said, this is just a geeky thing called data mining. No big deal. IT's not like anyone's privacy is being violated.

And to hell with FISA. It's out of date. It's impossible to work with. How are you supposed to get warrants when you're wiretapping everybody? 300 million warrants? There aren't enough judges in the whole country to review that.

If you don't want the government to know your business, don't use third party carriers. Use a couple tin cans and a string.

The silence of the trolls is deafening. Of course, we have Jay reliably daring Democrats to campaign on the issue that THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS SPYING ON EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN CITIZEN - HEY ALL YOU FAG-HATIN', GUN-TOTIN', BOOT-IN-YOUR-ASS, MEAT-EATIN' GOOLD OLE AMERICANS - HE THINKS YOU'RE A TERRORIST TOO!

"I'm now sure that Al is not real. Nobody can be that clueless and jobless at the same time"

Hey "God" that hurts and its not funny. I'll have more to say about this later but right now my mom is yelling at me to make my bed in the basement!!

brewmn, unlike the incessant non-stop whining of the liberals, you only hear from the trolls on election days when we show up en masse and win elections. I thought you would have figured that out by now.

NOW can we call it a "domestic spying program" Al, Freedom fries, Freq, Cnut, Bueller?

Lot of heat on this one. Dunno why everyone is so worked up over it. I did dB work with WorldCom back in the 90s and they had a database of every call coming over their trunk -- something like 2 billion calls/month. Of course we were using it to break down billing. But the TelCo had a record of every call.

Now, don't get me wrong. I think that having a dB of every call's start and end point can be open to abuse, but could also be very useful (the dukestir called MZM, and they called who?). It's also probably not legally authorized, and any use of it should be very carfully overseen (which I have no expectation of occurring in this admin), but again, datamining is a powerful tool. For both good and evil.

Seems to me the Bush Family has many more ties to the Bin Ladens and Saudis and tarrists than Joe Public does. Let the surveillance begin.

Jay you have to be the biggest fucking moron on your planet - which one is yours anyway?

Merrily you troll along - giving up everything this country used to stand for to coddle your false sense of security and then you chirp about elections.

Fuck off and phone home.

Like nearly everybody else I have only the vaguest idea what this database program is about, but it strikes me that it probably involves you, me and everybody we know. None of the people I know are terrorists or have any terrorist sympathies.

This is just a question. Something to ponder. Do you think we, the people, had a right to debate the relative merits of this program? Not the really secret details, but the broad outlines. How much freedom are we willing to give to the President? Does this level of spying actually add to our safety?

Oh, you say that we have "intelligence oversight committees" and congress to make those kinds of decisions. Well don't you think that we the people have a right to know who decided what. Maybe the folks of Kansas wouldn't like to know that Pat Roberts would sell their freedom so cheap? Maybe the people of Califorinia would feel the same way about Mrs. Harmon?

Don't you think it is time we peeked behind the curtain just a little. Just so, we, the people, will be able to excercise our rights of oversight on election day.

I say vote against every member of the house and senate intelligence committees regardless of party. If some member of congress knew or should have known about this program, and didn't blow the whistle, vote them out. Vote them out NOW. They do not deserve our support.

Ugh -- you captured the Republican defense meme perfectly.

I long for the days when the greatest threat to our civil liberties was a dusty old box of FBI files sitting on a couch in the White House and right-wing talk radio screeched 24/7 about what a threat that box was to American democracy.

fucking amazing -- a total scoundrel like joe nacchio turns out to have a few decent bones in his body after all.

who would have thought?

fucking amazing -- a total scoundrel like joe nacchio turns out to have a few decent bones in his body after all.

who would have thought?

As Jonathan Turley put it yesterday on Obermann, the loss of Civil Liberties is an irreversible process. I think he is right with the proviso that your time horizon is at least a few decades.

