Expect lots of screaming and claims of outrage over this one for the next few days -- hey, it's a better way to try and ignore the Iraq elections than to dredge up the Karl Rove Plaimegate thing again -- but unless those people can find some NSA domestic-to-domestic telephone intercepts, it's hard to see the left getting much milage out of this one from the American public (though I'm sure the international phone call aspect of this will be downplayed by many of the most outraged).

Excuse me, but 9/11 was the sea change and GW Bush just trimmed the sails. I shudder to think that a Democrat could possibly win in 2008.

"Don't know about you, but I don't call al Qaeda much"

Then they came to eavesdrop on phone calls and I didn't speak up because I had nothing to hide.

Then they came...

h-man, then they came for all this financial information about me. For example, they want to know how much money I make, how much I give to my church, how many children I have, how much money I make selling stuff on the Internet, how much money I spend and win when I go to a casino, etc... (really intrusive stuff which is all required by a 1040).

h:

What do you have to hide?

I guess the civil libertarians, Democrats, and news media who are going to be screaming about this for the next two years would rather have the Brooklyn Bridge blown up than have a terrorist phone call intercepted. Let's give 'em international phone cards while we're at it. I'm sure McCain will propose that pretty soon.

OJ, you always talk about Europeans wanting to die demographically. We seem to be seeking an even more active demise.

"What do you have to hide?"

Alot.

Funny, I have assumed for years that the NSA monitored all international phone calls and emails.

Posted by: jd watson at December 16, 2005 12:17 PM

As of noon Eastern time, msnbc.com has the most blatant "Bush is evil" picture+headline that I've ever seen. It's really quite impressive.

I'm confused--are we supposed to worry about the incompetence of our intelligence agencies today, or worry about their all-powerful ability to know all the minute details about my life?

If the major media were willing to meet with NSA, I'm sure they could get some hard data on how badly their subscriber base is collapsing.

b;

It's not the intelligence agencies that are worrisome, but their employees. Keep in mind that the CIA doesn't know anything, only people who work at the CIA know things. The problem is that those people leak at the drop of a hat, so to a non-trivial extent any data gathered by the government can easily become de facto public knowledge. OJ, as a leftist, believes in the moral rectitude and probiety of government workers, but those of us in the real world have a less sanguine view.

h-man: The "then they came" line is about Nazis. So, is the NSA the Nazis? Or the whole administation? Or just the President?

It is a false comparison.

As the memory of 9/11 and the public's reaction to it fades, more and more people forget that gathering information to prevent the next 9/11 is not an operation where everything is easy. Barring access to Jimmy Carter's psychic, information on potential domestic terrorists isn't simply sitting out there for all to see; you've got to go in and get it. That may mean working for years to implant people inside the organization, or using electronic monitoring efforts that can produce quicker results.

Since we've seen and heard that the CIA had virtually no on-the-ground penetration of al Qaida prior to Sept. 11, it's safe to assume they didn't have anyone there on Sept. 12 or Sept. 13 either. So the question the public will have to decide is knowing our lack of information from within the organization, was it worth Bush opting to allow the electronic monitoring efforts to try and intercept information traveling within the organization. I can't be positive what the reaction will be in December of 2005, but I'm pretty sure I know what the public would have said when Bush gave the order four years ago.

Good for the NSA.

I read somewhere last night wthat the Times has sat on this story for a year.

Which implies to me that (a) even they didn't think it was a big deal and (b) they were desperate to find some story, any story, so that they didn't have to acknowledge the elections in Iraq.

AOG: The people who work at credit agencies know everything about you--far more than any gov't employee. I have no faith in their ability to maintain my secrets either.

The only real question is whether we are at war or not. If we're not, then the Patriot Act is no longer necessary, and should not be extended, let alone made permanent. If we are, then worrying about the alleged civil rights infringements of the Patriot Act is nearly suicidal (I am 100% confident that no government employee knows one iota more about me than in 2000).

Are you opposed to national ID cards? They'll be mandatory within 24 hours of a catastrophic terror attack. Opposed to warrantless wiretaps & searches? They'll be universal within an hour of a catastrophic attack. Want to ensure civil liberties? Win the damn war. Do you think we have yet? I don't.

Jim in Chicago:

The word is, supposedly, that the Times sat on the story for a year while they negotiated with NSA over what they could actually publish. Which naturally makes one wonder what they haven't.

b:

Neither. You are supposed to worry about the competence - professional and ethical - of the government agencies that have access to all of that information.

Bob:

The "then they came" line is not supposed to immediately imply that the NSA, the President and/or whoever are Nazis. It is merely a poetic evocation of the concept of the slippery slope. It applies equally well to the torture issue.

Bob
I used the "They came.." line to merely imply a process of gradually bringing the frog to a boil. Surely that concept of slow accretion of power in the government is applicable to other than a NAZI institution.

h-man: I think the phrase "They came.." is just too associated with the Niemöller poem to use like you did. Google the quote and you see alot of left wing articles using it to exactly make the connection with Nazis and fighting terror.

Mark Levin is good on this topic.

Bottom line:

The Foreign Intelligence Security Act permits the government to monitor foreign communications, even if they are with U.S. citizens -- 50 USC 1801, et seq. A FISA warrant is only needed if the subject communications are wholly contained in the United States and involve a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.

The reason the President probably had to sign an executive order is that the Justice Department office that processes FISA requests, the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), can take over 6 months to get a standard FISA request approved.

Seems like another manufactured "scandal" courtesy of the NYT.

Bob

Inadvertent, I assure you. I'm usually the one called a NAZI, so I guess this balances it all out where I can think of myself as middle of the road. By the way it is POSSIBLE that a leftist might come up with a good expression, Right?

"quanity has its own quality"

drudge is reporting that this article was released to coincide with a book that is being published. so now you know why the ny times sat on it for a year.

And of course it wasn't so secret either. Senate intelligence people, including Dems, were informed of it.

. . . including Jay Rockefeller who probably notified Syria and others on that trip of his a year before this recent war, warning them that W. was going to attack Iraq.

Don't they shoot traitors any more?

Do I love you guys or what!

You might be interested in a report I did a few years ago
regarding the NSA spying on us domestically.

It includes a treatment of how they perform Internet email
monitoring, by way of my describing how I monitored the
emails of more than 7000 employees on Wall Street.

http://orwellian.org/Cryptography_Manifesto.txt

That's odd, I seem to have included a description of
how life begins from lifeless atoms.

Enjoy.

b;

Your analog fails for three reasons:

1. Private industry has far more incentive to be careful. Business can go bankrupt for such abuse. Federal employees, agencies and officials suffer little if anything for similar abuse.


2. I can easily control what information a credit card agency has about me, and frequently do. I can't do that about the federal government.


3. Relatedly, the information that the credit agencies have is already de facto public, as it involved some other effectively anonymous person. The information we are discussing here is of a far more private nature.

Moreover, I do not view the Patriot Act as any signficant help in fighting WWIV. Just because we are at war doesn't mean we should useless things just because they appear proactive. Jim in Chicago provides an excellent example of what I mean. What would be better for national security, issuing the executive order or fixing the agency to issue FISA warrants in a reasonable amount of time? The Patriot Act is a patch, a kludge on a broken system when the real service to national security would be something like abolishing or reforming the CIA. It's not so much that I feel the Patriot Act is any sort of major step towards a police state, but that it has so few benefits (if not being outright harmful due to its placebo nature) that I can't see spending any civil liberties on it.