The conservative goons are all over the TV trying to discredit

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Wiretaps said to sift all overseas contacts

Vast US effort seen on eavesdropping

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff  |  December 23, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency, in carrying out President Bush's order to intercept the international phone calls and e-mails of Americans suspected of links to Al Qaeda, has probably been using computers to monitor all other Americans' international communications as well, according to specialists familiar with the workings of the NSA.

The Bush administration and the NSA have declined to provide details about the program the president authorized in 2001, but specialists said the agency serves as a vast data collection and sorting operation. It captures reams of data from satellites, fiberoptic lines, and Internet switching stations, and then uses a computer to check for names, numbers, and words that have been identified as suspicious.

''The whole idea of the NSA is intercepting huge streams of communications, taking in 2 million pieces of communications an hour, said James Bamford, the author of two books on the NSA, who was the first to reveal the inner workings of the secret agency.

''They have a capacity to listen to every overseas phone call, said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which has obtained documents about the NSA using Freedom of Information Act requests.

The NSA's system of monitoring e-mails and phone calls to check for search terms has been used for decades overseas, where the Constitution's prohibition on unreasonable searches does not apply, declassified records have shown.

But since Bush's order in 2001, Bamford and other specialists said, the same process has probably been used to sort through international messages to and from the United States, though humans have never seen the vast majority of the data.

''The collection of this data by automated means creates new privacy risks, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group that has studied computer-filtered surveillance technology through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

Among the risks, he said, is that the spy agency's computers will collect personal information that has no bearing on national security, and that intelligence agents programming those computers will be tempted to abuse their power to eavesdrop for personal or political gain.

But even when no personal information intercepted by the NSA's computers make it to human eyes and ears, Rotenberg said, the mere fact that spy computers are monitoring the calls and e-mails may also violate the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether automated surveillance of phone calls and e-mails, without a warrant, is constitutional.

The closest comparisons, legal specialists said, are cases challenging the use of dogs and infrared detectors to look for drugs without a warrant. The Supreme Court approved the use of drug-sniffing dogs to examine luggage in an airport, but said police could not use infrared scanners to check houses for heat patterns that could signal an illegal drug operation.

''This is very much a developing field, and a lot of the law is not clear, said Harvard Law School professor Bill Stuntz.

President Bush and his aides have refused to answer questions about the domestic spying program, other than to insist that it was legal. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week said the program only targeted messages ''where we have a reasonable basis to conclude that one of the parties is affiliated with Al Qaeda.

And some legal scholars have maintained that a computer cannot violate other Americans' Fourth Amendment rights simply by sorting through their messages, as long as no human being ever looks at them.

Alane Kochems, a lawyer and a national security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said, ''I don't think your privacy is violated when you have a computer doing it as opposed to a human. It isn't a sentient being. It's a machine running a program.

But Yale Law School professor Jack Balkin said that Fourth Amendment privacy rights can still be violated without human contact if the NSA stores copies of everyone's messages, raising the possibility that a human could access them later. The administration has not revealed how long the NSA stores messages, and the agency has refused to comment on the program.

Balkin added that as technology becomes ever more sophisticated, any legal distinction between human agents and their tools is losing meaning. Under the theory that only human beings can invade people's privacy, he said, the police ''could simply use robots to do their dirty work.

In 1978, following revelations that President Nixon had used the NSA to spy on his domestic enemies, Congress enacted a law making it illegal to wiretap a US citizen without permission from a secret national security court. The court requires the government to show evidence that the target is a suspected spy or terrorist.

Under the 1978 law, NSA officials have had to obtain a warrant from the secret court before putting an American's information into their computers' search terms.

The restrictions largely limited NSA to collecting messages from overseas communications networks, but some Americans' messages were intercepted before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Occasionally, the interception was deliberate. In April 2000, the NSA's then-director, General Michael Hayden, told Congress that since 1978 ''there have been no more than a very few instances of NSA seeking [court] authorization to target a US person in the United States.

More often, the interception was accidental. Because American international calls travel through foreign networks, some of which are monitored by the NSA, the agency's computers have sifted through some American international messages all along.

''Long before 9/11, the NSA gathered from the ether mountains of [overseas] phone calls and e-mail messages on a daily basis, said Columbia Law School professor Deborah Livingston. ''If you have such an extensive foreign operation, you'll gather a large amount of phone traffic and e-mails involving Americans. That's something we've lived with for a long time.

