Andrea Mitchell & Diane Feinstein -- ECHELON?

Did you catch that weird little interplay between Andrea Mitchell and Diane Feinstein Monday night on Hardball?

Mitchell appeared to bring up the topic of Echelon in their discussion of the NSA spying. Feinstein backed right off, sounding surprised at the notion that multiple conversations could be monitored simultaneously. She muttered something about not knowing anything about that, and meantime Mitchell appeared to be backpeddling.

What was that about? Was Mitchell about to spill something that the citizens aren't allowed to know?

I'll watch for the transcript, although this portion will probably be labeled "crosstalk."

That's interesting, wonder why DiFi pretended not to know about Echelon.

Wonder what DiFi had to do with getting that implemented....

hmmm.... :shrug:

it seems unlikely. Here's some reading material:

Senator Dianne Feinstein on the President’s Comments Regarding Patriot Act and Domestic Spying - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1458

Feinstein Releases Nonpartisan CRS Report that Concludes Congress Did Not Have Access to Full Scope of Prewar Intelligence - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1430

Diane Feinstein Denounces Decision of the President to Authorize Domestic Spying by the NSA - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1425

Try to get someone from the press or even notable bloggers to chat with you about the CIA. They don't like to talk about such things. Ever. The national security state exists and the citizens are not supposed to know about it and the people in the know are not allowed to talk about it.

eom

Does this exchange make sense?




FEINSTEIN: ... so I don‘t understand why they would not have gone or allowed the attorney general to exercise this, why the administration took it upon themselves to authorize, without any oversight by the Congress that‘s effective oversight, the surveillance of Americans.

MITCHELL: Well, what they‘re saying is that technology has changed, that you can‘t just go to this court with a couple of telephone numbers, that when they capture someone like Abu Zubaydah, chief of operations or the number three in Al Qaeda, they have a laptop with potentially thousands of phone numbers, that they had to move fast, and based on a whole web of these numbers.

FEINSTEIN: Oh, but wait a second. And this is where it becomes difficult. If you‘re going to say that the American military can electronically surveil literally thousands of Americans at a given time without any oversight by a court...

MITCHELL: Isn‘t that what the president is saying?

FEINSTEIN: ... I‘d have a very hard time thinking it was thousands. I mean, it may be tens, unless they‘re going in and taking records on a level that I am not aware of.

MITCHELL: Well, we‘ve been told—we at NBC News have...

FEINSTEIN: Well now, altogether over four years, they‘ve said that this could amount to the thousands.

MITCHELL: Exactly.