From Defense Tech: “A few current and former signals intelligence guys have been checking in since this NSA domestic spying story broke. Their reactions range between mildly creeped out and completely pissed off.”
Is the NSA data-mining emails and phone calls, in a technological offshoot of Poindexter’s cancelled Total Information Awareness project? If so, then that would contradict Bush’s insistence that his warrantless domestic spying operation was limited to Americans with ties to terrorists operating overseas. Because data-mining is very broad–like looking for a needle in a haystack. It may also explain why the Bush administration would be reluctant and/or unable to obtain a warrant.
More evidence that this may be the case is a Times article that DefenseTech links to, which reports that the NSA expanded its eavesdropping to include people indirectly connected to suspected terrorists. People with ten or twelve degrees of separation from al Qaeda, which might include your grandma or anyone.
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Balkinization has an excellent analysis of the Bush administration’s arguments: “The basic problem is that when government officials are given exceptions from ordinary civil liberties protections to stop “terrorism” the definition of terrorism will inevitably expand.”