Updated
Richard Falkenrath has an op/ed in today’s Washington Post in which he explains how the NSA’s phone call records program is not only necessary for national security but for civil liberties as well.
On Thursday, USA Today reported that three U.S. telecommunications companies have been voluntarily providing the National Security Agency with anonymized domestic telephone records — that is, records stripped of individually identifiable data, such as names and place of residence. If true, the architect of this program deserves our thanks and probably a medal. That architect was presumably Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and President Bush’s nominee to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The potential value of such anonymized domestic telephone records is best understood through a hypothetical example. Suppose a telephone associated with Mohamed Atta had called a domestic telephone number A. And then suppose that A had called domestic telephone number B. And then suppose that B had called C. And then suppose that domestic telephone number C had called a telephone number associated with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The most effective way to recognize such patterns is the computerized analysis of billions of phone records. The large-scale analysis of anonymized data can pinpoint individuals — at home or abroad — who warrant more intrusive investigative or intelligence techniques, subject to all safeguards normally associated with those techniques.
Read the whole piece.
Hat tip: Andy McCarthy at The Corner
Update: Mark Steyn also has an article today that is spot on accurate about the media:
So there are now two basic templates in terrorism media coverage:
Template A (note to editors: to be used after every terrorist atrocity): “Angry family members, experts and opposition politicians demand to know why complacent government didn’t connect the dots.”
Template B (note to editors: to be used in the run-up to the next terrorist atrocity): “Shocking new report leaked to New York Times for Pulitzer Prize Leak Of The Year Award nomination reveals that paranoid government officials are trying to connect the dots! See pages 3,4,6,7,8, 13-37.”
He also explains that in order to connect the dots, we have to be able to see the dots:
I’m a strong believer in privacy rights. I don’t see why Americans are obligated to give the government their bank account details and the holdings therein. Other revenue agencies in other free societies don’t require that level of disclosure. But, given that the people of the United States are apparently entirely cool with that, it’s hard to see why lists of phone numbers (i.e., your monthly statement) with no identifying information attached to them is of such a vastly different order of magnitude. By definition, “connecting the dots” involves getting to see the dots in the first place.
Update II: Glenn Reynolds reports that President Bush’s approval numbers have jumped six points since the story about the NSA’s program was published and the criticism ensued.
Ooh, I found a case from 28 years ago at Findlaw that proves me right! (or rather saw it linked by another blog). Law never changes!
Sorry, drjohn, your ruling from ’79 doesn’t mean squat since pen registers were dealt with in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in 1984. To use or obtain information from a pen register, law enforcement must obtain a court order showing that the information is relevant to an ongoing investigation.
Since this is apparently news to the left, I’ll let you in on a secret:
The government does not, in fact, have an infinite number of people with an infinite amount of time to try and track the people involved with somewhere in the neighborhood of SEVERAL TRILLION CALLS A MONTH. If the gov’t spent one second trying to trace every single call, they’d only be busy for the next couple of decades for one month of calls. And imagine the hell on Earth if there is an unusually busy month. Wow! How many employees do you think the NSA has?
There is no crime committed here (you see, if there WAS a crime committed here, those of you convinced this is probably illegal would likely be able to point to a statute that this violated). This is no invasion of privacy as it is so absurdly large with no identifying names or the like attached that it is meaningless. This is all fed into a computer.
I heard the left bitch, incessantly, that “why didn’t the administration connect the dots?” The administration then puts things in place that allow it to connect the dots and gets ripped.
The left is nothing if not hypocritical. Clinton IGNORES the UN entirely to deal with Kosovo and he’s held up as an examplar of int’l relations (ignoring that his “coalition of the willing” was smaller than Bush’s). Bush actually tries to go through the UN and he’s “ignoring his allies”.
Clinton openly STEALS FBI files OF HIS OPPONENTS and it’s not a big deal. Certainly not a “crisis”. Bush gathers UNTOLD TRILLIONS OF PHONE NUMBERS AND DATES and he’s suddenly trying to nose into peoples’ lives?
Clinton eavesdrops on domestic calls for solely political reasons and it’s hardly a huge scandal. Bush eavesdrops on international calls involving terrorists and it’s suddenly impeachable?
