Word: nsa
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...tipping point yet? What author Malcolm Gladwell described as small things that make a big difference seems like an apt metaphor for the latest developments on civil liberties and the Bush administration. First was Thursday morning's USA Today story, declaring, "NSA Has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls." The story dominated the morning news shows and drove the day's events, with the President racing to the microphones in the Diplomatic Room of the White House before departing on a trip to Mississippi. Bush didn't get into the specifics of the USA Today story, but he did defend...
...without trials and new methods of eavesdropping - that critics describe as an encroachment on civil liberties. Last year, the Democrats tried to make renewal of the USA Patriot Act an issue, but in the end they buried their objections and passed a bill that Bush could sign. When the NSA's policy of warrantless eavesdropping on some domestic calls was revealed by The New York Times in December, Democrats along with many Republicans also screamed from the rafters, but the program proved popular with the public. Presidential advisers thought it was such a winner that they put it in Bush...
...Will the new revelations about the NSA tip the balance? Perhaps. According to the story, the NSA is not actually listening in on the phone calls but monitoring the patterns of calls in a kind of giant Google search, with the hope that their algorithm will detect something untoward and worth investigating. But even if your call to Aunt Sally isn't being listened to by some NSA officer, the program sounds creepy enough that no shortage of senators jumped all over it. The Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said he'd subpoena...
...High on the list will be his handling during the six years he headed the National Security Agency of a major technological initiative called "Trailblazer" that was held out as a major advance in tracking the digital communications NSA was intercepting-but ended up in the virtual dustbin as a $1.2 billion flop, according to numerous published reports. With management skills a key aspect of the CIA directorship, particularly in the wake of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte's decision to oust Porter Goss from the post after a rocky 18 months on the job, the handling of such...
...Another point of contention for the Dems is the NSA's warrantless surveillance of al-Qaeda-linked phone numbers and addresses inside the U.S. Gen. Hayden began that super-secret program soon after the September 11 attacks. He explained the program in such no-nonsense terms-calling it "hot pursuit" of possible terrorists on U.S. soil-and was so clear in insisting that American civil liberties were respected that some credit Hayden with helping the White House turn the disclosure of the controversial program into a political plus. The question is whether it will play well enough the second time...