So we are all fucked, as is the concept of America as a real democracy. I do not count on Democrats to oppose this, effectively or even ineffectively.

lib, I heard Turley and think he is wrong. Civil liberties are always under threat. They are lost only until we demand them back. Sometimes we have to demand them more loudly than others.

Ron Byers

That's why I said that they are 'irreversible' on a reasonably short time scale. Once you lose them, it probably takes decades to get them back. So during this period they appear to be irreversible.

Damn! I knew I shouldn't have used the name "Osama" that time I sent out for pizza!

Posted by: BC on May 11, 2006 at 6:25 AM

Yeah, it makes me feel sorry for the guy who just bought a deli in my town, Usamah Hayyat. In a way, though, this is coming home for him, because he had a summer job there as a kid. He worked there before it was bought by the owners who just sold it, when the place was owned by a man named Jihad.

Needless to say, he went by his nickname, Baba.

So if this NSA program had existed when the place was called Baba's, would they have eavesdropped on everyone in my town who had ever ordered a pizza? What a silly question.

I am perplexed by Kevin's apparent quasi-neutral instance on this issue.

Where is the outrage?

Don't think that it will stop with simple "traffic" analysis either. People are working very hard on realtime "conversation" analysis at this moment. Voice - text - sound - images.

Oh, you say, that is beyond existing computing power. Not necessarily. The problem scales up and down very nicely - that is the traffic is easily divided and fanned out to multiple processors. These processors could be in a highly multiprocessor super computer or, who knows, all the internet folks doing 'SETI' analysis may be co-opted to search domestic traffic.

So say I'm talking to my Mom who asks what I did over the weekend and I tell her I attended the local high school play that bombed. Next think I know My Mom and I are on a watch list because I said "bomb" and "school" in the same conversation.

that should be 'I am perplexed by Kevin's apparent quasi-neutral stance on this issue.'

Sorry.

Jay: It's amazing what sources will tell you.

It's amazing to what lengths lying lemmings like Jay will go to in order to divert attention from the criminal activities of the Bush administration.

On the other hand, it really isn't that amazing, since that is what fascists do - protect totalitarian regimes.

Like Saddam Hussein.

And the Shah of Iran.

And Noriega.

And the Saudi monarchy.

And the Taliban.

Until they become political liabilities, of course.

Until then, however, no matter how much murder and mayhem they cause in the world, conservatives will support the totalitarians, especially those in the GOP leadership ranks.

And funny how conservatives believed such anonymous sources without question when Clinton was in office, even when those sources stories had no corroboration whatsoever and how they continued to promote those stories even after they had been debunked.

Face it. Conservatives are liars and questioning the sources in this instance by pretending that the journalists are just making those sources up out of thin air is just another lame lie.

Cyrus,

You are starting to get it. Everybody is watched all the time - at least by the listening computers.

Certain 'filters' and pattern recognition algorithms are used in real time to try to distill the data down to something 'meaningful.'

Believe me, I know what I'm talking about here. For the computing all it takes is a properly arranged array of PCs with less computing power than you can currently buy at Best Buy.

Or did we all think that the whole point of supercomputers, funded by the government, was to play a good game of chess?

The real questions are what happens to all the archived data and who gets to decide what is 'meaningful.'

I'll try to keep this simple:

1) Monitoring call patterns is legal
2) There is no constitutional rigt to privacy
3) The government would be negligent if it didn't use all legal means at its disposal to catch terrorists.

This whole thread is an example of how liberals are fundamentally unserious on national security.

"Never try to teach a liberal to think, It wastes your time and annoys the liberal!"

So, what would it look like if Evelyn Waugh and Stanley Kubrick collaborated on a movie? They would have thought the Bush Administration was too far out.

Here's an article where, for a year, the Pentagon was sending shipments of AK-47s from Bosnia to Baghdad, yet none of these planes ever landed!

And no one noticed. For a year.

Jay: . . . you only hear from the trolls on election days when we show up en masse and win elections.

Not much "en masse" last two elections and even less projected for the next.

