Bush says domestic surveillance a ‘vital tool’

[ahsingjai]

Bush says domestic surveillance a ‘vital tool’
President lashes out at officials who revealed secret program
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:57 a.m. ET Dec. 18, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday he personally has authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and he lashed out at those involved in publicly revealing the program.

"This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security," he said in a radio address delivered live from the White House's Roosevelt Room.

"This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and their civil liberties and that is exactly what I will continue to do as long as I am president of the United States," Bush said.

Angry members of Congress have demanded an explanation of the program, first revealed in Friday's New York Times and whether the monitoring by the National Security Agency violates civil liberties.

Program constitutional, Bush says
Bush said the program was narrowly designed and used "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." He said it is used only to intercept the international communications of people inside the United States who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al-Qaida or related terrorist organizations.

The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews by the Justice Department, White House counsel and others, and information from previous activities under the program, the president said.

Without identifying specific lawmakers, Bush said congressional leaders have been briefed more than a dozen times on the program's activities.

The president also said the intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated.

Adamant in his defense
Appearing angry at points during his eight-minute address, Bush said he had reauthorized the program more than 30 times since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and plans to continue doing so.

"I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaida and related groups," he said.

The president contended the program has helped "detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad," but did not provide specific examples.

He said it is designed in part to fix problems raised by the Sept. 11 commission, which found that two of the suicide hijackers were communicating from San Diego with al-Qaida operatives overseas.

"The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," he said.

Bush's remarks echoed — in many cases word-for-word — those issued Friday night by a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity. His highly unusual discussion of classified activities showed the sensitive nature of the program, whose existence was revealed as Congress was trying to renew the terrorism-fighting Patriot Act and complicated that effort, a top priority of Bush's.

Senate Democrats joined with a handful of Republicans on Friday to stall the bill. Those opposing the renewal of key provisions of the act that are expiring say they threaten constitutional liberties.

Critics call Bush’s justification ‘absurd’
Reacting to Bush's defense of the NSA program, Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said the president's remarks were "breathtaking in how extreme they were."

Feingold said it was "absurd" that Bush said he relied on his inherent power as president to authorize the wiretaps.

"If that's true, he doesn't need the Patriot Act because he can just make it up as he goes along. I tell you, he's President George Bush, not King George Bush. This is not the system of government we have and that we fought for," Feingold told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The president had harsh words for those who talked about the program to the media, saying their actions were illegal and improper.

"As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have," he said. "The unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10505574/

[Chu Chi]

Im old enough to remember President Nixon getting busted for doing this.

As a consequence, mechanisms were installed to prevent it from occuring again (FISA)

My question is this:


If this behavior is fully within the scope of executive power, why try to hide it?


CC

[Faithless]

Originally Posted by Chu Chi

If this behavior is fully within the scope of executive power, why try to hide it?


CC

That is a good point.

But is this enough to impeach Bush, finally?

[Arex]

Bush himself is a tool. He needs to first explain why he couldn't get wiretaps under FISA before he can spout off about how successful his snooping has been. Idiot.

[Faithless]

Originally Posted by Arex

Bush himself is a tool. He needs to first explain why he couldn't get wiretaps under FISA before he can spout off about how successful his snooping has been. Idiot.

And he's probably wiretapping --

Hillary and Bill.

[kpih]

Yeah this is what freedom is all about...

Bush said the program was narrowly designed and used "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution."

I guess civil liberties are also narrowly defined...

[Faithless]

Are there any conspiracy theorists out there that think that the nomination of Harriet Miers had something to do with helping to protect Bush's interests in this area?

It's also funny how he goes from saying in 2004 before the election that he's all against wiretapping to this in 2005. What a difference a year makes.

Why the heck did that one judge resign? Why didn't he stick around and fight the abuse?

[snailpoo]

Originally Posted by Chu Chi

My question is this:


If this behavior is fully within the scope of executive power, why try to hide it?

He didn't.

Without identifying specific lawmakers, Bush said congressional leaders have been briefed more than a dozen times on the program's activities.

"Congressional leaders" meaning the Senate Select Committe on Intelligence with both Democrats and Republicans.

[kpih]

Speechless. Less for them to pick up on me...

The New York Times
December 24, 2005
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.

"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality.

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.

The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.

But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats at home.

A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.

"All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets.

Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.

"If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis," he said. "Massive amounts of traffic analysis information - who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends - is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny."

Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.

The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.

One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.

The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.

Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.

Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said.

[haplesshobo]

This could have been an interesting debate about what civil limitations are acceptable in a time of war. After all, we have previously accepted limitations on certain domestic civil liberties in exchange for homeland security in times of war. Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR all were willing to do that and later lifted those limitations once the war had ended.

Unfortunately, in today's polarized world, such debate has fallen to the wayside in favor of partianship sniping. I would argue that part of the appeal of the story is that it serves as another chance to criticize the Bush administration, and not necessairly about the true merits of the programs. After all, was everybody here similary outraged when the Clinton adminstration pushed through Echelon, a similar data mining program, through the NSA.

[Martino]

Originally Posted by haplesshobo

After all, was everybody here similary outraged when the Clinton adminstration pushed through Echelon, a similar data mining program, through the NSA.

This board didn't exist back then.

[Faithless]

Originally Posted by Martino

This board didn't exist back then.

Well, maybe not outraged on the board, as much as, outraged when they heard the news.

I think if one is to be consistent, then one would have to say the Clinton era program was as nasty as the Bush one.

[haplesshobo]

Originally Posted by Martino

This board didn't exist back then.

Okay, then we'll use a more recent example, when the board did exist.

Everybody was pretty upset when somebody in the administration leaked Valerie Plame's idendity to the media, as it compromised american interests. And, they wanted a full blown investigation to get to the bottom of this, to find and punish whoever did that.

Now, is everybody also upset that somebody also leaked such information to the media, also compromising american interests. Should we also start an investigation to find out who did this, and then punish that person.

[Martino]

Originally Posted by haplesshobo

Okay, then we'll use a more recent example, when the board did exist.

Everybody was pretty upset when somebody in the administration leaked Valerie Plame's idendity to the media, as it compromised american interests. And, they wanted a full blown investigation to get to the bottom of this, to find and punish whoever did that.

Now, is everybody also upset that somebody also leaked such information to the media, also compromising american interests. Should we also start an investigation to find out who did this, and then punish that person.

There's been lots of threads about each stage of the CIA leak investigation. Could you post links to those specfic threads where people here were upset?

[haplesshobo]

Turns out that the board wasn't around when it was first leaked. But, there have been several threads since then. In them, some people wanted whoever leaked the name to get punished, and sent to prision so the leaker would get anally raped.

I'm just asking if everybody here also feels that whoever leaked this sensitive material should also be found, and prosecuted. If not, what's the difference between leaking information in one case and the other case.