I'm not a tinfoil hat type of person. Exact opposite, really. I never look for a conspiracy when good old-fashioned incompetence and stupidity offer an reasonable explanation. So it is with extreme reluctance that I have picked up a roll of the shiny stuff.
Here's my teaser: What type of international electronic conversation strikes the greatest fear into the heart of the Bush Administration?
My scary answer over the fold:
bradspangler wrote a thought-provoking
diary and lipris wrote this
one. The question both diarists asked is - If the Bushies didn't want to take the NSA content in front of the FISA court, what were they hiding? As others have pointed out, there are some clues:
- It isn't Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda sympathizers. These folks already know good spycraft (anyone seen Bin Laden lately?) and virtually any measure would be instantly approved by the FISA court.
- It HAS to involve American nationals - Several Bushie people have admitted this and the NSA doesn't need extra permission to spy on anyone else.
- The references to 'technology' and 'detection' in the various administration statements suggest that they may be trying to 'sift out' or 'locate' conversations and transmissions of interest.
If they're trying to detect interesting conversations, what are they looking for and what are they likely to find? It must involve conversations American-to-American or American-to-foreigner that touch on hot-button topics in the GWOT. Where would most of these conversations occur? Its probably not among American executives, buyers, sales personnel on business trips, or mothers' talking to their kids on vacation.
It probably crops up among people that are deeply concerned about the war and desperate to talk about their feelings, such as activists, progressives, academics and naturalized Americans talking to family and friends in the 'old country'. But these are small potatoes - and damn predictable. By now, the Bushies can probably write our rants for us. So who's left ...
... ta da ...
<tinfoil on>
The biggest, juciest target is American personnel posted in Iraq and Afghanistan when they talk to their families and friends at home.
The biggest threat to the Bushie agenda is the truth. The kind of truth soldiers told Hackworth. The kind of truth soldiers tell Clark, Hackett and Murtha. The kind of truth that leaked Abu Ghraib to Sy Hersh. These conversations would contain lots of keywords and references to Al Qaeda, jihad, US Army, etc. They would pop up in any big electronic fishing net.
- When Capt. Jones sounds off to his brother about the total F*up in Falluja, is NSA listening? When Sgt. Ramirez tells his mother that morale is in the shitter, is NSA listening?
- When an ABC reporter tells his/her editor about an off-the-record interview with a US major, is NSA listening?
- When a contractor tells his wife in Texas that security 'consultants' are running amok among Iraqi civilians, is NSA listening?
<tinfoil off>
I don't know if any of this is true. But I do know that the Bushies must be dying to know where the leaks are coming from. They must be dying for advance warning before the next big turd hits the rotating blades. Ultimately, this raises two huge questions:
- Has the NSA used its capability to spy on US personnel (military and civilian) in Iraq and Afghanistan?
- If it hasn't, what is to prevent it from being tempted to do so when the Administration really gets desperate?
I have absolutely no answers - But someone should sure as hell ask them!