Unless you in your delusions think a bare majority of bare majority of Americans voting represents "en masse."

LOL.

Maybe you should actually look up words and phrases before you use them.

Sorry, that article is,

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17055497&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=have-200-000-missing-ak47s-fallen-into-the-hands-of-iraq-terrorists---name_page.html

Bartleby's whole post is an example of shameless troll shilling for a corrupt administration and shows how Republicans are fundamentally unserious about civil liberties, personal freedoms, and democracy.

So if I follow the latest logic…gee, we aren't doing anything illegal even though we aren't using the FISA system…and we are talking to "some" members of congress…but they can't tell you anything because the information is totally classified….and gee, we are ok with some investigative oversight…but unfortunately we can't grant security clearance to the investigators.

Gee…it looks to me like we have a dictator in charge. He breaks the rules, he rewrites the rules, he changes the rules, and he answers to no one.

I only hope we can soon finish exporting our "democracy" to Iraq and the rest of the oppressed world so they can have the same rights that we do.

more observations here:

www.thoughttheater.com

"Bartleby's whole post is an example of shameless troll shilling for a corrupt administration..."

How about addressing the points of the post instead of just saying it's trolling? You're demonstrating how true that quote from Rush about liberals and thinking is. Tell me what's wrong with the data mining program.

3) The government would be negligent if it didn't use all legal means at its disposal to catch terrorists.

Which, I suppose, is why we should nuke Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea?

And yet we do not. Hmmmm. Could it be there are options between "None" and "All?"

Because you're a waste of time,

1)Lawyers can and should argue whether what the government is currently doing is legal.
2)Scholars have argued this till the cows come home. I would argue that Article IX gives me right to privacy
3)I would also argue that our current government is doing illegal and incompetent and unfruitful actions in the "War on Terror".

Just because you proclaim your claptrap points as fact doesn't make them so.

Sorry, Amendment IX.

"3) The government would be negligent if it didn't use all legal means at its disposal to catch terrorists.

Which, I suppose, is why we should nuke Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea?"

That's terrible. How you can take what I wrote and conflate it with a call to nuke anyone is beyond comprehension.

Would nuking them be legal? Would it catch terrorists? No and no. We're discussing a surveillance program, not obliterating nations.
That's just a sad attempt demonize conservatives. If you want to advance your cause, try an actual argument.

Bartleby wrote: You're demonstrating how true that quote from Rush about liberals and thinking is.

You are demonstrating that you are a brain-dead Bush-bootlicking neo-brownshirt mental slave who is incapable of doing anything but robotically typing the scripted, programmed drivel that you get from Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Fox News and other bought-and-paid-for shills for the Bush administration. You don't care about America. All you care about is reciting a script that's been fed to you by your controllers, and cheering "Rah! Rah! Red Team Wins!"

You are just another in the long parade of right-wing clowns who post here to impress themselves with their ability to slavishly regurgitate the turds that they gobble from Rush Limbaugh's stinking toilet bowl and the bile that they slurp from the toxic sewer that is Fox News.

You and your ilk are a tiny lunatic fringe that began as the Cult of Clinton-Hatred and then morphed into the Cult of Bush-Worship, and the most hilarious thing about it is your absurd delusion that you represent the majority of Americans.

You are not a "conservative". You are just a dumbass.

Tell me what's wrong with the data mining program.

Bartleby, you not being able to read is not our fucking problem, it's yours.

Really, the resistance of Qwest in these circumstances is astonishing. I'm really curious as to what the whole story is.

Bartleby quotes Rush and wants to be seriously considered.

B, you're a waste of time, a waste of bandwidth, and a waste of skin.

I prefer using the full name - "Rush the drug addict."

"Bush who couldn't find oil in Texas" has a nice ring, too.

Back on topic - what is done with the data and who decides what is "meaningful?"

I seriously doubt that data collection is limited to phone numbers and the dates and times of the calls. It became clear when this story first broke that there is not just one NSA domestic spying program, but several.

