New at Reason

January 24, 2007

Jacob Sullum tries to make sense of the presidential policy on wiretaps.

Comments

uncle sam|1.24.07 @ 11:21AM|#

Or perhaps his contempt for the people.

|1.24.07 @ 11:52AM|#

Well, dear Mr Sullum,

as it seems, 72 hours are not a lot of time when it comes to the surveillance of foreign intelligence TODAY -- as opposed to the good old days of the cold war.

You see, it takes quite a bit of time to translate communications from Arabic, Pashto, Kafiri, Urdu, Farsi-e Darbâri etc. into English, not to to mention the task of analyzing said communication.

If I remember rightly from the 9/11 report, it usually takes up to two weeks for the FBI to get translated transcripts of wiretaps in urgent cases, due to the lack of linguists. Perhaps the NSA is faster, however I doubt it -- this kind of work can not be done by computers, so a lot of numbercrunching muscle doesn't mean much.

Mike Laursen|1.24.07 @ 6:57PM|#

One could argue that a lack of linguists to quickly translate transcripts in urgent cases is a sign of mismanagement, lack of foresight, and misplaced priorities in FBI management. In fact, I'll just go ahead and argue that.