US eavesdropping program listening to 'thousands': report

[ProSense]

US eavesdropping program listening to 'thousands': report

1 hour, 37 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US eavesdropping program approved by President George W. Bush has reportedly monitored the overseas phone calls of thousands of Americans, most of whom were ruled out as potential terrorist suspects.

The controversial eavesdropping program by the National Security Agency has sparked a political firestorm in the United States, particularly since it taps into Americans' communications without the use of court warrants.

President Bush claims he has the power under the US Constitution to authorize the program, but some opposition Democrats have criticized the eavesdropping and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is due to testify about the program before Congress Monday.

Two "knowledgeable sources" told The Washington Post that the NSA has eavesdropped, or monitored the communications, of thousands of Americans in the past four years. One source told the newspaper the dragnet had included about 5,000 people.

more...


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060205/pl_afp/usattacksintelligence_060205171252

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Another waste of taxpayer money

I can't help but think that these net sweeps of phone calls are wasting a lot of time and really coming up with nothing. Come on, does Bush think the terrorists are as stupid as he is? Don't you figure they have certain innocuous code words that they use when calling each other? Certainly they don't talk about 'jihad' or 'al Qaeda' on the phone!

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. a "dragnet" - well there you go

that's obviously why they didn't go to FISA, because if they had they would have been denied.

[Joanne98]

3. Bull shit. They've been spying on political enemies........

[ProSense]

5. Ssssh! That's for next year's article. n/t

[Kagemusha]

4. If this is who Bush meant by thousands of Al-Qaeda suspects,

well first of all, that's just sad.

I think I'll leave it at that frankly.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

6. link to WP story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401373.html

"The program has touched many more Americans than that. Surveillance takes place in several stages, officials said, the earliest by machine. Computer-controlled systems collect and sift basic information about hundreds of thousands of faxes, e-mails and telephone calls into and out of the United States before selecting the ones for scrutiny by human eyes and ears.

Successive stages of filtering grow more intrusive as artificial intelligence systems rank voice and data traffic in order of likeliest interest to human analysts. But intelligence officers, who test the computer judgments by listening initially to brief fragments of conversation, "wash out" most of the leads within days or weeks.

The scale of warrantless surveillance, and the high proportion of bystanders swept in, sheds new light on Bush's circumvention of the courts. National security lawyers, in and out of government, said the washout rate raised fresh doubts about the program's lawfulness under the Fourth Amendment, because a search cannot be judged "reasonable" if it is based on evidence that experience shows to be unreliable. Other officials said the disclosures might shift the terms of public debate, altering perceptions about the balance between privacy lost and security gained."

[louis-t]

7. Yeah, but, Cheney sez it saved "thousands of lives"!!

And shit-fer-brains presi-dunce sez it's all done with court orders, and it's "limited". * is so busted.

[Quakerfriend]

8. Firstly, ~ 5,000 is just rubbish when it's known that AT&T

and Verizon, for ex, gave the gov't permission to use their switches to gain access.

Secondly, the real heart of the matter is oversight. The gov't must have a committee that oversees just who is being monitored. WE NEED TO KNOW on some level.

I am a mid-aged biochemist, turned stay at home Mom, who just happens to be Quaker and also a DUer, and the DoD has routinely accessed my PC. This is facism plain and simple!

[caligirl]

9. I'll bet lots of people in my town were spied on, huge Afghan population

[SOS]

10. Points on domestic spying

1. Al Qaeda stopped using electronic communication in 1998.
2. If AQ used electronic communication, it would be in Arabic.
3. The communication would be in code. Do we have even have code breakers fluent in Arabic?
4. Before 9/11, two hijackers in San Diego:
a) were on the FBI most-wanted terrorist list.
b) they were listed under their real names in the San Diego phone book
c) they rented their apartment from an FBI informant who was specialized in terrorism.

They couldn't find these most-wanted guys listed in the San Diego phone book and renting their apartment from an FBI informer, but now suddenly they can crack codes, in Arabic, from a group that doesn't use phones?