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by John W. Dean
E.J. Dionne
$20.95
$17
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Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security advisor, told reporters about North Korea’s missile launch, “Obviously, it is a bit of an effort to get attention, perhaps because so much attention has been focused on the Iranians.”
This reminds us of a classic Andy Borowitz article a few years back that said something to the effect of “Kim Jong Il Wants to Know What It Will Take for America to Bomb His Country and Put It on the Map.” Can anyone find that link?
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The NSA asked AT&T to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, allege lawyers filing a lawsuit on behalf of telephone company customers.
This is huge because, according to a lawyer on the case, “The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11…. This undermines that assertion.’‘
Posted on Jul 2, 2006
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The newspaper originally reported that AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon have been providing phone call data to the NSA. But now USA Today says it can’t confirm that either BellSouth or Verizon provided the data. (AT&T definitely appears to have done so.)
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From Salon.com
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Two former AT&T workers have told Salon that the telecom company has maintained a secret, highly secured room in a St. Louis network operations center where, the two workers were told, employees have been “monitoring network traffic.” Salon’s security experts say the operation has all the hallmarks of an NSA operation.
Summary
Full story (Reg. or ad-watching req’d.)
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Faces: from smartmobs.com / NSA seal: from isoc.org
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The National Security Agency is funding research into ways to collect personal information from social networking websites like MySpace and Friendster, according to New Scientist magazine. The agency reportedly aims to combine the information with details from banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
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History will surely boggle at this one: The architect of the NSA’s domestic spying program has been made the head of the CIA. And the vote was 78-15.
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The attorney general, in defending the NSA’s collection of millions of U.S. phone records, claims it is constitutional—but conveniently ignores the fact that it appears to be illegal.
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Illustration: Blair Golson
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This is the big one, folks. Wired News unearths internal AT&T documents that show how the telecom company, at the behest of the government, built “secret rooms” in cities across America that enable the NSA “to look at every individual message on the Internet and analyze exactly what people are doing.”
Story and AT&T internal documents
Wired News explains why it published the story
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Via Business Week, we learn that an entire niche industry has sprung up to provide the government with commercially purchased telecommunications records that the government isn’t allowed to purchase itself. (TPM Muckraker has a good sum-up.)
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By Andy Borowitz — The satirist tells us that Bush, feeling low as he contemplates his public approval rating, has turned to a man who knows a thing or two about numbers.
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gregpalast.com
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When the government can’t legally dig up your medical records, call histories and voter registration information, it turns to the data mining company ChoicePoint—which has sucked up over $1 billion in federal contracts.
Do. Not. Miss. this article on how the frightening industry of data mining works.
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From AMERICAblog
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You won’t believe the envelope that the phone company has apparently been sending out. If it’s not a hoax, the irony is so thick that not even an NSA eavesdropper could penetrate it.
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“The Daily Show” host tees off on the recent report of the NSA’s phone call database. “It turns out that there was one specific type of domestic call the government was keeping tabs on. All of them.”
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From ThinkProgress
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Amazing. (Or maybe not.) The new White House press secretary (a former Fox News host) kicked off his tenure with a misleading statement about Bush and the NSA program.
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The phone company says that, despite the claims made in the USA Today story, it never provided phone records to the NSA.
Posted on May 15, 2006
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The fiery N.Y. Times columnist returns from book leave with an attack on the real “traitors” in America: a White House that has compounded lies with incompetence to spy on Americans, run “black site” Eastern European prisons and prosecute an unjust war.
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In the wake of Sept. 11, the vice president argued that the NSA should intercept purely domestic calls and e-mails without warrants, reports the N.Y. Times.
The NSA ultimately decided against the idea, but this report leaves no doubt about Cheney’s regard for civil liberties.
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The Washington Post loaded a poll so it would appear that most Americans support the NSA’s phone record collection program. Blogger Jane Hamsher did the original analysis on this sloppy poll, and Buzzflash sums it up.
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The telecom giant faces two suits—one for $20 billion, another for $5 billion—for handing over customers’ phone records to the NSA.
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Images: From "The Charlie Rose Show"
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Truthdig salutes Leslie Cauley, the USA Today reporter who broke the blockbuster story about the NSA’s program to amass the records of every phone call made in America. Her scoop laid waste to President Bush’s assertion that his domestic spying targets only a handful of suspected terrorists living in the U.S. In the wake of her story, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter is calling for congressional hearings.
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From thezreview.co.uk
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President Bush will deliver a rare (for him) television address, a Monday night talk on immigration reform.
Is it too cynical to ask whether he’s wagging the dog to distract attention from the NSA phone record issue?
Is it possible to be too cynical about Bush’s motives?
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From AmericaBlog
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The logo above appears on T-shirts being sold by AmericaBlog. Be the first on your block to get one!
Posted on May 12, 2006
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Before the USA Today story, The Nation magazine had loads of details on the NSA-telecom spying program: a lawsuit against AT&T; links between telecom officials and the White House; and a history of how these insidious relationships developed.
