Committee demanding details of NSA data-mining

[sabra]

Source: CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A House committee is requesting Justice Department documents on a data-mining project that identified the senders and recipients of calls and e-mails intercepted via the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program.

In a Monday letter, Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to hand over "all opinions, memoranda and background materials, as well as any dissenting views, materials, and opinions" about the data-mining program.

While the Bush administration has acknowledged OK'ing the controversial program in which the government wiretapped phone calls without obtaining a warrant, it has remained mum on whether it authorized the NSA to use computers to sift through databases to identify who participated in intercepted communications. (The computers reportedly do not identify the contents of the communications.)

...

In his letter, Conyers wrote that his committee is considering changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and therefore must be "fully apprised of these controversial, and possibly unlawful, programs."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/31/congress.gonzale...

[Elidor]

1. "The computers reportedly do not identify the contents of the communications."

I don't believe them.

[nebenaube]

3. not that method (sub-routine) but...

I'm sure the class object in question (or some derivation) has many other methods (procedures, sub-routines) that do examine the contents.

[krispos42]

4. "Hey, I've found stuff that looks bad!"

"What stuff?"

"I can't tell you without a warrant"






"Judge, I need a warrant."

"On what basis?"

"Computer sez it found bad stuff, but it can't tell me without a warrant."

"Sounds like probable cause to me! Here ya go!"





"Okay, I have the warrant!"

"Oh great! Here it is..."




Apparantly, it's not a violation of the 4th because nobody in the government sees what's being looked at. But they can get a warrant based soley on stuff that software sees that it thinks looks bad. Oy, vey.


Um... how about anybody or anything analyzing communication without a warrant is illegal? Maybe we should just do that?

[EVDebs]

2. The program's failures in weeding out terrorists seems to be the weak link in all of this

The datamining, now taking place offshore in the Bahamas via Ben H. Bell, IIIrd's company Global Information Group, most certainly has hackable and corruptible 'data' on US citizens and any other residents of the US. In their zeal to weed out the terrorists without going through legal channels, the neocons have set up a vacuum-cleaner system that assumes all US citizens are guilty and thus worthy of whatever investigating the NSA or whatever spy group has trumped up as an excuse for surveillance.

No doubt some of this surveillance is warranted, however, no legal warrants were asked for.

The proof of the pudding is that this system was counter-productive is that only dissenters to the administration appear to have become the victims of this program. Quakers, Ragin' Grannies, UC Santa Cruz students, Green Party members, assorted liberals of all stipes.

Without producing tangible results of preventing any terror except upon liberals, OBL and Co. only had to sit back whereever they are and let BushCo do their dirty work for them.

[rockedthevoteinMA]

5. Uh oh... Sounds like things are getting a little messy. n/t

[GenDem]

6. Nothing like the smell of oversight in the morning