WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said. The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said. Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation. Both the former analyst’s account and the rising concern among some members of Congress about the N.S.A.’s recent operation are raising fresh questions […]
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress
Author: JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
Source: The New York Times
Publication Date: 17-Jun-09
Link: E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress
Source: The New York Times
Publication Date: 17-Jun-09
Link: E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress
Stephan: SR readers will remember I predicted this, not because I am smarter, or more intuitive, but because it was inevitable that a secret intelligence agency dedicated to hoovering up information would interpret the fuzzy limits written into laws such as the Patriot Act as broadly as possible. After all it was all being done in secret, who would know? Certainly not the Congress which seems, collectively, to be made up largely of a cohort of technologically impaired aging White men with bad hair cuts. They're just shocked... shocked...