Posted on 05/11/2006 1:08:24 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
A United States intelligence agency has been collecting data on the phone calls of tens of millions of Americans, a report in USA Today has alleged. The country's three biggest phone companies have been handing over call records to the National Security Agency (NSA) since 2001, the newspaper says.
President Bush refused to confirm or deny the existence of the programme. He said he had authorised intelligence gathering in the wake of 9/11, adding that the activities were "lawful". "Our intelligence activities strictly target al-Qaeda and their known affiliates," he said in a brief White House statement after the newspaper report appeared. "The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected," he said, adding: "We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans." The USA Today report does not claim the government listened in on phone calls. But it cites an unnamed source as saying the NSA has used data on telephone calls to build "the largest database ever assembled in the world". Senate response US senators reacted quickly to the allegation, saying they would order the phone companies to testify about it.
Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, reacted with anger to the report, brandishing the newspaper in committee meeting.
I think this is going to present a growing impediment to the confirmation [of Michael Hayden to head the CIA]
"We need to know what our government is doing to spy upon Americans," he said. But Republican senators suggested Mr Leahy was over-reacting. They pointed out that the story did not allege wiretapping, only the creation of a database in order to analyse calling patterns.
Experts disagree about whether the government has the authority to demand the data it is allegedly compiling. "I'm quite confident that if it's true it's illegal," Prof Michael Greenberger of the University of Maryland school of law told the BBC. The communications act of 1934 bars companies from releasing information about callers, he said. But the three phone companies in question - AT&T, Verizon, and Bell South, all told USA Today they had not broken any laws. Together the firms serve more than 200 million customers. A fourth company, Qwest, reportedly declined to participate in the programme. A civil liberties group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed suit against AT&T last month after a former AT&T employee indicated the company was engaging in the kind of data-mining the USA Today report described. Sensitive time
The Bush administration has asserted that the president has the authority to monitor communications in order to disrupt terrorist activity.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has testified before the Senate in defence of a programme of wiretapping without warrant ordered by the president. The USA Today report comes at a potentially sensitive moment for the administration. Gen Michael Hayden, the man who headed the NSA when the data-mining operation was allegedly launched, was nominated this week to head the CIA. He is due to face confirmation hearings from the Senate soon. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein warned the latest allegations would "present a growing impediment to the confirmation".
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the president was standing by his choice: "We're full steam ahead on the confirmation."
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A call record may simply be a record showing the two numbers making a connection....there may not be any conversation recorded....
Are these people flipping insane? This stuff has been going on for years and years. No federal agency cares to hear anyone's conversations about American Idol nor do they care to listen to us order pizza. The calls may be monitored for keywords and ultimately end up on a hard drive somewhere. Unless there's a specific reason to do so, it's unlikely the call is ever heard by a human being. This is just a tempest in a teapot. To focus on it so much is just plain silly.
"Spy agency"? More sensationalist silliness. "Intelligence service" will do just fine!
:)
Information gathered without probable cause and without a warrant can't be used in a criminal trial.
This is not a criminal proceeding, this is a war. We aren't going to serve court papers on them, we are going to hunt them down, sweep them away into one of those secret Moldovan jails, sweat them for information, and then drop kick them into the ocean. Unless they convince us of their sincere desire to tell us everything they ever knew, in which case they may get to live out their days in Guantanamo.
Lets use for our model the "last great war" fought by our "greatest generation". There was an active hunt for 5th columnists, and if you were one, the FBI paid you a visit and you went away.
Program begun by Billy Clinton referred to as Echelon that Congress totally approved.
I'm sure half the database is filled with my mothers phone calls.
See the thread at link at post #3....several Freepers are going ballistic there....
I guess 9/11 never happened to these people. This is precisely why it is critical that Republicans rally around the President and the Republican Party in general.
Well said! I'm glad we're doing it, but again sorry the media got wind of it. Blown all out of proportion, it will be. Drat.
Many people still want to live in a 9/10 world.
If on 9/10, we had know about a plot, and had detained a group of ME men because we believed they were going to fly planes into buildings, the press would have gone wild, as would have the Congress attention seekers who always want their face on TV. IMHO, that's why 9/11 could not have been prevented.
Now, attempts at intelligence gathering are blocked (not that the NSA, CIA or FBI would know what to do with the info once they got it), but we have the same type of hysteria that would have resulted had we arrested Mohammed Atta, the day before 9/11.
Took a look at it. I recall the thread from yesterday. Fact is that this particular topic has been discussed and rediscussed. It's a non-event. This sort of surveillance has been going on for years. People need to get over it. Many of the phone calls I make are to people familiar with the process. We enjoy triggering it off by saying things like "go TS" or "are you secure?". Never fails. I'm sure our boring conversations are sitting on a hard disk, maybe entertaining NSA employees on the night shift. Who cares?
I certainly hope not! Most Muslims have absolutely nothing to do with this conflict. I do believe that we should be able to hold ones who have been shown to have terrorist ties as long as necessary though - without all the PC whining.
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