Read this Washington Post article in "favor" of this program:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/12/AR2006051201656.htmlOn Thursday, USA Today reported that three U.S. telecommunications companies have been voluntarily providing the National Security Agency with anonymized domestic telephone records -- that is, records stripped of individually identifiable data, such as names and place of residence. If true, the architect of this program deserves our thanks and probably a medal. That architect was presumably Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and President Bush's nominee to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The potential value of such anonymized domestic telephone records is best understood through a hypothetical example. Suppose a telephone associated with Mohamed Atta had called a domestic telephone number A. And then suppose that A had called domestic telephone number B. And then suppose that B had called C. And then suppose that domestic telephone number C had called a telephone number associated with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The most effective way to recognize such patterns is the computerized analysis of billions of phone records. The large-scale analysis of anonymized data can pinpoint individuals -- at home or abroad -- who warrant more intrusive investigative or intelligence techniques, subject to all safeguards normally associated with those techniques.
I understand the NSA database is simply phone numbers connecting to other phone numbers, but it isn't anonymous because last time I checked phone books can be used to find people's names and addresses. What am I missing that makes this anonymous?
While some in the government have said it is legal, and this puke of writer says it is also legal, it is going to be on extremely shaky ground. 18 U.S.C. 2709, is so far the only law I have seen wherein some agency might have special privileges to get these records, and would only have to have the certification of the head or deputy of its agency. "Unfortunately," for the NSA, the agency explicitly mentioned in the law is FBI. An agency the NSA used to rely upon to do its domestic spying in the past.
Maybe the NSA will argue that somehow, even though the law mentions explicitly the FBI alone, they were acting in the same capacity. Of course even that doesn't make sense. The NSA would still be required to have its director or deputy director certify the program. Qwest, which would have no reason whatsoever to lie and in fact would stand to make money from this, refused access to its records because no authorization or warrant were ever presented to it by the NSA.
And say somehow they manage to get past all that, this work is not counterintelligence. It is not because every American's phone records, if they subscribe to sell-out companies, were given to the NSA. Unless every one of those people, nearly 200 million, are an Al-Qaeda member, a member of an affiliated terrorist organization, or an agent of a foreign power, this is not counterintelligence work.
The main problem, is that this was unnecessary from everything I have seen. I am highly doubtful that someone can be identified as a terrorist simply from the number of phone calls, their duration, and to whom those calls are made. Why didn't they just request the phone records of suspected terrorists? Why? Wouldn't that be much cheaper and wouldn't that also be much easier to work with? Increasing the number of dots almost certainly makes it more difficult to connect the right ones.
The fact that the agency is looking for new ways to connect the dots, is in my opinion based upon a fallacy. President Bush had a very significant prior warning to 9/11, the August 6th PDB specifically stated terrorists were planning to hijack airplanes. To most Presidents that would be a good reason to put airports and airlines on alert for suspicious activity, but for our current President it wasn't enough for some reason, and he didn't act on this intelligence. In addition to that, we knew Al-Qaeda was planning something at lower levels in the FBI, and that was from the use of traditional intelligence collection methods. The only thing that should have been changed in the FBI, was the flow chart of organization not the intelligence collection method or a shift of duties to the NSA.
This database, in principle, is a fundamental change in our system of justice. For nearly 230 years, our nation has always believed in placing the burden of proof with accuser not the accused. However, that is not the most disturbing part, every one in America is under some level of official suspicion. That is the most significant change in our system of jurisprudence ever, and I wonder if any system so conceived can ever ensure the guilt or innocence of Americans. It seems the officials running our nation could stand to learn from words originally by Edward R. Murrow, "We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men -- not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular." I couldn't have said it any better myself.
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