Thursday, May 11, 2006
The NSA, Once Again, Rears its Ugly Head
So the headline today in USA Today is that the NSA’s activities over the past few years have also included acquiring phone call records from all but one of the major service providers in the United States, including AT&T, Verizon, and Bellsouth. These phone lists were then fed into a data mining project to try and determine patterns of activity among suspicious persons in the United States.
In the words of USA Today, “The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans—most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime.”
Coupled with what we now know about the NSA’s ongoing program to read the international communications of Americans on American soil without previously obtaining a warrant, the NSA’s operations amount to a massive data mining project directed against the communications of Americans.
It is ironic that a similar program, Total Information Awareness (TIA), headed by John Poindexter (the felon from the Reagan Administration involved in the Iran-Contra Affair), was shut down by congress in 2004 when even the rubber stampers in the capital balked at such a comprehensive and intrusive program to monitor Americans.
I would like to commend USA Today for keeping the lawless eavesdropping of the NSA in the headlines, and also for informing the public that there is seemingly no limit to the illegal and massive instrusiveness of the NSA’s spying programs directed against Americans.
USA Today points out that “the NSA’s domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged.” The phone numbers the NSA collects can be cross-checked with other databases to discover names, street addresses, and other personal information.
Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, asserted to USA Today that “all appropriate members of congress have been briefed in the intelligence efforts of the United States,” a direct contradiction of the accounts of democrats on the hill, and a direct contradiction of the findings of the non-partisan research arm of congress, which found that the Bush administration had not adequately briefed members of congress on the nature and extent of the NSA’s efforts.
This is a return to the “bad old days,” as Jim Bamford has said. In 1975 a congressional investigation discovered that the NSA had been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of Americans under “Operation Shamrock” for over 20 years. The FISA was enacted in 1978 in a direct response to that to protect Americans from unwarranted (literally) surveillance of their international communications. This is the law that the president has flatly refused to obey.
This new facet of the NSA’s program adds a new dimension of intrusiveness—and illegality. As USA Today writes, “under section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers’ calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered.” When Qwest, the one phone company who refused to go along with the program, asked the NSA to get a warrant from the FISA court first, the NSA refused, because it said it didn’t think it would be able to get one.
This is blatant illegality of the first water. The republican congress refuses to even investigate these programs, much less impeach the president for admittedly breaking the law. The Justice Department has just shut down a review of the NSA wiretapping program because the administration denied them security clearance.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration, while egregiously invading the privacy of others, stonewalls the investigation into his meetings with Jack Abramoff. The Bush administration finally released its records of meetings with Jack Abramoff…the problem is, the records are incomplete. The records don’t include several meetings with Abramoff that the administration has already publicly acknowledged.
This is disastrous. Bush’s poll numbers are going to drop to incredible levels over this. Arlen Specter has said he will now launch an investigation of the domestic NSA program. Senator Patrick Leahy, the ranking democrat on the panel, was furious. ''Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al Qaeda?'' Leahy asked. ''These are tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of anything ... Where does it stop?'' At one point he held up a copy of USA Today and added: ''Shame on us for being so far behind and being so willing to rubber stamp anything this administration does. We ought to fold our tents.'' He, just today, told Ed Schultz on the Ed Schultz radio program that he didn’t think he had been this angry in 30 years of serving in Washington.
Many critics of the Bush administration said this would happen. They said that when you condone an illegal program you not only condone breaking the law but you also open the door to further lawbreaking, by the same or future presidents. But few listened. They said that when you elect a dry-drunk son of privilege to the White House you are courting disaster. Few listened. They said that when you cut taxes in the face of massive government spending you will explode the deficit. Few listened.
Leahy was right. Shame on us.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 3:39 PM 
