This NSA story has not fully been told. I have no secret knowledge, but I would like, in this short diary, to ask a question or two. A question that any moderately well-informed person might well ask.
First, the administration, and Bush himself, obviously are very worried about this story. Shortly after the first revelations by the NY Times several months ago, Bush immediately responded with a statement on the matter. I watched that statement a number of times. Go find it on-line. I have never seen the president so shaken. He is pale, he is scared.
Again, a new revelation, and another immediate speech. This in itself is extremely rare; for Bush to respond to a single press article in an effort to get ahead of the story.
Second, the phone RECORDS of Americans are no big deal. The phone companies have a record of each call you make - with the length to the second and to whom. This is not state of the art technology or any big secret. Collecting this data is routine, and would in no way consist of the 'the biggest database ever in the world'.
Consider all efforts to get to the bottom of this program have failed. The secrecy is extraordinary. This can't just be about what are, essentially, billing records. This is the NSA we're talking about. They have tens of billions of dollars to work with. The have the most advanced technology in the world; stuff that the civilian world won't see for decades.
No, this is not about collecting billing records.
So what is it about? I don't know, but I can sure make an educated guess.
My guess is they are not just collecting the phone RECORDS of Americans, but that they are collecting the actual calls.
Sounds impossible, doesn't it? That they could actually record every single phone call Americans make, year after year, and store them away to listen to at their leisure? Remember, this is the NSA. They have been doing this already for international calls for years.
The legal parsing will go this way when it comes out - yes, we are recording the calls, but only with automated machines. We don't actually listen to them unless we get a court order.
Thus there is no invasion of privacy, thus there has been no violation of the law. We only keep them so if we need to later, if some event occurs that gives probable cause, we can then go and check the CONTENT of that person's calls for the last few years. That's how it will be spun.
Tell me I'm wrong.
This is my second diary this year.