Why not spend more time worrying about an agency that REALLY does have a very personally intensive file of info about you that you are required, by law, to update constantly.
You know, the IRS.
Oh, and MikeT, about the Muslims — keep in mind it wasn’t a massive power than destroyed the Roman Empire. It was a bunch of smaller barbarian tribes that did the trick.
-=Mike
“Sorry, drjohn, your ruling from ’79 doesn’t mean squat since pen registers were dealt with in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in 1984. To use or obtain information from a pen register, law enforcement must obtain a court order showing that the information is relevant to an ongoing investigation.”
Cite the statute, please.
“I don’t want either to end. I like being alive.”
I think that’s just the issue here – you nailed it. You’re scared and you want the government to protect you. You are willing to give up some of your liberties.
>> What liberties would those be? Companies RIGHT NOW and for the last few years have been selling your phone records to marketers. WHY is it any different for the government to have them? Your argument is simply not tenable.
I think the left, in this case, isn’t as scared and isn’t willing to give up so many liberties.
>> Nah. The left wants Bush to be harmed more than they want citizens to be safe.
“But again, it is legal right now.”
After independent judicial review, I do not think it will stand. Neither do most legal experts. (Because bypassing FISA is illegal) However, we may never see it actually challenged due to the administrations efforts into blocking any investigation/oversite. (Because they know it’s illegal – otherwise, it would proceed)
>> Then how is it phone records are FOR SALE RIGHT NOW?
mantis
Try checking US code section 2709.
“Most legal experts seemed to agree that the government could collect a huge database of phone records without violating the Constitution’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
Hosenball and Thomas, Newsweek
“What I dont understand is why this process could not have been done with Congressional oversight and judicial approval.”
Uh, because it isn’t the job of Congress to protect the country? Is there a Democratic Senator-in-Chief I don’t know about?
Uh, didn’t Congress pass the original law funding NSA, and isn’t a Congressional committee briefed on this subject on a regular basis? How much of this story is really news to our bloviating liberal friends in the Senate?
Sorry, folks. What really stands out, if we stick our fingers in our ears long enough to block out the indidnant sputtering from the left for a few seconds, is that USNews conveniently broke yet another unsourced story just before a confirmation process, this time for Michael Hayden. I keep hearing liberals go all a-twitter about “transparency”. What’s transparent is the timing of this “breaking news story”. This is about stopping Hayden’s confirmation.
If this isn’t yet another staged controversy from the left, I’ll eat my hat. The timing of this story tells it all — it’s just a little too delicious. Once again, a whining liberal beaureaucrat committed treason and passed secret information to a willing Press, all too eager to inflate the story beyond any pretense of common sense. I’ve seen way too many instances of this kind of manufactured “news” to give it any credence at all, and most of the grownups have figured it out.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once.
I’m just floored that the left has no problem with leaking info such as this.
I mean, considering how upset they were over Plame and all.
Clinton didn’t get this kind of irrational bashing.
“And how do you people know that the government doesn’t have access to a database that matches your phone numbers to your name?”
I would assume the government would have such a thing. After all the phone company delivers a book to everyone that does exactly that…you know, the phonebook with everyone’s phone number and address in it?
Oh, and before the “unlisted” argument comes up get ready for a shock….if you are a telemarketer you can purchase unlisted and unregistered numbers from the phone company…they just cost more and if you aren’t on the No Call List they can call you. Ditto if you ever did business with them in some fashion.
Oh, and for a free online database matching names to phone numbers and addresses…
http://www.411.com
To think this is suddenly new or Big Brotherish you just haven’t been paying attention to what personal info has been available for years…legally.
They have the personal calls of millions of Americans logged. Are we to assume they don’t look at them?”
Logging number to number registrations is NOT mining your personal life. You guys throw the word “lie” around so easily it’s bizarre.
The reply dodged the question. Yes, they have number to number registrations, but that also have the telephone conversations and email traffic as well.
Are we to assume they aren’t scanning those calls and emails for terrorist traffic as well? The government thinks they don’t have to reveal the answer to that question because it’s a secret.
We must compel the government to answer that question.
Lee, they don’t have the audio of the calls because it is impossible to listen to several trillion calls a month.
-=Mike