Why is this news? I mean, anyone who's read Tom Clancy knows the NSA has been doing this for years. And besides, the program under Bush is far less intrusive than the one Clinton ran. According to USA Today, the NSA is merely looking at phone numbers to detect patterns, while Bill Clinton allowed the screening of calls for content and substance. John Hinderacker reacts in "NSA Accused of Protecting U.S. From Terrorists." Excerpt:
One, as A.J. Strata points out, the USA Today article identified Qwest as the one major carrier that declined the NSA's request for cooperation. Presumably Qwest has now become the terrorists' telecom company of choice. Way to go, USA Today!
Two, it's obvious that what the NSA does with this vast amount of data is to run it through computers, looking for suspicious patterns, especially involving known or suspected terrorist phone numbers. I did a quick calculation: assuming that there are 200 million adult Americans, each of whom places or receives ten phone calls a day (a conservative estimate, I think), it would require a small army of 35,000 full-time NSA employees to pay a total of one second of attention to each call. In other words, lighten up: the NSA obviously isn't tracking your phone calls with your friends and relatives.
Three, it's interesting to juxtapose the NSA stories--this one plus the Agency's international terrorist surveillance program--with this account of a report earlier today by Britain's Intelligence and Security Committee on the subway bombings in London last July:
The suicide bombers who killed 52 passengers on London's transit system had a string of contacts with someone in Pakistan just before striking, Britain's top law enforcement official said Thursday.
However, authorities admitted they didn't know what was discussed in those contacts and stuck with their contention that the blasts were a home-grown plot and that the degree of involvement by al-Qaida, if any, was unknown.
Thursday's report by the Intelligence and Security Committee concluded that intelligence agents had been alerted to two of the suicide bombers before the attacks but limited resources prevented them from uncovering the plot.
Reid, speaking of the contacts in Pakistan ahead of the attacks, said authorities did not know what was discussed. *** "There are a series of suspicious contacts from an unknown individual or individuals in Pakistan in the immediate run-up to the bombings," Reid said after his department released its narrative of the attacks. "We do not know their content."
Sounds like they should have listened in on those calls. These are exactly the kind of communications that are intercepted by the NSA under the terrorist surveillance program that has been widely denounced by Democrats.
Michelle Malkin has a roundup of reactions. And to think, this story came out after Bush nominated Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to director of the CIA. Orin Kerr, who earlier took a look at Michael Hayden's view of the Fourth Amendment, discusses the legality of the NSA program.
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