Thursday, May 11, 2006

The Jobby Hits the Fan

Well, will this be enough to tip the scales at last?

  • NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls
  • By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY [note: with John Diamond contributions]

    The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

    The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

    QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: The NSA record collection program

    "It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

    For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

    The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

    The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.

    Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.

    The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

    In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

    As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

    Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

    Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency's operations. "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide," he said. "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

    The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. "There is no domestic surveillance without court approval," said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

    She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States."

    The government is collecting "external" data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting "internals," a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together...


    Etc. -- read the full USA Today story and weep.

    But dig the final paragraphs:

    One company differs

    One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.

    According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

    Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

    The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as "product" in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

    The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

    Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

    In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

    Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

    The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

    In June 2002, Nacchio resigned amid allegations that he had misled investors about Qwest's financial health. But Qwest's legal questions about the NSA request remained.

    Unable to reach agreement, Nacchio's successor, Richard Notebaert, finally pulled the plug on the NSA talks in late 2004, the sources said.


    No comment from me -- you all know how outrageous I find all of this.

    Land of the free?

    My ass -- and your ass, too.
    Check Yesterday's Post

    For you early morning risers and readers, check yesterday afternoon's postings, in case you missed them. Though I'm determined to post daily, it won't necessarily be my morning ritual for the summer, in part due to the text I'm prepping for the Bissette Website, which leads me to --

    Finally, the Website is Close to Launch!

    It's been a long haul, complicated by my commitment to CCS and the lack of ability to load illos from home (you don't need me to bitch about lack of high-speed access this early in the day, do you?), but at last Jane Wilde and I are in the final stages of the initial website launch. Once it's up, I'll be adding material weekly to get it to where I want/need it to be, but it'll be a start, and one with a fair amount of eye-candy, too.

    The key features -- including an extensive bibliography -- will take some time to pull together, but I'm still sure even the diehard Bissettaholics out there will find some eye-opening 'new' stuff in view on the site, never seen before anywhere else. Of course, in the best of all worlds, I'd also be able to regularly post new art, photos, etc. on the site (and on this blog), but alas, that's still a remote and far-away option. It'll be a big step up, though, from the long-defunct comicon.com site, which has been impossible to update since February of 2005; no sour grapes, though, as all that Rick Veitch & Steve Conley created did bring many of us into the internet era, as did Jack Venooker's all-too-brief but energized The Kingdom discussion board, home to the missed-by-some Swamp.

    But this'll be my site, sans "you can't do that/you shouldn't do that" encumbrances or deferments, for better or worse. The design on the initial launch will be crude, mind you -- I'm no web designer, and Jane Wilde's skills are more technical than artistic -- but it'll be a beginning, as I've said. More later on that...

    Copenhagen Followup

    I'm prepping a bunch of followup material on our trip to Copenhagen, including writeups of the books I picked up there. Marge also took four rolls of photos, which we'll find some way to share with you -- but in the meantime, I'll post links (as they emerge) from my friends in Copenhagen. First up, appropriately enough, is Arni Gunnarsson -- the man who suggested I come to Komiks.dk's event, and proposed that to the organizers; thanks, Arni! -- who has just posted his writeup of Leah Moore & John Reppion's series Wildgirl
  • here.
  • Arni's also hoping to create an online gallery for everyone's photos, so that may be how you see ours, too. Updates as they emerge, promise! But in the meantime, I'll have some writeups here (and full reviews at Paneltopanel.net) over the next couple of weeks.

    Just Kos

    A couple of end-of-April Daily Kos articles worth a read, which I meant to post sooner -- links suggested by/compliments of my old friend Jean-Marc Lofficier,
  • here

  • and
  • here.
  • Give 'em a look-see, and ponder...