Exploiting a leak timed with Michael Hayden's nomination as CIA director, a USA Today headline screams that his former agency, the NSA, has a "massive database" of your phone calls. It has no such thing.
This story is much ado about nothing, except maybe an attempt to derail the nomination of Gen. Hayden, who used to run the National Security Agency.
Under a contract with AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, the list is collected and analyzed through a program launched by the NSA after Sept. 11, 2001, that uses a technique known as data mining to detect patterns in seemingly random data.
In this case the data are used to study how terrorist networks organize and contact each other and their members. Such a list might be useful if we have the next Mohammed Atta's phone number and want to know all the numbers he has called or that have called him.
So is compiling such a list illegal? No, says Paul Butler, a former U.S. prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes.
"FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) does not prohibit the government from doing data mining," he says, as long as there are no "personal identifiers" such as names or street addresses included as part of the search.
And, as Judge Allan Kornblum, a U.S. District Court judge and one of FISA's authors, told a Senate hearing recently, FISA does not override the president's constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.
Nou escàndol, doncs? No per les escoltes sinó per la manipulació política i mediàtica per impedir un nomenament i desgastar el dolent de torn.
ADDENDA.- UNA CLARA MAJORIA D'AMERICANS JUSTIFIQUEN LES ESCOLTES TELEFÒNIQUES
Segons una enquesta de The Washington Post-ABC News, publicada avui:
A majority of Americans initially support a controversial National Security Agency program to collect information on telephone calls made in the United States in an effort to identify and investigate potential terrorist threats, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it. A slightly larger majority--66 percent--said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found. Underlying those views is the belief that the need to investigate terrorism outweighs privacy concerns. According to the poll, 65 percent of those interviewed said it was more important to investigate potential terrorist threats "even if it intrudes on privacy." Three in 10--31 percent--said it was more important for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.
