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December 18, 2005
Losing all frame of reference
Framing can be hazardous to your health. Democrats are so hard wired to assume that Bush will abuse any power and break any law that my fellow Kossacks seem to be losing their collective grip on reality.
Unless I am missing something here, the NSA program involved watching all foreign communications originating from up to 500 people in the US and over 7,000 people worldwide, all of whom had links to Al Qaeda. Given that the list changes as names are shuffled, I'd think it's possible they could target up to 20,000 people in a year.
The FISA court currently handles fewer than 2,000 cases a year. It is an actual group of judges, who formally meet to decide each case, based on the merits of the request. They rarely reject, but sometimes limit, the warrants they are asked to issue. Much has been made of the fact that the FISA court has even met at 2 AM in an emergency, "if all the players could meet" but clearly that is the exception. It is by no means a 24 hour court with a liason at the NSA waiting to approve or deny their requests. Maybe that is what they need, given that lunch time in Tehran is the middle of the night here in the US. Regardless, I do not have a hard time imagining that the FISA court could cause some serious logistical problems.
It is not like the FISA court was left in the dark about the secret program. They were kept updated on it, and apparently did not object. It is not clear to me why they did not object if it is in fact illegal. If the FISA court is a rubber stamp, why are people so upset they did not individually rubber stamp each request? They can already approve spying on a US citizen's communications wholly inside the US, even for reasons other than terrorism or criminal activity. I just don't see spying on the overseas communications of people with some type of link to terrorism - to target Al Qaeda - as a big deal.
The NSA did not intercept communications here in the US. It sounds like they sniffed the packets off the high capacity fiber optic lines that carry voice and data traffic across the Atlantic and the Pacific, possibly including data sent overseas via a satellite. This is not technically speaking spying inside the US. Their taps into the data pipes are probably well off shore. In fact, the NSA was probably already setup for this, since they appear to have full legal authority to spy on voice and data traffic that originates overseas. Again, I just don't see the big scandal here.
What happens if Terrorist A in Pakistan calls Terrorist B in LA. Terrorist B says, "I'm gonna hang up and call you back so the NSA can not listen to us" and it works? Is the system really that screwed up?
Of course, given the abiding frame, this means I must be in on the plot to spy on Democrats and lock us up in secret prisons. Here are some examples of this lunacy, the top four recommended diaries at Kos.
Operation Flabbergasted: Let's Watergate Bush
Come and get me, you motherf*#kers, I'm not scared
Posted by Mike at December 18, 2005 01:28 PM
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