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Politics : FREE AMERICA -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (5871)	5/12/2006 9:47:54 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14758

PHONY PHONE FLAP NSA JUST DOING ITS JOB By MICHELLE MALKIN NEW YORK Post Opinion May 12, 2006 -- IT'S never too early to start angling for a national security-undermining Pulitzer Prize. Yesterday, USA Today scraped the bottom of the Beltway leakers' barrel for a scare-mongering story about a secret counterterrorism program that collects phone-call data. Well, it used to be secret. So what if spilling the beans about all of our highest-level efforts to monitor al Qaeda operatives undermines the War on Terror, eh, fellas? Anyway, all the cool kids in elite journalism are doing it. Why should The Washington Post and New York Times get all the glory, right? And thus, USA Today tapped its anonymous, loose-lipped, illegally leaking sources and breathlessly disclosed a classified data-collection agreement between private phone companies AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth and the National Security Agency. According to the newspaper's piece (a naked attempt to derail former NSA head Gen. Michael Hayden's nomination as CIA chief): <<< "The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans - most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews." >>> Note, please: "This program does NOT involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations." They're looking at massive amounts of numbers and phone-call patterns, not eavesdropping on teenage lovers' quarrels or your neighbor's pizza order or Susan Sarandon's heart-to-hearts with Cindy Sheehan. And: "The spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity." Translation: The counterterror experts at the NSA are - gasp - doing their job. And - to their credit - some American companies are stepping up to the plate to help them. The paper admits the kind of data collection involved is not new. The Clinton administration's Echelon program was far more intrusive. President Bush made clear yesterday: "We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates. So far we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil." Nevertheless, the civil liberties Chicken Little are screaming "Bushitler!" on cue. What they should be screaming for are the heads of the blabbermouths endangering all of us by running to the fifth-column press when they don't get their way in Washington. But you can never find the leak-decriers when you need them, can you? Prediction: To the dismay of the USA Today prize-seekers and fear-stokers, most Americans won't react to their precious scoop by hysterically throwing their cellphones into the nearest lake and calling for President Bush's impeachment. I, for one, will be sure to continue to do business with Verizon, in support of its willingness to cooperate with the government to prevent another 9/11. In fact, I think I'll pick up the phone and give them a call right now. And if you're listening, NSA: Thank you. malkin@comcast.net nypost.com

To: KLP who wrote (5871)	5/12/2006 10:01:36 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14758

[T]he program has clear antecedents in a widely rumored surveillance program called Echelon, which was hotly debated across the Internet back in 1999 [but NOT in the liberal MSM] - nearly two years before President Bush took office. THIS WEEK'S TREASON NEW YORK POST Editorial May 12, 2006 Far from disqualifying Gen. Michael Hayden from the job of CIA director, the political and news media uproar over a report that the National Security Agency is mining data from domestic phone calls only reinforces why Hayden should be confirmed. For all the hyperventilating on the TV news and on Capitol Hill - by Republicans as well as Democrats, sad to say - there is little new in yesterday's "disclosure" by USA Today. And even less to cause Americans concern. As a matter of fact, prominent stories in both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times reported the details of the program months ago. And a lawsuit filed against the NSA in January spelled out specific details. Plus, the program has clear antecedents in a widely rumored surveillance program called Echelon, which was hotly debated across the Internet back in 1999 - nearly two years before President Bush took office. None of which stopped the pols from sputtering their outrage every time a TV camera started taping yesterday. "Our privacy as American citizens is at stake," yelped Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). "We're really flying blind on the subject," added Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who vowed to haul officials of the nation's phone companies before his panel. Nonsense. Even taking the USA Today story at face value, a number of things are clear. No one is listening in on domestic phone calls, as the NSA is doing to a limited number of international calls involving Americans suspected of terrorist links. What this database does is record phone numbers, in search of calling patterns that might tip terrorist activity. No names, no addresses. No personal information. Just phone numbers. (Still scared? Google your own phone number, and see what pops onto your screen.) Indeed, notes the Media Research Center, that's far less personal information than another government agency - the IRS - maintains on Americans, including investments, banking activity and even medical expenses. The Census Bureau, too, maintains a database with much more personal info than does the NSA. President Bush, while not confirming the existence of the alleged program, stressed that "we're not mining or trolling the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans individual privacy is being "fiercely protected." Indeed, all of the outrage neglects the stark fact that preventing another 9/11 demands the use of any sophisticated investigative techniques now available to law enforcement. Sophisticated enough to stay one step ahead of the terrorists. Equally troubling is that people in extraordinarily sensitive positions think nothing about leaking highly classified information to sympathetic reporters. As the president said yesterday, "Every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy." It seems clear that the latest leak was designed to keep Hayden, who is heavily involved in NSA surveillance activities, out of the CIA - which only shows just how much the spy agency needs to be shaken up. As columnist Robert Novak noted yesterday, the CIA in 2004 was a place where "criticism of George W. Bush and support for John Kerry were rampant," and where Director Porter Goss "found an entrenched bureaucracy" in which "CIA staffers savaged him in leaks to friendly journalists." That situation, coming on top of the agency's manifest intelligence failures, cannot be allowed to continue. It needs someone like Hayden - who understands the need to maximize efforts actually to defeat the terrorists - to whip the CIA into shape once and for all. nypost.com