Surveillance Starts at Home

Julian Sanchez | February 10, 2006

A story in the Washington Times magazine Insight contradicts the administration's longstanding claim that only conversations in which at least one party is overseas were targeted under the NSA's program of warrantless wiretaps:

[Law enforcement] sources provided guidelines to how the administration has employed the surveillance program. They said the National Security Agency in cooperation with the FBI was allowed to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of any American believed to be in contact with a person abroad suspected of being linked to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

At that point, the sources said, all of the communications of that American would be monitored, including calls made to others in the United States. The regulations under the administration's surveillance program do not require any court order.

Hat tip: AMERICABlog

Comments

|2.10.06 @ 10:54AM|#

Sincere question: is anybody actually surprised by this?

|2.10.06 @ 11:07AM|#

No

|2.10.06 @ 11:11AM|#

I'm shocked, shocked to find that wiretapping is going on in here!

|2.10.06 @ 12:10PM|#

Isn't anybody going to argue why this is perfectly acceptable for the government to do? Or are the apologists finally running out of steam? Did the revelation that many of the Gitmo prisoners are innocent change any minds?

|2.10.06 @ 5:21PM|#

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that wiretapping is going on in here!"

Your audio tapes, sir.

|2.11.06 @ 9:52AM|#

Great comic on this:

I apologize, but I don't know how to hyperlink. If someone was willing to explain, I'd be quite grateful.

http://www.ucomics.com/nonsequitur/2006/02/10/

|2.11.06 @ 11:03AM|#

Andy:

<A HREF="http://www.ucomics.com/nonsequitur/2006/02/10/">YOUR TEXT HERE</A>

Thus, YOUR TEXT HERE

In case you're curious, it's possible to use HTML code to produce symbols without actually using the "real" symbols. That's how I could type the code the first time without it actually making a link. Voilà!