From: "Gary Britt" 

As judge Posner said, the President would be criminally negligent had he
NOT instituted this surveillance.

Gary

"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
news:43addbbf{at}w3.nls.net...
> Well let's let the NSA capture all the data at their leisure without a
court
> approval. How soon before the government decides to use the 'pattern
> matching' for other than 'terrorist' activity? The  RIAA and MPAA are
> probably wringing their hands in anticipation.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html
>
> WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed
> large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and
out
> of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President
> Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of
> terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.
>
> The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice
> networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White
> House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping
> directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main
arteries,
> they said.
>
> As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic
surveillance
> without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American
> telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of
> domestic and international communications, the officials said.
>
> The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic
have
> raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials
familiar
> with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence
> Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications
> growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has
> legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass
> through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials
> familiar with the matter.
>
> "There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in
conversations with
the
> court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways
through
> which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about
access
> to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you
> minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes
of
> traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."
>
> Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance
> program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his
> executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the
> monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving
people
> with known links to Al Qaeda.
>
> What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians,
besides
> actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through
large
> volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might
point
> to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large
> data-mining operation.
>
> The current and former government officials who discussed the program were
> granted anonymity because it remains classified.
>
> Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the
technical
> aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look
for
> clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many
details
> of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress
> who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to
> learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its
legality.
>
> Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have
> knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze
> communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling
> whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the
> origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and
> from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular
> interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.
>
> This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United
States would,
> in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to
> trace who calls whom.
>
> The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in
> other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection
with
> the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for
> tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps
> program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately
> scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil
> liberties
>
> But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and
> analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to
detect
> terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with
the
> program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by
> Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not
> give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats
at
> home.
>
> A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said
that
> since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have
been
> storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal
> government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.
>
> "All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared
> with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in
that
> area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not
want
> his name or that of his former company used because of concern about
> revealing trade secrets.
>
> Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as
> eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.
>
> "If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is
going
> to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis," he said.
"Massive
> amounts of traffic analysis information - who is calling whom, who is in
> Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends - is used to identify lines
> of communication that are then given closer scrutiny."
>
> Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the
> N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of
some
> of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to
> switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States'
> communications networks and international networks. The identities of the
> corporations involved could not be determined.
>
> The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some
> Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the
> globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many
> international-to-international calls are also routed through such American
> switches.
>
> One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the
> N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American
> government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the
> telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international
traffic
> that is routed through American-based switches.
>
> The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the
> intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully
> addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that
> foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some
> judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls
> as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the
> Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved
> warrants for domestic surveillance.
>
> Historically, the American intelligence community has had close
> relationships with many communications and computer firms and related
> technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major
> telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major
> corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's
operational
> capability, according to current and former government officials.
>
> Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast
> telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be
> significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like
this,
> what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum
> operation to sweep up data," he said.
>
>
>

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