Conyers:Seymour Hersh: The NSA is Listening to Calls Without a Warrant

[cal04]

Seymour Hersh: The NSA is Listening to Calls Without a Warrant

The New Yorker published an article today by Seymour Hersh that featured a disturbing piece of information: the NSA is listening to calls, not just monitoring call data. Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist with impeccable sources. His sources are usually spot on. It is very disturbing to learn that despite all assurances to the contrary, the NSA may actually be wiretapping domestic calls.

The other major issue raised by Hersh, which needs to be examined, is the level of access that the phone companies have provided to the NSA.

A security consultant working with a major telecommunications carrier told me that his client set up a top-secret high-speed circuit between its main computer complex and Quantico, Virginia, the site of a government-intelligence computer center. This link provided direct access to the carrier’s network core—the critical area of its system, where all its data are stored. “What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records,” the consultant said. “They’re providing total access to all the data.”

I guess the NSA doesn't really need the phone companies to hand over call data if they already have access to every bit of data and traffic that travels through their networks. If this is true, there can be no greater urgency for comprehensive Congressional oversight.


http://www.conyersblog.us/

LISTENING IN
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060529ta_talk_hersh

[Roland99]

1. It's time to go Jack Bauer on this administration!!

[Scout1071]

2. K&R

[bananas]

3. link to the New Yorker article

the link is in the conyers blog entry:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060529ta_talk_hersh

[acmejack]

4. Will anyone ask Hayden about this?

I still say he is confirmed 95-5.

[Roland99]

6. "tens of thousands of Americans had had their calls monitored...."

Instead, the N.S.A. began, in some cases, to eavesdrop on callers (often using computers to listen for key words) or to investigate them using traditional police methods. A government consultant told me that tens of thousands of Americans had had their calls monitored in one way or the other. “In the old days, you needed probable cause to listen in,” the consultant explained. “But you could not listen in to generate probable cause. What they’re doing is a violation of the spirit of the law.” One C.I.A. officer told me that the Administration, by not approaching the FISA court early on, had made it much harder to go to the court later.

The Administration intelligence official acknowledged that the implications of the program had not been fully thought out. “There’s a lot that needs to be looked at,” he said. “We are in a technology age. We need to tweak fisa, and we need to reconsider how we handle privacy issues.”

Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, believes that if the White House had gone to Congress after September 11th and asked for the necessary changes in FISA “it would have got them.” He told me, “The N.S.A. had a lot of latitude under FISA to get the data it needed. I think the White House purposefully ignored the law, because the President did not want to do the monitoring under FISA. There is a strong commitment inside the intelligence community to obey the law, and the community is getting dragged into the mud on this.”

General Hayden, who as the head of the N.S.A. supervised the intercept program, is seen by many as a competent professional who was too quick to follow orders without asking enough questions. As one senior congressional staff aide said, “The concern is that the Administration says, ‘We’re going to do this,’ and he does it—even if he knows better.” Former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey, who was a member of the 9/11 Commission, had a harsher assessment. Kerrey criticized Hayden for his suggestion, after the Times exposé, that the N.S.A.’s wiretap program could have prevented the attacks of 9/11. “That’s patently false and an indication that he’s willing to politicize intelligence and use false information to help the President,” Kerrey said.

[leveymg]

9. For what have NSA and DHS gotten for all our trouble?

Have they arrested even a single kid with a pipebomb planning to blow up a toilet in a Dacatur, IL middle school before it happened? Not that I've heard - and I listen closely.

This has been nothing but a collossal pork barrel for IT and defense contractors who are way too cozy with the GOP Rightwing. They've set up the perfect apparatus for running a Forever War and maintaining their version of a Single Party Dictatorship Lite with Red, White and Blue bunting. Forever. And, guess what folks, we're The Main Enemy of their project.

NSA+GOP=USSR

[cal04]

7. thank you bananas. I forgot the link

:hi:

[Jackpine Radical]

5. I have never doubted they were listening in.

From the time the first stories broke about wiretapping foreign callw without FISA warrants,I was morally certain that they were listening in on everything.

At the time, I asked a question that nobody really answered. It was this:

Is anybody aware of any "anomolous" events during the 2004 election cycle that would suddenly make sense if we assumed that Democratic candidates, their vehicles, their phone lines, and/or offices, etc. were wiretapped/bugged?

You know what I mean by "anomolous." Cases where the Puggies took actions that indicate they had inside knowledge of Dem plans, strategies, etc.

[Disturbed]

8. The Bush Regime along with NSA violated the Law.

Now it doesn't matter because the majority of Repugs and Dems will allow these violations to continue. It seems that the USA is a Neo Fascist Police State.

[Roland99]

10. KICK!!

[slaveplanet]

11. I believe it's even worse than what they

put forth in this article.

They can listen in to a target's residence even if no call is being made, they can queue up the phone transmitter even when the phone is hung up and use it as a microphone.
Same goes with devices that are hooked to the cable(CATV), if they're mic equipped.

They have technologies that can turn walls into glass and can peer in for weapons or to locate bodies, they also have super sensitive microphones that can hear through the walls.

Just imagine what life will be like once they mount all this shit on the streetlights and telephone poles.

They're just having the official product rollout right now, bringing all this NSA crap out publicly is just to acclimate us inmates and let us know how things are going to be from here on out.

The spiders from minority report will be the next evolution as they tighten the electronic straight-jacket and turn America and the westernized world into the giant prison of their dreams.