Bending the Third Rail
Because We Should, We Can, We Do
Friday, January 13, 2006
More Iceberg Showing
Thanks to Lynne for some great posts today. I've been "indisposed".

I did run across this interesting news story that reveals a wee bit more of the NSA illegal wiretapping story "iceberg" (via Suburban Guerrilla):
Still, one thing that appears to be indisputable is that the NSA surveillance began well before 9/11 and months before President Bush claims Congress gave him the power to use military force against terrorist threats, which Bush says is why he believed he had the legal right to bypass the judicial process.

According to the online magazine Slate, an unnamed official in the telecom industry said NSA's "efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a 'data-mining' operation, which might eventually cull 'millions' of individual calls and e-mails."
This is an excerpt so be sure and read the whole article, much of which is based on James Risen's new book on the illegal NSA taps. There were procedures in place (in addition to FISA) for dealing with domestic information. Bush and his boys went about changing those procedures to get domestic surveillance information. And it all happened long before Bush's bogus claim of authorization by Congress.
Written at 1:40 PM by Greyhair.
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