NSA Data Mining Much Larger Than Reported

silassewell writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that the "volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged." The NSA gained the cooperation of many American telecommunication companies after 9/11 to access streams of communication, both domestic and international, as a part of a presidentially approved program to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity.

Comments

It's a new technology...

[farrellj]

The people over at Ars Technica have a great little article about this whole fiasco concerning the wiretapping of US citizens without a warrent...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051220-5808 .html

From the article:

"Now let's take a look a statement of former senator Bob Graham (D-FL), who was one of the few senators to be briefed on the program. From a new Washington Post article:

        "I came out of the room with the full sense that we were dealing with a change in technology but not policy," Graham said, with new opportunities to intercept overseas calls that passed through U.S. switches."

and

" This system's [TIA] purpose would be to monitor communications and detect would-be terrorists and plots before they happen... This project is not interested in funding "evolutionary" changes in technology, e.g., bit-step improvements to current data mining and storage techniques. Rather, the amount of data that the directors are anticipating (petabytes!) would require massive leaps in technology (and perhaps also some massive leaps in surveillance laws). According to DARPA, such data collection "increases information coverage by an order of magnitude," and ultimately "requires keeping track of individuals and understanding how they fit into models.""

ttyl
          Farrell

Bullshit. You're distoring the law.

[Reality Master 201]

Ok, look, if you're gonna quote the law, give us a link to it:

from FISA

Subchapter 1 (Electronic Surveillance) has the relevant passages of the law.

Though perhaps you didn't want to give us the link to that, because if you had, someone would have gone and read the law and seen that you're full of shit.

1. Your point about "not conflating a US person with a US citizen" is non sequitir and meaningless. A US citizen is a US person under the statute, as is a resident alien (a person granted a green card), among others:

   Section 1801
   (i) "United States person" means a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as defined in section 1101 (a)(20) of title 8), an unincorporated association a substantial number of members of which are citizens of the United States or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or a corporation which is incorporated in the United States, but does not include a corporation or an association which is a foreign power, as defined in subsection (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this section.

2. The section of the law you quote is only the definitions section. Specifically, you're quoting what the definition of Electronic Surveilance is. Nothing in what you quote actually discusses the LEGALITY of tapping activities in the US or the warrants required therefore. You missed section 1802 of FISA. This section is about "Electronic surveillance authorization without court order; certification by Attorney General; reports to Congressional committees; transmittal under seal; duties and compensation of communication common carrier; applications; jurisdiction of court." That section has the following to say about electronic surveilance and when warrants are needed:

   from Section 1802
   (1) Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath that--
   (A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at--
   (i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or
   (ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;
   (B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party;and

   (C) the proposed minimization procedures with respect to such surveillance meet the definition of minimization procedures under section 1801 (h) of this title; and

   if the Attorney General reports such minimization procedures and any changes thereto to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at least thirty days prior to their effective date, unless the Attorney General determines immediate action is required and notifies the committees immediately of such minimization procedures and the reason for their becoming effective immediately.

   Unless the communications take place completely under means controlled by a foriegn power (i.e., not involving US communications carriers), they are potentially subject to FISA judicial oversight requirements. If any party involved in said communication is a US person in the statute, a court order is required. This does not just apply to communications