Thursday, May 18, 2006

Yeah, sure

There's this naive assumption, even in Left Blogistan, that the NSA's phone monitoring program is hunting terrorists.
If the truth ever comes out, I think we will find that the program actually is tracking all the Enemies of the Bush State -- journalists, talk show hosts, media executives, Quakers, peace activists, progressives, liberals, Hollywood movie stars, members of NARAL, gay rights organizations, environmentalists, Democratic politicians and Al Gore.
Today Josh Marshall and Digby both reference a Baltimore Sun story about how NSA had a computer program which would have gathered communications data legally. It would have encrypted the phone numbers and ensured that only those records which demonstrated a potential terrorist threat were ever decrypted.
This program was junked, the article says, due to "bureaucratic infighting and a sudden White House expansion of the agency's survelliance powers."
Oh, sure -- not because such a program would also have stopped the Bush administration from tracking phone calls to the New York Times and John Murtha . . .

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