H*ll, that's progress.
Of course, the article still darkly intimates that there may be many of these calls. Doesn't the AP read its own prior articles? What are there in the world, maybe 10,000 known Al Qaeda suspects? How many of them make calls into, or receive calls from, the United States? How does that possible number of maybe 30 a day compare to the total international phone traffic to/from the US on a daily basis? Maybe one in a million?
The article doesn't say anything about other Presidents using the same powers (varying with current technology, for sure). Under President Roosevelt in WW II, all letters to and from Germany and Japan were being opened and read before delivery. And there was no "suspected agent" criterion. It was all of them.
I spit on the AP for not doing their homework fully on this story. I spit twice on the New York Times, because they did even less, and violated espionage laws by even publishing their story.
Did I miss anything?
Congressman Billybob
Which reminds me of something. Last year I tried for months on end to do something about getting a pedophilia incubator site taken down. The problem I ran into was that the servers were located outside the U.S. The owner did this so he couldn't be touched by U.S. laws. And he can't be.
I am also reminded of how Soros keeps his money safe from U.S. taxation. And it's all legal.
In this new day and age, phone and electronic communications make it very easy for all the bad guys to wreak havoc and do things like blow up the WTC. The government needs to be able to exploit the same tools they use to protect us.
I was a bit surprised to see this Q&A pop-up myself. Of course, it comes out on a Saturday evening, but..
I wanted to make sure it got posted, and as you said , it is progress in that it does define basics behind the program and is not a complete fudgejob as has been most of the reporting to date re: the NSA "Domestic" "spying" "scandal" ..