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The Sept. 11 attacks “did not give the president the limitless power he now claims to intrude on the private communications of the American people,” the N.Y. Times says in an editorial about the NSA spying story.
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From ThinkProgress
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The president claims that the program activities “strictly target Al Qaeda and their known affiliates,” despite USA Today’s claim that the NSA has pored over the records of tens of millions of Americans.
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hardnewsnow.com
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“We’re not mining or trolling though the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,’’ Bush says, without directly addressing the NSA program reported in USA Today.
Meanwhile, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter demands that phone company executives testify before Congress about the data they provided to the NSA.
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From wcsh6.com
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Many Republican and Democratic lawmakers are furious over the alleged NSA phone record collection program.
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham: “The idea of collecting millions or thousands of phone numbers, how does that fit into following the enemy?”
Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy: “It is our government, it’s not one party’s government.”
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“The NSA’s gathering of phone call records of millions of Americans is “something that would make the late Leonid Brezhnev proud of Bush—and [Gen.] Michael Hayden, the Pentagon apparatchik, who saw it through,” Buzzflash writes in an editorial.
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Late coming to the story about the NSA’s massive telephone record collection program? The Washington Post does a 360-degree report.
Neither Bush nor his aides denied any facts in the original USA Today story.
Senate Intel Chair Pat Roberts wants to shoot the messenger (USA Today).
Bush’s pick for CIA chief, Gen. Michael Hayden, oversaw this program at the NSA, a fact that guarantees fireworks at his confirmation hearing.
Check out the original story.
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From NSA.gov
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By Robert Scheer — UPDATE: Michael V. Hayden, nominated by President Bush to head the CIA, is the man responsible for the most extensive attack ever on the privacy of U.S. citizens.
While head of the NSA, he oversaw the program that recorded the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans.
Want to take action? Check out StopHayden.org (includes video proof that Hayden is smugly incorrect about the privacy foundation of the Fourth Amendment).
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From NSA.gov
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The presumed next head of the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden, once ran the National Security Agency. Fine. It’s got a cartoon picture that leads to a kid-friendly site called Cryptokids: America’s Future Codemakers and Codebreakers. It’s filled with decryption games and NSA employment resources.
Huh? Cartoons appeal to 7-year-olds. How many of them are going to be surfing the NSA’s website? And if the agency is trying to recruit high school students, why use a cartoon turtle as a roper?
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AT&T gave the National Security Agency open access to its customers’ phone calls and Web-surfing activities, according to a former AT&T employee cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against the company.
The full story and a public statement by the whistle-blower.
Posted on Apr 8, 2006
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From mundanesounds.com
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OK, OK, it’s not time to get hysterical yet. This one doesn’t look likely to pass, but…
Four senators have introduced a bill that would allow the NSA to eavesdrop, sans warrant, for up to 45 days. GOP Sen. Arlen Specter objected, saying the law would allow government to “do whatever the hell it wants.”
Oh. Right. What a departure that would be.
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The MSNBC host lays bare the White House’s attack on press freedoms and whistle-blowers.
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Jeff Chester at The Nation has an eye-opening report on how big telcos are trying to transform the “free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.” | story
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Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) breaks with the White House and calls for a full congressional inquiry into Bush’s spy program. | story
The dam hasn’t just cracked—it’s gushing.
Posted on Feb 8, 2006
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Walter Pincus, one of the best-informed national security reporters in the country, offers a video critique of the Senate appearance of the nation’s new spy chief. | video
Posted on Feb 3, 2006
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The transcript of the Al Gore speech that’s got everyone talking—as well as links to C-SPAN’s downloadable video of the event.
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After the attorney general dismissed the vexed former veep’s charges of illegal spying, Gore swats back: No wonder you didn’t defend yourself on the issues—you can’t. | release
Meanwhile, a group of arch-conservatives call for hearings into Bush’s program. Hey, if you’ve lost Grover Norquist and David Keene… | release
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Susan Walsh / AP
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The former VP, hot and bothered, says a special prosecutor should investigate Bush’s spy program. | story or transcript
The NYT reports that even the former FBI director had qualms about the legality of the spying. | story
Meanwhile, the ACLU and another group sue Bush over his wiretapping. | story
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From www.isoc.org
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The NSA began its data-mining activities early in 2001. This disclosure contradicts the president’s claim about the program being a product of his post-9/11 “smoke ‘em out” mind-set. | story
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Members of Congress question whether the agency can investigate itself. | story
Meanwhile, a dream team of 14 legal scholars and ex-gov’t officials write a memo to the DOJ calling the NSA program illegal. | story
Posted on Jan 10, 2006
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By Jon Wiener — Bush rolled out an old canard about Bin Laden and the media rolled over. An inside look at the sticking power of a falsehood.
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A former NSA agent tells Democracy Now! that he will testify to Congress about Bush’s “unlawful and unconstitutional” spy program. Story.
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