Dude, this database is a completely different program from the one monitoring international calls to terror affiliates.

I should also point out that, unlike the content of your calls, there are currently no laws limiting anyone from obtaining records of our calls.

In addition to the comment above noting that this is a different program.... The NSA program that was in the news previously was about listening to the content of the calls, this is not.

Currently there are no laws, but there should be and as the article you linked pointed out, Sen. Schumer is working to change that.

As to the fact that it was a different program, ultimately I think that's a red herring. At the time the original program was revealed, there were concerns that it was a data-mining type of operation. Traffic analysis. And in response to this Bush claimed "I authorized a terrorist surveillance program" that was "a targeted program" that applied "only to international communications." That's like the Chewbacca defense. Many Bush critics were concerned that "the program" was domestic data-mining. Which is exactly what this "new program" is doing. What did they have to do, say the secret word?

This is TIA all over again. It's a colossal fishing expedition. I think it's intelligence equivalent of trying to make our ports invulnerable.

For the record, I have no opinion on this whatsoever. My brain is full up.

Hell, I barely have an opinion myself. I wouldn't describe myself as "OUTRAGED" over this, but I definitely don't like the domestic data-mining.

But what you're saying is ...

...

"BUSH LIED?!"

For reals?!

...

Yeah. Well. "Bush lied" in non-caps. How about "Bush is full of crap"?

Wow, "...Bush lied..." Whatta concept.

What makes you think that the tripe about this being a "..a very non-targeted program..." will hold water after the string of exposed lies and misinformation delivered to us by this administration up to this point? What makes you confident enough with the previous lies from the mouth of the 'decider-in-chief' that "...we can take some comfort in the fact that it didn't monitor the content of the calls..." that you will continue to carry the administrations water and cut them every bit of slack you can. Who says there hasn't been phone conversation exactly? The d-i-c or the phone companies doing his bidding? Come on. We could use a good dose of Libertarianism in the next congress and some new folks with enough guts to restore the rights that have been caustically eroded by the current no-veto administration and the 'rubber stamp' Republicans who have given the concept of a representative republic two black eyes, a bloody nose, and a five year concussion.

waddayaknow, did you even read the post? Or the comments?

Dorkafork,

Isn't today's "news flash" what was reported in the Dec. 2005 NYT link that you noted above?

Not exactly. There are parts of the story that hint at domestic data-mining: "...the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications..." and "This so-called 'pattern analysis' on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom."

But it also includes a denial by the Bush administration: "Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda."

And the first sentence of the story says "The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States..." Now it's one thing to data-mine calls where one end is in the US, I don't really have a problem with that. The problem is data-mining purely domestic calls, something that Bush essentially denied after the story broke. (The Bush statement I linked above was also made after this NYT piece.)

Once upon a time, to call someone you signaled the operator and told her who you wanted to call - which she would subsequently gossip about.

The telephone switch was actually invented by a mortuary owner because his competitor had paid off the telephone company operator to connect his calls to his competitor instead.

Today, you dial digits into a handset, those digits are transmitted to the phone company switch which uses them to address your call, those numbers and your own phone number are captured by the phone company for billing ( and captured by the telephone destination sometimes, such as if you dialed an 800 number ), all of those billing records are kept in a database by the phone company which has already sent you a "privacy" disclosure that says you don't have any privacy, and then each month those calling records are printed on a piece of paper and mailed to you.

And you think there is a privacy issue here?

This could be a useful tool. If we find out a terrorist's phone number 6 months from now, we would know all of the people he has ever talked to (or at least their phone numbers, and the physical location of the phone).

If that's all they use it for, then it is a great idea! But how do we know that's all they use it for though? I've always been a fan of checks and balances, and I don't see any here.

Yes, and the privacy issue is why Schumer's trying to make selling call logs illegal.

I'm underwhelmed with anyone's concern over this program. Not the least of my don't-give-a-rat's-ass attitude is because this program, or others so similar as to be indistinguishable, have been in effect for decades.

I'm too tired after a very long week to try to show you the error in your analysis, dorkafork, especially since I doubt that anything could budge you off your position, but you've left some glaring gaps in coming to your conclusion.

And I apologize if this sounds condescending, since it's not intended to be. I could have waited until I wasn't so tired, but...

Words escape me. Off to bed for Boyd-o.

