Yet Another NSA Program Raises Questions About Obama's Statements to Charlie Rose

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53. I don't think what you said is exactly accurate.

"The content isn't looked at until a warrant is issued, we are told..."

I think there is quite a bit of confusion about the order of things, in other words how these things are related to each other in time.

If this is the case, then the next leak of classified material might be more information on how these analysts can look at anything in their database (which includes recordings of all our conversations and emails) with little or no oversight. I think it works something like this:

1) Yes, they do need a separate warrant in order to access content of individual phone calls/emails.

2) Yes, the analyst has legal authority to access content of individual phone calls/emails of anyone, on his own, without first getting a separate warrant.

These are consistent statements. The FISA law allows 72 hours after the fact to seek the warrant.

My understanding is that the analyst has legal access, on his own authority, once he has been verbally authorized by either the Attorney General or the Director of National Intelligence. I think the analyst only need fill out a form in order to take a peek at anything.

At least this is my current understanding of the law and the policy. These analysts, once verbally approved, might might be compared to the robosigners we found in the banking fraud.

There is one important difference; unlike the illegal robosigners for the banks, Congress, the Adminstration, and the Courts all seem to have made this process perfectly legal.

If you start to parse the Q&A information with this timeline in mind, it starts to reveal an amazing consistency. Many of the contradictory claims evaporate.