Senator Bond: "it's difficult for eavesdroppers to separate foreign and domestic calls"

[sabra]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-08-01-A_fisa_N.htm?csp=34

<snip>

Passed in 1978, FISA created a special court to review the government's requests to eavesdrop on the electronic communications of people in the USA who are suspected of working for a foreign power.

U.S. law does not require a FISA court order to eavesdrop on purely foreign conversations. But because many foreign calls are routed through U.S. service providers, intelligence agencies have been required to seek time-consuming and sometimes problematic orders before they listen in.

"Each FISA application takes many hours (so) there's a tremendous backlog," says Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "We are burdened."

Also, Bond says, it's difficult for eavesdroppers to separate foreign and domestic calls because of the fiber-optic technology on which call data is routed through the USA. This rules out a Democratic proposal that would exempt foreign calls from the court order requirement but keep FISA oversight where one party is in the USA, he says.

"You cannot know who (the suspected terrorist) is calling until he picks up," Bond says.

:crazy:

[babylonsister]

1. Tough; improve the technology, or don't eavesdrop. nt

[dkofos]

2. Bullshit If they weren't trying to collect ALL communications, it

would be possible to distinguish from foreign and domestic.

[krispos42]

3. That's why there is a 72-hour grace period, ya dimwits

So if they hear something incriminating and realize after the fact that one end of the call was in the US, they can get a retroactive warrant.

<sigh> The bullshit runs deep.

[shance]

4. People need to realize its not just phone call eavesdropping, its invasions of personal property

it is collecting data on our health, financial worth, everything.

[Joe Fields]

5. I am ashamed to say he is from Missouri.

I have had to endure that rumpot gasbag for far too long. What a clueless enabler to this administration.

[librechik]

6. well, just assume everyone is guilty and go from there

That's the Cheney Plan.

What could possibly go wrong? And it's not like that is unconstitutional and unAmerican or anything. Atleast, under the Shrub.

[Karmageddon]

7. No it's not. They can easily filter calls as specifically as they want.

The switches are all "intelligent". Every call that comes through has a whole crapload of information along with it telling where it came from, where it's going. That info is needed to 1) complete the connection and 2) bill the right amount to the right people (as voice and data traffic moves from one carrier's network to another, they charge each other for carrying the traffic).

If they are intercepting the phone traffic, they are doing it at or through a switch, therefore they can filter out for all sorts of criteria. It is NOT difficult.

(I work for a phone company and spent a couple years working on a project dealing with inter-company billing and fraud issues, monitoring phone traffic.)

Kit Bond isn't necessarily lying. He's just a raging idiot nestled comfortably in the back pocket of big business.