Presidential Speaking and Listening
Conservababes' post is probably the one I've read that sums up my feelings best.
In other Bush news, I saw Condi on Meet the Press (transcript) this morning as I was getting ready for work, and I basically agree with her assessment of the 'eavesdropping':
SEC'Y RICE: Tim, first much all, the president has authorized – and it's important to talk about what he's actually authorized. He's authorized the National Security Agency to collect information about the activities of a limited number of people with ties to Al-Qaeda so that there is not a seam between the territory of the United States and the territory abroad. One of the most compelling outcomes of the 9-11 Commission was that a seam had developed. Our intelligence agencies looked out, our law enforcement agencies looked in, and people--terrorists could exploit the seam between them. So the president is determined that he will have the ability to make certain that that seam is not there, that the communications between people, a limited number of people with Al-Qaeda links here and conversations with terrorist activities outside will be understood so that we can detect and thereby prevent terrorist attacks.The president is acting under his constitutional authority, under statutory authority. I'm not a lawyer, but the president has gone to great lengths to make certain that he is both living under his obligations to protect Americans from another attack but also to protect their civil liberties. And that's why this program is very carefully controlled. It has to be re-authorized every 45 days. People are specially trained to participate in it, and it has been briefed to leadership of the Congress and including the leadership of the Intelligence Committee. So in a time when the war on terrorism is not just one in which people carry on activities outside the country but also activities inside the country, the president is drawing on his constitutional authority to protect the country.
Julian Sanchez from Reason's Hit and Run blog poses an interesting question that stems from this:
A second, slightly more abstract question is what, exactly, counts as an "international" communication these days. Previously, we're told, the NSA had only spied on wholly foreign conversations. They still (say they) don't do any wholly domestic surveillance. What's new is the intereception of phone calls and e-mails where one party is based in the U.S. and the other overseas. Except... how do we know? I check the same account whether I'm sitting in D.C. or Madrid—and I can't say I'm wholly sure I know where the servers that store my e-mail are located, though I think they're all in the U.S., though I might just as easily, from D.C., read an e-mail from my nextdoor neighbor routed through an account on a server in Madrid. The growth of Internet-based telephone services like Vonage means that the same is increasingly true of voice converrsations as well. Matt Welch is in Prague right now, but if I wanted to reach him on his Vonage phone, I'd dial a number with a California area code. Presumably the converse might be true as well: I might call an international number to reach someone staying in a hotel across town. Which of these various communications would the NSA feel at liberty to listen in on?
| Permalink | 
