May 16, 2006
NSA "wiretapping"
Been thinking about the whole NSA bit for a while now. Not really all that happy about it, but haven't formulated any coherent train of thought, as information has been spotty (it's the NSA after all).
In the past few days it's been rumored that the NSA is maintaining a database of all US telephone activity. Further revelations indicate that this isn't strictly true, and that rumors of major telecos turning over calling histories are probably false. Still, it's not the kind of thing that makes one all warm and fuzzy inside.
Then I read this, an Atlantic piece entitled "Big Brother is Listening". This, in clear, technical, detailed language, spells out exactly what the NSA seems to be doing. And "wiretapping" as such isn't it. They aren't planting bugs on phones. They're doing "signals intelligence" or "sigint". They're basically listening in on the entire data stream and filtering out what they think they want. They intercept all of the satellite and fiber-optic traffic that goes in and out of the country and use supercomputers to analyze it. It's still creepy, but it's not quite as invasive as it sounded at first. It's also really damned cool, but that's neither here nor there.
The NSA is still engaging in activities which, it can be argued, violate or potentially violate the Fourth Amendment. But sigint seems to me to be less intrusive than actual domestic, individual wiretapping. Anyone who believes that their communications are truly private is kidding themselves anyway: they're broadcast for the world to see. There's nothing that prevents anyone from listening in at any time, so it's not entirely surprising that the one entity with the budget and technology capable of such an endeavor would do so.
Still, the move by the president to shunt aside the FISA court is unnerving, and quite probably illegal. I'd also like to know what in the name of all that's holy have the House and Senate Intelligence committees been doing for the past four years. I mean, do your damned jobs people.
Anyway, I'm not nearly as convinced that the Fourth Amendment has been materially breached, though this certainly does not look good and something does indeed need to be done.
