U.S. Spying Is Much Wider, Some Suspect (LAT)

[Wordie]

December 25, 2005

THE NATION
U.S. Spying Is Much Wider, Some Suspect
By Josh Meyer and Joseph Menn, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — President Bush has acknowledged that several hundred targeted Americans were wiretapped without warrants under the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, and now some U.S. officials and outside experts say they suspect that the government is engaged in a far broader U.S. surveillance operation.

Although these experts have no specific evidence, they say that the NSA has a vast array of satellites and other high-tech tools that it could be using to eavesdrop on a much larger cross-section of people in the United States without permission from a court.

The suspicion is quietly gaining currency among current and former U.S. intelligence officials and among outside experts familiar with how the NSA operates.

The NSA conducts such "wholesale" surveillance continuously almost everywhere else in the world. It does so by using a sprawling network of land-based satellite transponder stations and friendly foreign intelligence agencies and telecommunication companies to collect millions of phone calls, e-mails and other communications.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-spy25dec25,0,1214433.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=morenews