From: "Mark" 

More would say that it'd be malfeasance in office if he didn't do it.


Merry Christmas back at ya 

"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
news:43ae0d1b$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> Some would say Bush is criminally negligent instituting this data mining
>
> By the way Merry Christmas  - peace on earth especially to neocons 
>
>
> "Gary Britt"  wrote in message
> news:43adffce$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>> 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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