They had the head of NSA and his top assistants up in front of a Congressional investigating committee today. The NSA guys looked and sounded professional and honest, unlike some the the witnesses in recent days. They pretty much confirmed that NSA gathers all the telephone billing information in the entire world and keeps it plenty long enough. The NSA guys explained that they just gather the info up and store it on their computers and don't actually look at it except after jumping thru a lot of administrative hoops, largely NSA hoops, no FISA court. They went on to explain that they only keep overseas calls, not inside the US calls.
It all sounds good, and these individuals looked trustworthy. I wonder if they will look so trustworthy after some Obama appointments. Once the data is in NSA computers, they will look at it if they care enough.
And this is legal. The Supremes held some years ago that looking at telephone company business records is not a search or a seizure. Fourth Amendment does not apply, thus saith the Supremes.
Bottom line, if you make a phone call, NSA knows about it. They claimed they don't tap the calls, they just record the fact that the call was made. That's probably true, for now.
This effort costs plenty. I wonder if we wouldn't score more good intel by taking terrorists alive and grilling them, rather than killing them to avoid putting more terrorists into Guantanamo? And not shooting people dead after the phone number monitoring. fingers them.
No comments:
Post a Comment