I suspect that there are different levels of collection and analysis. If something fits a pattern it gets kicked up a level to say recording and speech recognition. The transcripts from those calls are then themselves data-mined. It is all automated so there is no opportunity to get a warrant.

Nice bullshit statement from Bush, who was, of course, too cowardly to take a single question.

I'm wondering how that database is helping Rove and the GOP? Plame's a distraction from the real sheet these guys are pulling.

You're demonstrating how true that quote from Rush about liberals and thinking is.

Quoting Rush shows what an unthinking boob you are on more than one level. Didn't you know that Rush himself argued he had a Constitutional Right to Privacy in his recent court case?

Even your fat, drug-addled master has abandoned you on this one.

Duh.

bartleby:
1) Monitoring call patterns is legal
2) There is no constitutional rigt to privacy
3) The government would be negligent if it didn't use all legal means at its disposal to catch terrorists.

If the arrangement with the big telecom companies was legal, why didn't NSA go to FISA with Qwest's lawyers and get them the assurances they needed that the activity was legal?

The more apalling thing is they allow private companies access to these databases for 'analysis'.

Sex toys tax deductible Down Under, if you use them in a professional capacity,

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12683929/

Like lobbyist.

Bartleby: That's just a sad attempt demonize conservatives. If you want to advance your cause, try an actual argument.

Not nearly like the sad attempt of conservatives to demonize liberals to advance their cause, instead of actual argument, by calling liberals traitors, terrorist lovers or aiders and abettors, or soft on national security.

Tell me what's wrong with the data mining program.

The communications companies likely violated the 1933 Communications Act in turning the info over. The government should not be encouraging, tricking, or extorting private entities to violate the law, even if the governmnet itself is not doing so. This undermines the integrity of the law.

The resources that are being used would be better used for activities more likely to identify terrorists and terrorist activities.

The Bush administration cannot be trusted to use this information solely for combatting terrorism.

The Bush administration cannot be trusted not to share this info with GOP groups and government officials engaged in partisan election activities.

The administration will be diverted to investigating numerous non-terrorist activities thus wasting precious national security resources in the same way that law enforcement officials are often diverted from finding missing children or other persons through false or mistaken tips when publically calling for information.

Because the administration cannot be trusted not to use this process as a wedge into more and more intrusive data collection - they want to slide down the slippery slope and they are greasing it up as we speak with this program.

Just a few objections.

How you can take what I wrote and conflate it with a call to nuke anyone is beyond comprehension.

How you can take what any liberal wrote and conflate it with supporting the terrorists is not beyond comprehension - it is what conservatives have been doing daily since 9/11.

For how long will we be complacent in this flusing of America? When generations look back to these years, the generations that follow will curse us.

That is, if they can even speak out at all.

Signed,
New York Inquirer

p.s. Shhh! They're listening!

visit www.nyinquirer.com

I'll try to keep this simple:

1) Monitoring call patterns is legal

No it's not. THPHTHPHTHH!

I'm sure you would take that as an example of what you accuse ckelly of doing, so I'll spell it out for you. I'll even use short words: I did not present an argument for my belief about what the NSA is accused of. But nor did you. Asserting that this is legal does not make it true, and you give no logical argument and cite no law or court case. Why should we take your unsupported assertion any more seriously than ""THPHTHPHTHH?"

That being said, I do have reasons for my belief more than just reflexive support of or opposition to Bush. I'm not a legal scholar and I have neither the time or the inclination to fake it, but I assume Qwest's lawyers are. And apparently they thought they could get away with it. And apparently, the NSA agreed with them, if they let this slide.

So if the NSA didn't bother pursuing legal action to support their program, then why do you think their program was legal?

2) There is no constitutional rigt [sic] to privacy

In the language of the time, I think I've read that the word "privacy" applied only to toilet functions. So if the framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure a right to privacy, they would not use that word. Instead, they would write something saying that due process is needed for any legal action, and set a high bar for government intrusion on or even just interference with private property, and any rights not explicitly given to a government body are reserved for the people.