I was on a jury for a murder case in NYC, and the prosecution used phone logs that helped us determine that the defendant was implicated in the murder. So we sent him to jail. Afterwards the judge told us that he had been tried several times before for other murders, but of course we couldn't know that during the trail. I wonder if we had been denied the phone logs, that maybe this guy would be out on the streets again. My point is: phone logs really do help catch bad guys sometimes.

I don't really see how you can claim that Bush "lied," since these are two different programs.

Yeah, right. Chuckie Schumer write a good law? You'd have better luck finding a good driver in the Kennedy family. You've got the right guy though. He knows all about data mining. Just ask the Dem Senate committee workers. Did Schumer read Steele's credit report?

Boyd... wow, that is some world-class jackassery.

Sean M, let me try and make it clearer. Initial reporting comes out on an NSA program where the NSA is looking at calls made by Americans without a warrant. Headlines say "Domestic Spying." The NYT article that broke the story came out on Dec. 16. The Times report on data-mining I linked above came out a week later on Dec. 23. Bush made his remarks a month later on Jan. 25. He stressed that it was only international calls and they were targeted at people that intelligence professionals had reason to believe had ties to terrorists. Now that's not an outright lie, I'd like to avoid a semantic argument, but I'd say it's disingenous enough to be considered a lie.

You have people worried about data-mining international calls of Americans, and these concerns are reported as "Domestic Spying." The President argues against the idea they're doing "Domestic Spying" and stresses the program deals only with international calls of people with terrorist connections. Then you have reports about actual data-mining of domestic calls, and what would the President's response be? "Oh, I was talking about Program A. Program A isn't "Domestic Spying". That's Program B, the Domestic Spying program." This sort of argument makes it hard to believe any denials. Now he says the content isn't monitored, but how do we know there isn't some "Program C"?

This is all arguable, but what is not arguable is that Bush is lying right now about the new program. Here's his statement in response to the database story. "First, our intelligence activities strictly target al Qaeda and their known affiliates." That's crap. "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." By definition they are mining the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.

Dorkafork,

I can agree with you this far -- Bush is engaging in some Clintonist word-parsing in his use of "surveillance" and "monitoring." If those words are strictly limited to "listening and taping," then he is being narrowly honest. If they more broadly mean "any traffic analysis," then he is/was not being honest.

I can forgive the President a little lattitude in trying to contain intelligence leaks of the scale we seem to now have. The point of the database, in my understanding, is it is now easy enough to check the outgoing call record of a newly discovered terror suspect, and this would allow the inspection of past recieved calls as well. I can't really see the hub-bub over phone bills, other than from some purely principled position. It falls under reasonable searches in my mind.

It's one thing to create a database of phone logs. I'd imagine the phone companies are required by law to keep records like that for a certain amount of time. And searching the phone logs of a newly discovered terror suspect is eminently reasonable. That is quite different, however, from providing the government logs of every single call made in America merely so the government can play around with algorithms in an attempt to discover terrorist cells.

That is quite different, however, from providing the government logs of every single call made in America merely so the government can play around with algorithms in an attempt to discover terrorist cells.

How so? Seems perfectly reasonable to me. In fact, it actually strikes me as a pretty innovative program. (disclaimer: part of my job centers around data mining, so I have a good idea how something like that goes)

It all depends on how one proceeds with the information.

All joking/political shots aside? I wouldn't be shocked if far left activists come up in response to the terror-seeking model, which is a scenario where you'd get a potential snafu. Or not.

there's nothing to worry about, folks! unless you've called somebody suspicious. like your uncle who one time slurred out 'bush sucks' in a bar with empty gennie cans surrounding him. or your weirdo cousin who went to a PETA meeting once. or dorkafork, who is endangering national security by even BLOGGING about this secret program.

Eh, I wouldn't overhype the threat of data mining. From the most rudimentary perspective, the program probably would reference a set of call profiles of known terrorists and their specific contacts, and the system flags all domestic calls that hit these contacts, ranking them the more contacts they hit. But that's too basic.

On a more advanced level, the program has a list of phone logs from known terrorists, and uses ALL of their contacts to form a profile, which then creates a model that ranks all calls in the database. All those in the top decile might be "a certain % likely to be associated with terrorists." Which is a good investigative start. Specific matches might be ranked even higher, based on matches of specific terrorist phone numbers; some might be a red herring, as, due to the fact that all jihadis are obsessed with 1-900 sex numbers, it might distractedly rank a flurry of these numbers as "terrorist-like," and thus indicate the need to clap dorkafork in irons.

