Criminal Spying

The Washington Post has revealed what the administration is desperately trying to hide: the extra-judicial domestic spying program is a massive data-mining program that is illegal, intrusive, and highly ineffective. As such, the Bushies have broken the law and committed criminal acts.

Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.

The Bushies refuse to say how many Americans in the past four years have had their conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority. Some knowledgeable sources placed that number in the thousands; some say about 5,000; others say many more than that. Surveillance takes place in several stages – first by computer systems. The systems collect and sift information about hundreds of thousands of faxes, e-mails and telephone calls into and out of the United States, using artificial intelligence programs to “sniff” the communications for “leads”. These leads are then forwarded for scrutiny by human eyes and ears. Contributors to the technology said it is a triumph for artificial intelligence if a fraction of 1 percent of the computer-flagged conversations guide human analysts to meaningful leads.

Vice President Cheney has claimed that eavesdropping without warrants "has saved thousands of lives." Asked about that Thursday, Gen Michael Hayden told senators he "cannot personally estimate" such a figure but that the program supplied information "that would not otherwise have been available."

Many lawyers say the ratio of success to failure is of prime importance when eavesdropping subjects are Americans with constitutional protection. The minimum legal definition of probable cause, said a government official, is that evidence used to support eavesdropping ought to be "right for one out of every two guys at least.", adding “those who devised the surveillance plan knew they could never meet that standard -- that's why they didn't go through" the FISA court. The prevalence of false leads is especially pronounced when U.S. citizens or residents are surveilled. No intelligence agency, believes that "terrorist . . . operatives inside our country," as Bush described the surveillance targets, number anywhere near the thousands who have been subjected to eavesdropping.

Participants in the program, according to a national security lawyer who represents one of them privately, are growing "uncomfortable with the mountain of data they have now begun to accumulate." Spokesmen for the Bush administration declined to say whether any are discarded.

The law has knowingly been circumvented, the excuses are not valid, there is a needed remedy.
Posted on The Human Stain