Oh, wait. That's what they did. How about that.

3) The government would be negligent if it didn't use all legal means at its disposal to catch terrorists.

Wow. I haven't seen such a perfect example of mindlessly parroting an excuse for a McCarthyist mentality in... hours, at least. I mean, are you quoting Orwell here? First there's the (again, unsupported) assumption of its legality. And then there's the assumption that the program is being used to catch terrorists. Now, that is completely unsupported beyond all sane debate. The issue underlying any complaint about the NSA is lack of warrants. Warrants, and the process to get them, are oversight. So how do you know the program is being used mainly to "catch terrorists"? (You make it sound like a game. "Look mommy, I got a terrorist!") You don't know. Barring personal involvement, you can't possibly know. You're just taking what the government says on faith.

This whole thread is an example of how liberals are fundamentally unserious on national security.

"Never try to teach a liberal to think, It wastes your time and annoys the liberal!"

Posted by: Bartleby on May 11, 2006 at 11:32 AM

You're quoting Rush Limbaugh on deep thought and honest debate. Riiight.

During the Hayden hearings the Congress should call someone from Qwest to testify about how they told the NSA and Wh to go screw themselves.

"The White House and Congressional Republicans [have] decided to make it easier to steal the money intended to rebuild Iraq.

Repeat it often and with fervor.

bartleby, we are dying to know why the NSA did not pursue legal avenues to get Qwest to sell them vital information to use in their perfectly legal spy program. Please tell us.

bartleby: "I prefer not to."

So, you all believe that they are only doing traffic analysis? Why do you believe that?

This sudden blind faith in government by conservatives is really touching. Don't worry, they're only going to be looking at your phone records for good purposes, nothing to to worry about. Sleep tight.

It's not about wiretapping, or even data mining precisely. It's about collecting biometric identifiers for US citizens and others.

We know that voice recognition software is being used wthin the NSA/AT&T link. We can surmise that the goal is to collect voice patterns, very small fragments will suffice. That voice data can then be stored for all callers, linked to the callers' demographics (e.g., billing information). Thus, we all have a unique biometric identifier. No need for fingerprints anymore.

Getting the data is easy since the service providers opened the doorto the NSA. Storing it and parsing it could only be done with the vast arrays of NSA computing power. No, this is not your father's basic Oracle application or even VLDB. The NSA has all of the time and MIPS to go way beyond listening to conversations. That's old and well established technology.

This database being discussed becomes the index to TIPS, Total Information Awareness. All we'll have to do is say, "Hello" on the phone and all of our voice, IP, and Demographic data flashes up together with a positive ID. Add that to network analysis and TIPS is in production today.

All of the issues need to be dealt with up front with the Senate and the legal infrastructure should be established.

SHOULD I drop Verizon as my cell phone provider?

So, you all believe that they are only doing traffic analysis? Why do you believe that?

Who's "you all"? Two or three pathetic backwashers?

Matt,

"I am most concerned about the Islamic belt bombers finding me than the NSA, considering the insulting remarks I have made about Muhammed and his affair with his camel."

Smart bomb Islamic belt bombers are hardly your problem as they tend to avoid asses like you.

Feds open an investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) ...

Remember when tbrosz and rdw said beware lest the corruption investigations touch as many Dems as GOPers?

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

You wish.

Feds open an investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) ...

Let's see if Tom Coburn's count turns out to be correct!

I would be the first one to accompany the liberals to go to the White House with pitch forks in my hand if they can convince me that the spittles oozing from their frothing mouths are in anyway related to any illegal activities by the administration, or for that matter, to any tactics that do not contribute to our total and complete victory in the war on terror.

"Bartleby" wrote: There is no constitutional rigt (sic) to privacy

U.S. Constitution: Tenth Amendment

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

'Nuff said.

"Bartleby" wrote: There is no constitutional [right] to privacy . . .

