NSA doc proves "Bush Authorized Domestic Spying BEFORE 9/11
"The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.
"The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups."
snip
"But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law."
snip
"According to the online magazine Slate, an unnamed official in the telecom industry said NSA's efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a 'data-mining' operation, which might eventually cull 'millions' of individual calls and e-mails."
Link to article:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml Link to NSA document:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/nsa25.pdf some comments:
"This completely undermines BushCo's claim that Congress's Authorization of Military in Afghanistan gave them the "statutorial exception" for warrantless wiretaps. It couldn't...because it hadn't happened yet!!
I haven't looked through the NSA doc fully yet, but it wouldn't hurt to also try and get the testimony of that unnamed telecom industry official mentioned in the last paragraph of the article." magellan
"so if the monitoring were working wouldn't they have caught
the 9/11 highjackers before they hit us"? catmother
"That's assuming they were actually monitoring for terrorists
The thing to bear in mind is that regardless of why BushCo were eavesdropping, they broke the law to do it". magellan
"
of course. i know that. but that point can be brought up -- if
he was listening for terrorists -- well. what happened dubya??" catmother
It could be part of the source for PDB "Binladen determined to strike..."
Which we all know he ignored anyway. My thought is that they have been spying on political enemies, not real enemies and that is why they had to circumvent FISA. gilpo
Total Information Awareness -
That's exactly what's going on here. Interesting LTTE:
sparosnare
Who will help when Pentagon nabs you?
Back in February 2003, Capitol Hill agreed to bar the Department of Defense from implementing a computer surveillance scheme called "Total Information Awareness." There was concern about a program that would enable federal authorities to dig into the details of the lives of American citizens.
That concern has not penetrated our executive branch. Using the umbrella of "executive privilege" and a rather vague reference to the Constitution, the current administration has again placed our sacred right of privacy in jeopardy. Our history, in general, supports the view that the danger of violent individual acts is far outweighed by government activities which do not respect the dignity and privacy of its citizens.
We are all terrified by the thought of being blindsided by terrorists with bombs or germs. However, that terror can in no way compare to the horror of an overzealous government suddenly allowed to examine each of us with a microscope.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=...