SAUNDERS: The opposite of intelligence

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 2/7/6 | Debra J. Saunders

[SmithL]

IF ANYONE can show me that the National Security Agency, under order from President Bush or top aides, eavesdropped on Hillary Clinton or Ted Kennedy or some prominent partisan critic, I'll change my tune and see what this administration is doing as a threat to civil liberties. Until then, I can only see the attacks on an NSA surveillance program -- on Monday the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales over the program that allowed officials to mine information from international phone calls and the Internet -- as ill-conceived, partisan and dangerous.

[SmithL]

Amen

[frankjr]

"The best way to define the most irritating senators on the Judiciary Committee: They voted for the Patriot Act before they voted against it."

[SR 50]

I say again, "The only one's complaining are the one's that have something to hide".

[Danae]

Sense out of San Francisco?

The sky is falling the sky is falling!

Oh sorry.... I just can't believe a story that not only makes sense, is true, AND came out of SFGate! I need to play the lottery today!

[snowman1]

I applaud her column but find it hard to believe that this could get published in the Socialist State of San Francisco

[syriacus]

Now, Washington is scolding the NSA for using state-of-the-art technology to try to connect more dots.

Skeeves-dropping

There's a pol with a miniscule mind
Who will tell us that we should be blind
And not ask smart hackers
To track our attackers.
I don't want advice from his kind.

[stuartcr]

Do you really expect that if someone had that evidence, that it would be available here, for you?

[angkor]

As the Washington Post reported Sunday, much of the NSA data-mining produced leads that led nowhere. They didn't provide probable cause for a warrant.

Very amusing.

First, no reporter, only a handful of Senators, and a team of NSA employees know what the program actually entails from a technical point of view (and the technical implementation drives it's "legality" to a great degree).

Secondly, suppose this is a massive "trap and trace" and "pen register" operation. That's quite different from "wiretaps" (which is the term the Rats insist on using although it may be flatly incorrect and is certainly different in a legal sense).

T&T and PR merely trace communication transactions, e.g., an email sent by X address to Y address; phone number X dialed by number Y; phone number X answers call from phone number Y.

So at this stage we're merely collecting communication patterns and transactions and *not* the content. We are building a map of which numbers (and emails) connect with other numbers (and emails), and with what frequency. We may know who only one of the parties is. But we are determining whether there are discernable patterns which might demans further attention and expose "probable cause", for which we can then request a FISA warrant to collect communication content.

"Wiretapping", quite differently, deals with the interception of communication content.The legal warrant standards for T&T/PR versus "wiretap" are quite different. T&T and PR requests *cannot* be judicially refused (unlike FISA warrants), and can be run for days without any kind of warrant whatsoever (e.g., enough time to establish potential "patterns" of communcation transactions).

I do strongly suspect that this is a massive T&T/PR operation fully along the lines with what NSA normally does in its alleged international keyword-search operations (Echelon), and with what it is legally able to do overseas in any case. Particularly if these T&T and PR devices are sited at communications hubs overseas, then there is no way at all that they are covered by FISA or even remotely approach the legal standards for "wiretapping". In fact these would be operating under the same standards that the NSA has employed during its 40-year existence.

Well, that's just my theory. However it is quite clear that the bloviating Judicial Committee hasn't a clue what's going on, so they're trying to paint a gloomy scenario which necessarily (because it's classified) can't be refuted.

[muawiyah]

Still, if it'd been used to monitor the subversive and anti-American activities of Hillary and Teddy, that'd been a real plus.

[inquest]

Still, if it'd been used to monitor the subversive and anti-American activities of Hillary and Teddy, that'd been a real plus.

Thank you for illustrating the slippery-slope danger coming from a program like this. Just wait till John McHeinous or someone of similar bent gets into the White House, and comes up with his list of whom he considers "subversives".