Griswold and Roe say you're wrong (or a liar).

There is, however, no constitutional authority, at least by your method of analysis (which amounts to 'if it is not expressly in the Constitution it doesn't exist'), for the government to intercept electronic communications or to collect data on telephone usage.

A Constitutional right to privacy is provided in the Fourth Amendment, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Everything a person does not themselves make public, as with the coat you wear walking down the street, is private unless described by a warrant.

There is a long history of practical law describing exceptions to this, but, basically, that's it.

The question here is, is your conversation on the phone the same as walking down the street? Or is it, in its' being intended narrowly for one, or a few, selected parties, a private thing?

Life and death are public matters. If I'm walking by and I see someone stab another through a window, it's not a private thing, but if I happen to see anything else, that's different.

Does this mean I am obligated as a matter of civic duty to go around looking in everyone's window to see if someone is being stabbed? Some Republicans seem to think they have that duty. Republicans like Dusty Foggo, who named his son after Brent Wilkes.

I've been up since 6:00 and I am still enraged by this.

Here's my pathetic "little guy" letter to my cell provider Verizon:

Dear Verizon,

Why have you been giving my phone records to the National Security Agency without a court order and without my permission? News articles have detailed how my local line provider QWEST refused to give the NSA access to my and other citizens’ information because of a lack of court order. But based on quotes by new CIA chief nominee Gen. Haydon, the NSA “cemented a deal” with cooperating phone companies to provide private phone records to the government without a court order. Your name is at the top of current news reports of those cooperating companies.

Why are you profiting by selling my private information to the government or anyone else in violation of the law?

Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered....

Why shouldn’t I switch providers to regain my privacy?

I look forward to your reply.

I look forward to your reply.

It will go like this: "Thank you for writing. Our policy is not to comment on matters of classified information, but rest assured that we care deeply about our customers' security and we are complying with the law--the Law of Bushworld, that is!"

The last part might go a little differently in the actual reply you receive.

"Where's the outrage"

Drum doesn't see a need or justification for outrage. This is merely data mining. All businesses do it. The government is just catching up to the real world and acting more like a business. We are the government's customers. Wouldn't you like to understand more about your customers?

Besides, Drum never takes a risk of being caught on the wrong side of an issue. It may turn out that USA Today is relying on forged memos.

Drum and I say: Show me the fonts!

I don't want to be unclear. You have to ask, why is an 'unreasonable search and seizure' wrong? If it weren't wrong, what kind of world would we live in? What could you expect to be happening?

A right to privacy isn't defined explicitly in the Constitution because they didn't want to address matters they wanted to leave as a matter of personal conscience, specifically religion, and because they wanted the Constitution only to directly address public matters, the citizen and his relation to the state.

In those days life wasn't various enough to allow much in the way of anything in private life beyond religion that might create dissension so by excluding religion from the foundation element of society they thought they had it covered.

Since I'm going to bet that 99.9% of the commenters to this post have never worked with NSA databases, have never had to review a request to collect information on phone call data in the course of a counterterrorism investigation, and have never had to actually sit down and determine where the boundary between a search and a non-search or between "reasonable" and "un-reasonable" lies, here's an education.

As you ought to have read in the USA Today article, the data being handed over to the NSA is "external" information; that is, the two numbers involved in a phone call and the date/time of the phone call. They do not turn over the actual content of what was said over the phone (because the phone companies don't record your phone conversations). Best analogy is the difference between the information on the outside of an envelope and the actual letter inside. There is a heightened protection for the content of your letter/phone conversation under the 4th Amendment (a constitutional provision) and is governed under Title III (criminal cases) or FISA (intelligence cases) (both statutes).

Pre-Patriot Act, there was a disconnect between Title III and FISA. If I were investigating phone calls made by members of the Mafia or the drug dealer in your hometown and wanted to collect the "externals" for their phone calls, there were no significant constitutional prohibitions or protections for the that information. The