NEW YORK - The National Security Agency has conducted much broader surveillance of e-mails and phone calls — without court orders — than the Bush administration has acknowledged, The New York Times reported on its Web site.

The NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained access to streams of domestic and international communications, said the Times in the report late Friday, citing unidentified current and former government officials.

The story did not name the companies.....

The volume of information harvested from telecommunications data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the paper said, quoting an unnamed official.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051224/ap_on_go_pr_wh/domestic_spying

Freeps you're being spied on too


hahahaha .... and they voted for these crooks .. what idiots

That's some consolation anyway.

I always assumed I wasn't important enough to attract the attention of Big Brother, but if they were just going on fishing expeditions, why not? Hell, just being on Boxer's and Kerry's e-mail lists might have gotten me labeled a "potential terrorist"!

, from a few years back, I just finished reading.

It described the MO of "a secrecy-obsessed regime"

a "scenario of arrest, interrogation and extreme physical torture," where

"prisoners were dragged to S21 and forced to confess unspecified crimes against the party, then name their treasonous activities and co-conspirators, perpetuating a cycle that invariably ended on the killing fields...."

"Civil Liberties" is a nice label but I want

FREEDOM

from this kind of threat .

She said that "the president had authorized the National Security Agency "to collect information on a limited number of people with connections to al Qaeda."

(http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/18/bush.nsa/)

The judges would soon have to curtail Bushco's illegal unconstitutional activities.

judge scalito.

I'll wear it as a badge of honor .

I hope Americans would be pissed at the waste of
tax dollars spent spying on dissidents

How could he not?

and still not a single actual terrorist identified by so doing. Shitheads all around.

Intelligence agencies run by dumbnuts and imbeciles for White House dumbnuts and imbeciles.

What was that thing about Republicans getting elected and demonstrating that government agencies don't work?

I really like how our government quietly encouraged the telecommunications industry to route calls through American Switchboards.

I'm sorry, it has no relevance what party I would tend to support - this is WAY over what's acceptable in a democracy. Unfortunately for some, it is not a question of if Bush is impeached, but when. We will have to deal with the consequences of having somebody even more unqualified than Bush. This is a really sad time for America :(

Now, has Hastert ever taken a penny from Abramoff? He was second to DeLay in fun excursions. Who finances Denny?

And, if revulsion is as great as it ought to be, and sufficient computerized voting is disabled or rejected (remember how fast the Republicans rammed that bill thru after 2000), then we can have the house back and a female president.

Look on the bright side. George hasn't nuked us, yet.

"But the Times said that NSA technicians have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might lead to terrorists."

And remember, they also scooped up data in the hands of banks and credit card companies at the same time. Maybe online actions, grocery store purchases, gas stations and so on.

This is the NSA's specialty, and convicted felon John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness wet dream was to do exactly this by collecting every bit of data on every action by every person in the US. Congress killed that plan as being too overtly totalitarian for even the most skilled of Republican con artists to sell to their sheep, so they did it in secret.

of course:

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

...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...

...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.

Full NYT artcle here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?ex=1293080400&en=014edb4eb79bdf63&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

his call through other countries deliberately so they can call it an "international call." why is this criminal bunch still in office, by the way????

I keep writing my congresscritters and nothing gets done.

Nobody knows the extent.

It's good that this is coming to light. I just wish they were running thee articles a few weeks ago or a few weeks from now.

I noticed also on local the news coverage of the strike: the noon news tended to be more accurate and anchormen even joined the reporters in sympathetic remarks about the Union. By nightime, all the clips were carefully selected and the anchormen reigned in to speak the owner's (Bloomberg) line.
I think it was a function of "live" vs "pre-chewed" - but also "less scrutiny".
I remember some almost 20 years ago, before cable, when networks just started sone "all night news" shows. It was a joy to listen them - they had cudos in magazines...If you'd be up at 3 AM, you'd actually get the news...

The technology was much more primitive, yet it had a simple genius to it: the government standard issue phone came with the bug (at no extra cost) and you had to have THAT kind of phone. Did I mention the bug picked conversations IN THE ROOM as well?