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May 18, 2006
Updates on the NSA Program

Posted by Dorkafork

AT&T may be getting out of its lawsuit over the (reported) NSA program due to a legal loophole. According to CNET news.com:

An AT&T attorney indicated in federal court on Wednesday that the Bush administration may have provided legal authorization for the telecommunications company to open its network to the National Security Agency."
...
AT&T may be referring to an obscure section of federal law, 18 U.S.C. 2511, which permits a telecommunications company to provide "information" and "facilities" to the federal government as long as the attorney general authorizes it. The authorization must come in the form of "certification in writing by...the Attorney General of the United States that no warrant or court order is required by law."

Could get AT&T off the hook, but I wonder what kind of liability the AG would have if he certified no warrant or court order was required by law when it actually was required.

Please note that all of this may not have happened. Neither the Bush Administration nor AT&T would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the program. The fact that the Bush Administration is trying to get the case dismissed under the state secrets privilege should not be taken as confirmation.

Related: Statement by the key witness in the AT&T case for those interested. If correct, includes details such as names of some of the equipment used and room numbers where the equipment was located.

Bill Adds: I'm not sure if dorkafork is going for smart-ass points here ...

Please note that all of this may not have happened. Neither the Bush Administration nor AT&T would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the program. The fact that the Bush Administration is trying to get the case dismissed under the state secrets privilege should not be taken as confirmation.

... in response to my comment under the previous post, regarding his definitive assertion of illegal conduct ...

Ah, but you don't KNOW this, you ASSUME it.

And you may be right, and you may be wrong. Though Sen. Roberts seemed to intimate in his opening speech to the hearings today that there was some sort of judicial oversight/review of the program.

And given the lack of detail on the program and the fact that the phone companies have now denied giving the NSA any records, it's not clear WHAT is going on.

And if he were being a smart-ass, that would be mildly annoying, given that me asserting that a random dude on the internet shouting "illegal!" is somewhat premature - given incomplete information about the specifics of the program or what steps the government may or may not have taken to either comply with or flout the law - is completely different than somehow asserting that certain specific actions may have never taken place, with direct, contrary and subsequent information.

You see, he could wind up being completely right about the legality of the program ... but that still wouldn't grant retroactive authority to claim definitive omniscience now.

And of course, why would the government want to have the case dismissed under "the state secrets privilege" in the first place? I mean, if no law was broken, they'd rather HASH IT ALL OUT VIA MEDIA LEAKS FROM COURT, right? You know, the details of a SECRET NSA PROGRAM?

Just so dorkafork might be satisfied that there's no funny business going on?

But again, I have no idea whether he's being a smart-ass or not, as it's awful hard to tell with the kids these days.

And the ambiguity with regard to his potential sarcasm, combined with the lack of ambiguity with regard to his legal assertions also raise further uncomfortable possibilities: namely, that my co-blogger can either read minds across both distance and the fabric of time itself, or in fact serves as both an intelligence agent with the NSA and an attorney with the Justice Department, specifically tasked with reviewing the legal rationale, applications and data obtention methodology of top secret programs.

All sarcasm aside: of course we can make rational arguments and conclusions about the nature of something without omniscience - and I believe dorka's relevant analysis of given legal info is pretty good - but I get squirrely about the concept when we're jawing about secret intelligence programs; it becomes difficult to analyze with characteristically dodgy information about such enterprises, leaked in dribs and drabs to the press. This should not be interpreted as implicit faith in the virtue of the government on my part.

dorkafork adds: I should have made that clear that I was not being sarcastic in that part. I am the Sarcastic Boy Who Cried Wolf. Mea Culpa. In the comment I said "Kidding aside..." but added a sarcastic comment in a parenthetical, making it unclear.

I originally was inclined to believe the basics of the story were true, so if I am less than guarded in my statements, if they sound definitive, that is why. I would hope nobody takes my blatherings as statements of fact. And I'll be more careful with sarcasm.

P.S. Bill likes to wear women's clothing. Fact or sarcasm?

Bill Adds: I think he's being sarcastic again.

And I fail to see what my preferred haute couture on a frisky Saturday evening has anything to do with any of this.

Posted by Dorkafork at May 18, 2006 03:20 PM | TrackBack (2)

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Comments

This also means that I should be careful calling Bush a liar. The idea that he is lying is based on a presumption of guilt and then comparing it to his statement on the matter. It could be completely accurate if there is no purely domestic data-mining. If the story is true, the Left will have their smoking gun they've been vainly searching for the past few years.

Posted by: dorkafork at May 18, 2006 07:59 PM

What is that statement about again?

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 18, 2006 09:59 PM

The possibility exists that the allegations of the complaint in the suit are false, and yet the administration rightly gets the suit dropped because further discovery on the issue would reveal another classified program - may even be one with full FISA warrants etc.

Posted by: Robin Roberts at May 18, 2006 11:56 PM

That statement was made after the database story broke. The key statement is "We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans." And Robin is right, the equipment described by the AT&T technician could be used only for normal, legal surveillance. What a clusterf***.

Posted by: dorkafork at May 19, 2006 02:39 AM

We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.

That's the entire basis for your "smoking gun they've been vainly searching for the past few years?" Man, dorkafork. If the data mining is strictly anonymous, and is not applied to identifying individual terror suspects through predictive analysis, and thus has potentially zero potential to overlap into investigating a regular citizen - if - then Americans not only won't give a shit about what Bush said, how he characterized it, but his characterization also wouldn't be definitively closed to interpretation. You call this delusional semantics - I call this the meaning that Americans will apply when it's framed as a security issue, and the meaning that a rational person could take when he is aware of how anonymous data mining is conducted.

Marketers create lists with predictive data mining of public information far more personal than phone numbers, and actually send people something. If the government has a statistical bot that predicts terrorist attacks without actually interfacing individuals or their identities ...

His ridiculous stupidity was specifically using the word "mine."

PS - Where did you get your Kool-Aid? And what flavor is it? "Michael Moorange?"

PSS - it is interesting that USA Today may have gotten the story wrong, which is where things get really interesting. If so, I'm starting to buy the theory that Karl Rove feeds poison pills to the press.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 19, 2006 07:21 AM

I'm still finding some of the breathlessness about the NSA getting ( possibly ... ) long distance phone call data a bit out of proportion.

Allow me to quote from the IRS website with respect to our tax returns:

"By law, the IRS can share your tax information with city and state tax agencies, and in some
cases with the Department of Justice, other
federal agencies, and people you authorize.
We can also share it with certain foreign governments under tax treaty provisions."

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