Eavesdropping targets only al Qaeda - U.S. officials (Hayden)

[sabra]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N05365206.htm

Eavesdropping targets only al Qaeda - U.S. officials

WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The Bush administration defended a domestic spying program on Sunday, saying it was tightly targeted only at people suspected of having ties to al Qaeda, but a Republican senator who is to lead hearings on it said he believes the White House acted outside the law.

On the eve of what are expected to be highly combative Senate hearings on the domestic eavesdropping, Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, deputy director of intelligence, said on television news programs the intercepts target only people whom intelligence analysts believe have links to al Qaeda.

"This is focused on al Qaeda. The only justification we have to undertake this program is to detect and prevent attacks against the United States," Hayden, the architect of the eavesdropping, said on "Fox News Sunday."

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will sound the same theme on Monday of limited, selected monitoring of American citizens' communications when he testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

[bullimiami]

1. prove it.

[Peanutcat]

2. As has been said before . . . . .

. . . . . If they know already know who's working with al Qaeda, then why not arrest them already?

[bowens43]

3. It doesn't matter.

They still need a warrant.

[revree]

4. THEY WERE SPYING ON THE QUAKERS, FOR GOD'S SAKES...

What the hell do the Quakers have to do with terrorism?????? These people are DROWNING in lies...

[KansDem]

19. Well, the names "Quakers" and "Qaeda" both begin with "Q..."

What more of a connection do you need to spy on the Quakers? Or, I should say, what more of a connection does Bush need?

[keopeli]

5. If they know people are working with AQ, why not get a warrant?

And if they don't know who's working with AQ, then they're lying when they say they only go after people working with AQ.

Personally, I believe they're lying and they just don't like answering to people.

This violation goes deep deep deep. This is not even a crawl towards fascism - it's a giant leap. Once our privacy is unprotected by the justice system, the last vestiges of our democracy that started dying in 2000 will have vanished.

[rodeodance]

10. executive powers have increased over the last decades--this is just a

visible upsurp by the this WH.

[PSPS]

6. Hogwash

> the intercepts target only people whom intelligence analysts believe
> have links to al Qaeda.

That's nonsense. If that were true, they would have had no trouble at all getting the FISA rubber-stamp of approval retroactively as provided by the FISA law.

No, the reason they're breaking the FISA law is because they know that what they're really doing (domestic political spying) would never be approved.

[rodeodance]

7. bunch of goofballs--they obviously did not read the WP today (p. A1)

[rodeodance]

8. above the fold also!

[rodeodance]

9. NSA's Hunt for Terrorists Scrutinizes Thousands of Americans, but Most Ar

the Post has been doing good work.


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

Surveillance Net Yields Few Suspects

NSA's Hunt for Terrorists Scrutinizes Thousands of Americans, but Most Are Later Cleared

By Barton Gellman, Dafna Linzer and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 5, 2006; A01

Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.

Bush has recently described the warrantless operation as "terrorist surveillance" and summed it up by declaring that "if you're talking to a member of al Qaeda, we want to know why." But officials conversant with the program said a far more common question for eavesdroppers is whether, not why, a terrorist plotter is on either end of the call. The answer, they said, is usually no.

Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well. That step still requires a warrant from a federal judge, for which the government must supply evidence of probable cause.

The Bush administration refuses to say -- in public or in closed session of Congress -- how many Americans in the past four years have had their conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority. Two knowledgeable sources placed that number in the thousands; one of them, more specific, said about 5,000.

[Theduckno2]

11. Suspected of having ties or links to al Qaeda?

Anybody want to guess what the criteria are for deciding what constitutes ties or links to al Qaeda? The more I hear about this, the more it sounds like a warrantless high-tech fishing expedition.

This just may be where Bushco and the Republican Congress go their separate ways.

[Daphne08]

12. This is the General who doesn't know the 4th Amendment. n/t

[Garbo 2004]

13. Exactly. He boasted of his knowledge of the Constitution because it was

his job to know it, assured the media that "probable cause" was not in the 4th Amendment and of course was completely wrong. So he's purporting to be a credible source for any kind of info for what the NSA is and isn't doing? Phooey.

[EFerrari]

15. He's our Number 2 under Negroponte. There's a joke there

somewhere but I can't find it.

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. Fine, then get a warrent

n/t

[HereSince1628]

16. Just like panning for gold is targeted at the yellow stuff not streambed

The on the ground reality is in both operations they scrape up everything and then sort through it.

This sort of mumbo-jumbo word game is all just parsing bullshit that enables the arguments of both sides to slide pass each other without colliding.

Bush needed to get warrants from FISC or a new (yet still constitutional) law from Congress. He didn't. He chose to ignore the law and violate restrictions on his authority. The result is the spying effort was illegal, no matter how focused or not, no matter how productive or not.

[TechBear_Seattle]

17. So... the peace groups and the gay groups and the Quakers....

... all have "suspected" ties with al-Qaida? Interesting. I would love to see the substantiating evidence.




But of course, that would jeopardize our war against terror, wouldn't it? And just asking has probably marked me as a suspect.

[superconnected]

18. Now remember, everyone against the war is helping Al quada

hence spying on vegetarian and animal rights groups....terra-risks.

[MissMillie]

20. Fine... spy on them. But GET A WARRANT!!!!

No one has reasonably defended circumventing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

NO ONE!

If you're not doing anything wrong--GET A WARRANT!!


On edit:

"Even a very short delay may make the difference between success and failure in preventing the next attack," his testimony said.

This cracks me up. Given that there is a 72-hour post-wiretap deadline.... how do you figure there would be any delays? You put the wiretap in place, then you go get a warrant. The judges for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court are supposed to be available w/i 20 minutes. The way I see it, that still give you 71 hours and 40 minutes to file for your warrant. No delays, at all. In fact, the FBI was praising Congress for giving them all they needed (with the Patriot Act) to comply with FISA in an expeditious manner. If the FBI was happy, what was the freaking problem????

[LynnTheDem]

21. The sec of Homeland Security testified otherwise; THOUSANDS of

INNOCENT AMERICANS caught up in bush's data-mining.

So gee, SOMEONE is LYING.