But Bush's order cleared the way for the NSA computers to sift through Americans' phone calls and e-mails.

According to a New York Times report last week, Bush authorized the NSA's human analysts to look at the international messages of up to 500 Americans at a time, with a changing list of targets.

Hayden, now the deputy director of national intelligence, told reporters this week that under Bush's order, a ''shift supervisor instead of a judge signs off on deciding whether or not to search for an American's messages.

The general conceded that without the burden of obtaining warrants, the NSA has used ''a quicker trigger and ''a subtly softer trigger when deciding to track someone.

Bamford said that Hayden's ''subtly softer trigger probably means that the NSA is monitoring a wider circle of contacts around suspects than what a judge would approve. 

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
 

At the time, officials told said that Plame's outing resulted in *severe* damage to her team and *significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.*  I guess personal kindergarten style paybacks are more important to Bush.  Just remember Bush's role in all this when he declares yet another war on Iran.

Bush Told Prosecutors He Directed Cheney to Discredit Joe Wilson

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

George W. Bush, 9/30/2003:

I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.

And again I repeat, you know, Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations. You've heard much of the allegations. And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information -- outside the administration. And we can clarify this thing very quickly if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out. And I would hope they would.

And then we'll get to the bottom of this and move on. But I want to tell you something -- leaks of classified information are a bad thing. And we've had them -- there's too much leaking in Washington. That's just the way it is. And we've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them and I want to know who the leakers are.

12/13/2005

Newspaper columnist Robert Novak is still not naming his source in the Valerie Plame affair, but he says he is pretty sure the name is no mystery to President Bush.

I'm confident the president knows who the source is, Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh on Tuesday. I'd be amazed if he doesn't.

So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.'

07/03/2006

Reports: Plame Was Monitoring Iran Nukes When Outed
By E&P Staff
Published: May 02, 2006 10:55 AM ET

NEW YORK What was Valerie Plame working on at the CIA when she was outed by administration officials and columnist Robert Novak? MSNBC's David Schuster on Monday said he had confirmed an earlier report that she was helping to keep track of Iran's nuclear activity--not a front and center issue for the White House.

Earlier this year, Larisa Alexandrovna of the Web site RawStory.com, reported that Plame, whose covert status was compromised in the leak, was monitoring weapons proliferation in Iran. At the time, officials told her that Plame's outing resulted in severe damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.

On last night's Hardball, MSNBC correspondent Shuster reported that intelligence sources told him thatr Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources asserted, he said, that when here Wilson's cover was blown, the administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well.

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002426164

than an "anything goes" liberal. Yeah, we make mistakes sometimes, and we're not perfect, but at least we have a goal we're striving for. And for every conservative you ridicule, I could name 5 liberals that did the same thing but the media doesn't make a big thing about it. Of course, if it's a conservative, it's broadcast 24/7 - like Sanford - but the Edwards affair was actually covered up by the mainstream media and got no attention until the National Enquirer forced it into the open. Selective outrage, anyone?

I try not to visit the bog of eternal stench. Funny though...sm

or else you'd have mastered the art of "twisting" and wouldn't have such high regard for the truth.

Lesson 1:  Visit the Conservative Board and study closely.

(Lesson 2 will follow as soon as you have successfully completed Lesson 1.)

You apparently have issues that are not going to be solved by endless bashing on a liberal board.

Although I may not like the rules on this board I am mature and courteous enough to at least try to follow them. 

icon, declares McCain temprament unfit for presidency.  You don't get any more conservative than George Will.  Meanwhile, Sara P has pictures taken with foreign leaders but absolutely no questions allowed.  Photo op.

"Smaller government and lower taxes" is one of those slogans that our side slings around but doesn't have any real meaning that allows us to defend it.

You can't just say such things without defining your terms.  How small should government be?  How low should taxes be?  Government - at every level - DOES have a critical role to play in the life of this nation.  We could never defend ourselves from foreign enemies, create a nationwide system of roads, or even coordinate interstate commerce among the states if not for federal government.  You'd be paying tariffs on everything produced in other states, for instance.

We need law enforcement agencies that operate at every level of government.  We need coordinated programs to help deal with problems like unemployment.  We need to know that our food and our drugs are safe. 