There are other levels of complexity, involving various other data overlays - for example, if they purchase credit demographics based on identity or reverse look-up of phone numbers, there might be a wealth of other data to sharpen the patterns/profile and increase the predictibility of the model; "arab ethnicity" would bring a serious boost to the score, for example - but those are the basic premises behind a program like this.

To be honest, I'd be rather scornful/ashamed if our government wasn't simply cross-referencing phone logs to bust any domestic terror operatives calling known terrorist numbers. Further statistical modeling is a bright program, and the guy that took that angle is keeping up with innovations used in private industry.

Again though, if the FBI kicks down one's door because you fit a certain pattern, it would be a very bad thing - it depends on the action one takes with the information. The information though, used right, could be useful. The devil is in the details.

The main threat of this data-mining to me is the threat of the slippery slope. (That it seems relatively benign and reasonable adds to that threat.)

I would think that a guy like you, Bill, whose phone call logs would be filled with numbers of... let's just call them "chat" lines... would see at least a small potential for abuse.

Oh boy... "Bush lied." I'm reminded of a kindergartner every time there is this knee-jerk reflex to label the president a liar. Well-adjusted adults look a little closer before they assume that a statement is "a lie."

How about this means that there is more than one NSA program? Or how about "wire tapping" and data collection that anyone can buy being not the same thing? Or how about you don't have enough information to judge if Bush lied about this?

I'm with Bill. If the records are for sale at all and perfectly legal to buy, then why can't the NSA buy them? If Qwest will give your phone records to its subsidiaries so they can sell you something, but not to the NSA so they can establish the network of terrorists, what does that really say about Qwest?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/01/americablog-just-bought-general-wesley.html

This isn't news: it's an orchestrated effort to make Hayden's confirmation more difficult.

I have to agree with dorkafork on a number of levels here. Sure it sounds nice when you can track a known terrorist's phone records. Don't think anyone would complain about that. But what defines a terrorist? Recent news reports exposed FBI and DOD spying on Quakers, a Catholic co-op, a vegan group, and anti-war protestors. So is dissent now threatening? Refusal to eat meat? Warrants require some existing evidence that there is something real to look into. But if you have a giant permanent database of phone calls (and emails which isn't getting the same media coverage), you can bet it isn't going to be used just for terrorists. Toss in dissenters, political enemies, people you might need some leverage over. The potential for abuse is enormous. The deeper question is also "what don't we know about?"

Also this is the second time he lied about the extent of the program. Before the first warrantless wiretap program was exposed in 2005, Bush said this in July 2004:

“A couple of things that are very important for you to understand about the Patriot Act. First of all, any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order.”

The potential for abuse is enormous. The deeper question is also "what don't we know about?"

Which makes it hard to wholly criticize or support the program intelligently, with public information. "Potential for abuse" doesn't mean abuse, and trusting wholeheartedly that the govt won't abuse its power is naive.

That said, the very existence of a data mining program is a good thing, IMO - it's all about what is done with the information, and what organizational safeguards keep folks from being exorbidantly harrassed when they are lit up in the results.

As it is, we've heard no uproar from individuals that have had their door kicked in, so I'm not inclined to condemn the program out of hand on hypotheticals of "slippery slope," which is, almost as a rule, a vacuous catch-all argument.

But if you have a giant permanent database of phone calls (and emails which isn't getting the same media coverage), you can bet it isn't going to be used just for terrorists.

That's why it's "investigation." Lots of innocent people are investigated by lots of authorities over lots of things. Usually if their nose is clean, they're left alone. The standard that the govt bothering people itself is terrible reminds me of the outcry when the FBI started interviews in the Arab American community after 9-11. The interviews were polite, and as much intended to make informational inroads into the community as they were to specifically sniff out radicals - but the cry of "racist harrassment" was heard from many quarters.

As far as anti-war protestors go, I wouldn't be shocked if some of them were donating money or providing other material support to Palestinian terrorist organizations, considering some of the rallies I've attended as an observer.

To sum up, again, what is done with the info? What protections are in place? What oversight? I dunno. But I'll tell you - if you think that it's going to get easier to stop terrorists, as hiercarchies continue to flatten and it becomes very very easy for a nut with a vendetta to blow up a city, you're in for a shock. There may come a day where we're begging for a lot more informational warfare than this, and that day may come soon. Shrug.

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