Gonzales said data on innocent Americans was retained.

[FormerRepublican]

Why?

If the NSA taps a call where the conversation was deemed innocent and not related to terrorism, WHY does the government need to retain the information? And what does that say about our privacy rights?

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. They'll check Peta, Quakers and environmentalist, but they

won't keep the paperwork on gun checks.

Makes no sense.

[Canuckistanian]

2. Maybe the next Democratic President can use the data

AHA, never thought of that, didja, Freepers?

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Maybe they know there'll never be another Democratic president

@)$^@&%^%@(*& election riggers!

[Canuckistanian]

8. Even the Israelites made it out of bondage

Mind you , it took a few centuries.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. The Tyranny does not think that will happen.

Look where they are. They've crossed the line where they can allow regime change at home. There is no way that an outside is going to be allowed to look at the details of what they have done.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Gnozales is a lying piece of shit

who provided nothing but disinformation and bullshit. That said, the NSA is using a system called Echelon that they developed for wholesale monitoring. It sweeps everything (all electronic communications passing through various switches) into a massive database where it is tagged by keywords/time/source/destination and who knows what else. They retain it because they use it, all of it for post collection analysis of anything they happen to want to figure out about who said what to whom when.

[MSgt213]

6. How does that idiot know it was retain? He does seem to know enough

about the program to make that statement. I got the feeling he was defending this program without knowing shit about it. Don't be too suprise if it comes out he doesn't know the full extent of the program.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. Why??? Read this, in fact, click on the link and read the entire

page... then get as mad as you feel is appropriate.



http://blogs.citypages.com/ecassel/
Two years ago, Ashcroft rescinded a 1995 guideline directing that information obtained through a national security letter about a U.S. citizen or resident "shall be destroyed by the FBI and not further disseminated" if it proves "not relevant to the purposes for which it was collected." Ashcroft's new order was that "the FBI shall retain" all records it collects and "may disseminate" them freely among federal agencies.

The same order directed the FBI to develop "data mining" technology to probe for hidden links among the people in its growing cache of electronic files. According to an FBI status report, the bureau's office of intelligence began operating in January 2004 a new Investigative Data Warehouse, based on the same Oracle technology used by the CIA. The CIA is generally forbidden to keep such files on Americans.

Data mining intensifies the impact of national security letters, because anyone's personal files can be scrutinized again and again without a fresh need to establish relevance.

"The composite picture of a person which emerges from transactional information is more telling than the direct content of your speech," said Woods, the former FBI lawyer. "That's certainly not been lost on the intelligence community and the FBI."