More NSA spying
The latest from USA Today:
By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAYNote another instance where the president mislead the American people by only admitting to what was publically known at the time:
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.
In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."
As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.
Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.
posted by Bravo 2-1 at 10:02 AM
2 Comments:
That's a ridiculous twisting of his words. They're amassing people's phone *records*, not listening in on the calls. That's far different, and clearly what Bush was referring to.
Since phone companies keep these records and the government has the right to acquire them at any time (with a required by law warrant), why then would it be necessary for the govt to compile a database?
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