I’ll offer a guess here as to the reason for the warrantless domestic spying and see what you think, especially those of you who may be a little more ‘inside’ than I.
The admin keeps saying they had a time problem in getting warrants and indeed they did. And that is because by the time they realized they needed a warrant, the spying had already taken place, at least IMHO. That is the nature of universal computerized electronic eavesdropping. It records and monitors everything everywhere, and reacts to specific keywords, like “bomb.” To work effectively, though, this system has to monitor everything. Easvesdropping must become universal and pervasive. And it is the NSA which most likely has this electronic capacity. That is the summary of my hunch anyway.
The project to do this began under Adm. Poindextrer and was written about at the time until the project went black about a year ago. Here is an AP article which specifically discusses the nature of the project,its purpose and its clandestine status.
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2004/02/ap022304.html
Associated Press
February 23, 2004
Here are some tidbits
Despite an outcry over privacy implications, the government is pressing ahead with research to create ultrapowerful tools to mine millions of public and private records for information about terrorists …….
“The whole congressional action looks like a shell game,” said Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks work by U.S. intelligence agencies. “There may be enough of a difference for them to claim TIA was terminated while for all practical purposes the identical work is continuing.”….
ARDA, the research and development office, sponsors corporate and university research on information technology for U.S. intelligence agencies. It is developing computer software that can extract information from databases as well as text, voices, other audio, video, graphs, images, maps, equations and chemical formulas. It calls its effort “Novel Intelligence from Massive Data.”
So, to recap, they couldn’t get a warrant because the spying had already taken place by their electronic means. IT giveth and IT taketh away.
Cheers
Jim
I’ve been HAARPing on this subject for a while.
Here’s another version of the same article with a few more tidbits. Notice the mention of when funding stops. If they’re giving us this because it’s now over, where are they now in development?
I’m not up to finding the link right now but Rummy admitted that he planned on going ahead with TIA under a different name.
However, I think this particular NSA program is a little different than what you are talking about. That is not to say you’re not right, just that I think the issue you raise is separate from the current debate.
I think this NSA program basically takes the cell phone or email records of a terrorist, or suspected terrorist, and it authorizes the NSA to monitor all the Americans in those records.
The issue is whether such time sensitive material can be monitored in a timely manner using the FISA court, or not.
And I would say that procedures could be set up to make it possible to get a warrant in a timely manner. If not, at the very least they could submit the request to a court as soon as surveillance starts and stop it if the court rules it out of bounds. But this step is probably unnecessary and the courts would probably find it unconstitutional without the granting of special Congressionally approved war powers.
The ties between the NSA/similar offices and regular phone wiretaps is fairly old with Infosys and Amdocs leading in that department.
The neocons pretty much took over the NSA in the first term especially and that would put them at the center of many different interests questioned.
How about the chance that this is as much related to industrial espionage and prewar planning/competition or even tied back to the AIPAC Frankin(and all) spy scandals.
The wireless and cell phone competition had some early troubles with corporations trying to get control of that new industry in Iraq.
Somebody else, Graham maybe, said they came out of meetings feeling it was a new technology issue rather than a policy issue. …catch-up of sorts.
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Oversaw the Process for Awarding the Wireless Contract
WASHINGTON March 3, 2005 — A congressional committee led by Rep. Bob Ney awarded a $3 million wireless contract to an Israeli telecommunications provider that had retained and made contributions to a now-indicted lobbyist with close ties to Ney. The lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, has been charged with fraud in connection with an unrelated matter, his purchase of a Fort Lauderdale casino cruise line in 2001.
Complete story in my diary ::
Scanlon Pleads Guilty in Conspiracy Abramoff & Bob Ney Accused
See also diary on Israeli airport security contracts …
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
one question…
Why haven’t you stopped these people yet?
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working on it!
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
best news I’ve heard all day!
Actually, all snark aside, Fitzgerald is one of the few hopefull signs in the midst of all this insanity.
I agree and I was going to make that comment but I thought what if it’s not snark?
…naw, couldn’t be,…right?
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NSA assets were spent on industrial spying, not on terror risks during the nineties. We’re a nation running corporate business, not concerned with damage control or collateral damage.
We just spread the Wings of the Eagle for some Lebensraum in the ME near recognizable landmarks.
So What’s New? – Electronic Spies
In 1946, Soviet school children presented a two foot wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States to Ambassador Averell Harriman.
Posted earlier in diary by Jefferson Democrat ::
NSA and the Bill Clinton Years
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
.
Jeb Bush in Florida took the initiative and embraced Florida corporations with some no-bid contracts to further the MATRIX development through DBT Online Inc., Accenture and Seisint Technology.
MATRIX, anacronym for the
“Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange” Program
Accenture and Seisint Form Strategic Alliance
Must read my work @dKos earlier this year ::
Accenture | Cheney | Halliburton | Ghost of Enron | SAIC & US Elections
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
The article does address speech recognition work and it must be pretty advanced if you can voice order your cell phone these days. …and….They are talking about international calls, I believe. And conveniently, NASA launches all US communications sattelites, so I suppose it would be comparatively easy to insert a device, before launch, to beam down all the traffic to the NSA.
Met the fellow who started the sat-phone net once upon a time when he was looking for funding back in the 90s. Nice fella, but seemed like a real ‘inside’ guy. IIRC he had a background in some department of the government.
Voice to text is probably 20-30 years old, as a guess but when we went all digital it made it much easier for them. I remember seeing somewhere that the underwater intern. cables were specifically named to be covered but that was long ago too.