From Today's WAPO Op-Ed Page:

On Thursday, USA Today reported that three U.S. telecommunications companies have been voluntarily providing the National Security Agency with anonymized domestic telephone records -- that is, records stripped of individually identifiable data, such as names and place of residence. If true, the architect of this program deserves our thanks and probably a medal. That architect was presumably Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and President Bush's nominee to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The potential value of such anonymized domestic telephone records is best understood through a hypothetical example. Suppose a telephone associated with Mohamed Atta had called a domestic telephone number A. And then suppose that A had called domestic telephone number B. And then suppose that B had called C. And then suppose that domestic telephone number C had called a telephone number associated with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The most effective way to recognize such patterns is the computerized analysis of billions of phone records. The large-scale analysis of anonymized data can pinpoint individuals -- at home or abroad - who warrant more intrusive investigative or intelligence techniques, subject to all safeguards normally associated with those techniques.

Hat tip Wizbang

Read the whole thing.

Now, I have a couple of questions based on the above assumptions...

1. In the already revealed domestic spying program, the NSA is already monitoring calls from inside the U.S., to suspected terrorist outside the U.S. Why is this additional data necessary. It would seem that it only overcomplicates the issue.

2. What is the reluctance of the administration to accept judicial and congressional oversight?

3. How do we KNOW that such programs will not be abused for political purposes. It is not like it has not been done before:

During the Vietnam War, the NSA used data from Shamrock to compile a watch-list (code-named "Minaret") of Nixon’s political enemies, including Martin Luther King, Jane Fonda, folksinger Joan Baez and Dr. Benjamin Spock, along with 75,000 other Americans.

The whole premise that suppossedly, "makes this all alright," is that we can trust our government to do the right thing. I dont think I need to elaborate on why that is naive...

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Tracked on May 14, 2006 02:04 PM