Enlarging the White House
The NY Times is on a roll. Last Friday (a year late) it broke the story on NSA eavesdropping on telephone calls made or received in the US. Since then, it has published almost a story a day on the White House's spying on Americans. Today's story deals with the fact that contrary to assertions by the White House and the NSA, some of the eavesdropping was on calls that were totally domestic.
A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.
The officials say the National Security Agency's interception of a small number of communications between people within the United States was apparently accidental, and was caused by technical glitches at the National Security Agency in determining whether a communication was in fact "international."
Telecommunications experts say the issue points up troubling logistical questions about the program. At a time when communications networks are increasingly globalized, it is sometimes difficult even for the N.S.A. to determine whether someone is inside or outside the United States when making a cellphone call or sending an e-mail message. As a result, people that the security agency may think are outside the United States are actually on American soil.
...questions about the legal and operational oversight of the program last year prompted the administration to suspend aspects of it temporarily and put in place tighter restrictions on the procedures used to focus on suspects, said people with knowledge of the program. The judge who oversees the secret court that authorizes intelligence warrants - and which has been largely bypassed by the program - also raised concerns about aspects of the program. [Emphasis added]
It seems to me that one of two things is going on here. Either the NSA, which has bragged at how careful it is and how sophisticated it is, really doesn't have the tech savvy to ensure that only international communications are monitored; or the NSA is intentionally not being too careful about the calls having an international nexus. Whichever is going on, the results are distressingly the same. People on US soil are being spied upon by their own government without any Constitutional restraints.
Buried within the story is what I think an interesting analysis of what is really going on here:
Vice President Dick Cheney entered the debate over the legality of the program on Tuesday, casting the program as part of the administration's efforts to assert broader presidential powers. [Emphasis added]
And that is the most frightening of all.
A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.
The officials say the National Security Agency's interception of a small number of communications between people within the United States was apparently accidental, and was caused by technical glitches at the National Security Agency in determining whether a communication was in fact "international."
Telecommunications experts say the issue points up troubling logistical questions about the program. At a time when communications networks are increasingly globalized, it is sometimes difficult even for the N.S.A. to determine whether someone is inside or outside the United States when making a cellphone call or sending an e-mail message. As a result, people that the security agency may think are outside the United States are actually on American soil.
...questions about the legal and operational oversight of the program last year prompted the administration to suspend aspects of it temporarily and put in place tighter restrictions on the procedures used to focus on suspects, said people with knowledge of the program. The judge who oversees the secret court that authorizes intelligence warrants - and which has been largely bypassed by the program - also raised concerns about aspects of the program. [Emphasis added]
It seems to me that one of two things is going on here. Either the NSA, which has bragged at how careful it is and how sophisticated it is, really doesn't have the tech savvy to ensure that only international communications are monitored; or the NSA is intentionally not being too careful about the calls having an international nexus. Whichever is going on, the results are distressingly the same. People on US soil are being spied upon by their own government without any Constitutional restraints.
Buried within the story is what I think an interesting analysis of what is really going on here:
Vice President Dick Cheney entered the debate over the legality of the program on Tuesday, casting the program as part of the administration's efforts to assert broader presidential powers. [Emphasis added]
And that is the most frightening of all.
posted by Diane at 4:18 AM
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