So we all know Bush broke the law, and illegally allowed the NSA to spy on American citizens. He says that “the practice is limited to occasions when an individual in the U.S. is communicating with someone overseas who has a known link to Al Qaeda, other terrorist groups or their supporters.”
However, the LA Times has a different spin, in an article I found in the writeup on CorrenteWire
One former NSA signals-intelligence analyst, Russell D. Tice, said the agency has long had such ability.
“I’m not allowed to say one way or another what the NSA is or is not doing. But the technology exists,” said Tice, who left the NSA this year.
“Say Aunt Molly in Oklahoma calls her niece at an Army base in Germany and says, ‘Isn’t it horrible about those terrorists and Sept. 11?’ ” Tice said: That conversation would not only be captured by NSA satellites listening in on Germany — which is legal — but flagged and listened to by NSA analysts and possibly transcribed for further investigation.
“All you would have to do is move the vacuum cleaner a little to the left and begin sucking up the other end of that conversation,” Tice said. “You move it a little more and you could be picking up everything people are saying from California to New York.”
Interesting. Please allow me to quote TNH: “I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.”
In a completely unrelated citation, please allow me to quote from the offical NSA web site:
Americans expect NSA to conduct its missions within the law. But given the inherently secret nature of those missions, how can Americans be sure that the Agency does not invade their privacy?
The 4th Amendment of the Constitution demands it… oversight committees within all three branches of the U.S. government ensure it… and NSA employees, as U.S. citizens, have a vested interest in upholding it. Respecting the law is only a part of gaining Americans’ trust.
Well, that makes me feel much better.
Finally, in a third–and completely unrelated–citation, allow me to quote from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary definition of progaganda:
ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
