The truly sad thing is, this isn't surprising. Not even a little.
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told 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. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.
[...] In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States." As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private. Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information....
And then there's this...
The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program. "We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program," OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey's office shared the letter with The Associated Press.
Jarrett wrote that beginning in January, his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday. "Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation," wrote Jarrett....
So we have a warrantless program that is effectively investigating ... well, everyone. (Including, one suspects, members of Congress -- I wonder if they've thought about that yet?) There is no Congressional oversight. The administration asserts that it can do what it wants, because it's the prerogative of the president to ignore any law that limits his power. Oh, and our alleged Department of Justice is threatening to quash lawsuits about the matter because they will expose government and military secrets.
You know, even if it sticks us with Cheney as president for two years, it's seriously beginning to look as if Congress should at least try to start impeachment proceedings. I can't imagine they would get anywhere -- the current Republican Congress would almost certainly table any attempts -- but at the very least, if proceedings on articles of impeachment could move forward to a certain point, it might actually get the administration to behave as though they believed in the Constitution, and answer Congress' questions. (Assuming Congress actually moves forward to asking them.)
As it stands, we have the NSA investigating everyone in the country, no oversight, no checks, and no investigation. Which is exactly what the administration likes.
On the other hand, the president is wreaking havoc with Republican chances in Congress this election season. The administration can't seem to keep their misbehavior out of the headlines long enough for people to forget that they are misbehaving. So perhaps, in 2007, we'll see a Congress with enough spine to at least attempt to force the administration to stop all this.
But I wouldn't bet on it.
(Interesting side note: people in the NSA must be some pissed off about this program, for this comprehensive a leak to becoming from within the NSA itself. Can't say as I blame them; doing meaningful analysis on a database this size must be next to impossible. At least 99% of it would be pure junk; I guess you'd have to do pattern matching analysis against known terrorists, but surely most deep cover terrorists wouldn't make all that many phone calls. And you wonder: why did Qwest refuse the government's request? And how did they get away with it? I'd assume that the government essentially blackmailed the other companies into going along with this request; the damage done by this information getting out could be fairly impressive. Lots of angry calls, some lost customers ... so what made Qwest so special?)
Posted by iain at May 11, 2006 01:07 PM
