p2pnet - rss feed: Bush spy plan nets few results
p2p news / p2pnet: US intelligence officers who spied on Americans have dismissed nearly all of them as potential terrorist suspects, say accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.
So says the Washington Post in a long report on the Cheney / Bush scandal in which the administration admits it secretly listened to calls and read private emails.
"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’," says the story. "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."
Although Bush won’t say how many Americans have had their, "conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority," two "knowledgeable sources" put the number "in the thousands," one estimating about 5,000.
"The scale of warrantless surveillance, and the high proportion of bystanders swept in, sheds new light on Bush’s circumvention of the courts," says the Washington Post.
"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."
The Bush administration, "declined to address the washout rate or answer any other question for this article about the policies and operations of its warrantless eavesdropping," says the story, but in December, co-president Dick Cheney told CNN eavesdropping without warrants had, "saved thousands of lives."
Arguments, "point to a conflict between the program’s operational aims and the legal and political limits described by the president and his advisers," the Washington Post continues.
"For purposes of threat detection, officials said, the analysis of a telephone call is indifferent to whether an American is on the line. Since Sept. 11, 2001, a former CIA official said, ‘there is a lot of discussion’ among analysts ‘that we shouldn’t be dividing Americans and foreigners, but terrorists and non-terrorists.’ But under the Constitution, and in the Bush administration’s portrait of its warrantless eavesdropping, the distinction is fundamental."
The story says features of the surveillance program remain unknown, including what becomes of the non-threatening US e-mails and conversations that the NSA intercepts.
"Participants, according to a national security lawyer who represents one of them privately, are growing, ‘uncomfortable with the mountain of data they have now begun to accumulate’," and the Bush administration refuses to say if any are discarded.
Also See:
Washington Post - Surveillance Net Yields Few Suspects, February 5, 2006
February 6th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
I would not have too much of a problem with this “spy program” if they would simply apply for warrants after the fact, just so there was SOME judicial oversight of what is going on. But Nooo, they can’t even be bothered with that. That’s the part that makes me feel they are abusing executive power and flouting the law.
Abusing executive power and flouting the law.
That seems to be a pattern with these guys.