A better slogan would be "Only as much government as needed to do the relatively few things that government does well, and only the taxes needed to support it." 

where we are free to talk about the extreme hatefulness coming from this board.  However, when some people wish the president dead...well that's bordering on a THREAT to the president.  I actually be afraid to post things like that.  You might receive a friendly knock on the door from the FBI.

Again, There were trolls on the liberal board (no consistent moniker that's the first thing that gives trolls away) posting VERY NASTY replies anytime a conservative posted anything on THEIR OWN BOARD.  It takes a lot nerve to argue with the administrator of this board who can delete you and ban you for any reason. It is a private board BTW no public doman.   Many of you have been stalking on the conservative board for weeks.  You have been posting near threats on the president....what do you expect the administrator to do!?  Start talking about real subjects and quit having a hate fest over here and you might find the administrator a little more sympathetic to your plight....

Sincere apologies, wrong board. NM

[Post a Reply] [View Follow Ups]      [Politics] --> [Conservatives]

Posted By: Libby on 2005-09-03,
In Reply to: They will never stop. Look at the post below where Brunson hopes that somebody is *hounded* off - Libby

NM

with this and other posts:

*The liberals are a bunch of chickens running about with their heads cut off, THE SKY IS FALLING!* 

I realize your board is DEAD, but please go away. 

Current Issue		November 20, 2006 Issue Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative GOP Must Go Next week Americans will vote for candidates who have spent much of their campaigns addressing state and local issues. But no future historian will linger over the ideas put forth for improving schools or directing funds to highway projects. The meaning of this election will be interpreted in one of two ways: the American people endorsed the Bush presidency or they did what they could to repudiate it. Such an interpretation will be simplistic, even unfairly so. Nevertheless, the fact that will matter is the raw number of Republicans and Democrats elected to the House and Senate. It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen—in America and the world at large—as a decisive “No” vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on George W. Bush’s failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration’s endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why—thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer. As a consequence, he rushed America into a war against Iraq, a war we are now losing and cannot win, one that has done far more to strengthen Islamist terrorists than anything they could possibly have done for themselves. Bush’s decision to seize Iraq will almost surely leave behind a broken state divided into warring ethnic enclaves, with hundreds of thousands killed and maimed and thousands more thirsting for revenge against the country that crossed the ocean to attack them. The invasion failed at every level: if securing Israel was part of the administration’s calculation—as the record suggests it was for several of his top aides—the result is also clear: the strengthening of Iran’s hand in the Persian Gulf, with a reach up to Israel’s northern border, and the elimination of the most powerful Arab state that might stem Iranian regional hegemony. The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason than the feckless president can’t face the embarrassment of admitting defeat. The chain of events is not complete: Bush, having learned little from his mistakes, may yet seek to embroil America in new wars against Iran and Syria. Meanwhile, America’s image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for this country—which once symbolized hope and justice—to be humbled. The professionals in the Bush administration (and there are some) realize the damage his presidency has done to American prestige and diplomacy. But there is not much they can do. There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which will stain our country’s reputation for a long time. But the process of recovering our good name must begin somewhere, and the logical place is in the voting booth this Nov. 7. If we are fortunate, we can produce a result that is seen—in Washington, in Peoria, and in world capitals from Prague to Kuala Lumpur—as a repudiation of George W. Bush and the war of aggression he launched against Iraq. We have no illusions that a Democratic majority would be able to reverse Bush’s policies, even if they had a plan to. We are aware that on a host of issues the Democrats are further from TAC’s positions than the Republicans are. The House members who blocked the Bush amnesty initiative are overwhelmingly Republican. But immigration has not played out in an entirely partisan manner this electoral season: in many races the Democrat has been more conservative than the open-borders, Big Business Republican. A Democratic House and Senate is, in our view, a risk immigration reformers should be willing to take. We can’t conceive of a newly elected Democrat in a swing district who would immediately alienate his constituency by voting for amnesty. We simply don’t believe a Democratic majority would give the Republicans such an easy route to return to power. Indeed, we anticipate that Democratic office holders will follow the polls on immigration just as Republicans have, and all the popular momentum is towards greater border enforcement. On Nov. 7, the world will be watching as we go to the polls, seeking to ascertain whether the American people have the wisdom to try to correct a disastrous course. Posterity will note too if their collective decision is one that captured the attention of historians—that of a people voting, again and again, to endorse a leader taking a country in a catastrophic direction. The choice is in our hands.    November 20, 2006 Issue