NSA Monitoring US Calls

The balance between security and privacy seems to be a bit more bent it the NYTimes has all their facts correct.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

This begs the question again of law enforcement of the release of secret information. The NSA is about as secret as these agencies get. If you read through the article, you'll find that there are lots of former NSA officials who commented "anonymously." Well, why bother having secret agencies, no reason to have anything secret. It's only about security.

Looks like there was some congressional knowledge of this.

After the special program started, Congressional leaders from both political parties were brought to Vice President Dick Cheney's office in the White House. The leaders, who included the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, learned of the N.S.A. operation from Mr. Cheney, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, who was then the agency's director and is now a full general and the principal deputy director of national intelligence, and George J. Tenet, then the director of the C.I.A., officials said.

It is not clear how much the members of Congress were told about the presidential order and the eavesdropping program. Some of them declined to comment about the matter, while others did not return phone calls.

The MSM doesn't appear to have been able to find anyone in congress to comment so far. Not really a surprise.

The activities described basically describe listening in on international calls that have a point in the US. From what I've read it looks like the listening on internal country calls is not allowed by law without a warrant. It sounds like the international call to or from the US isn't quite as clearly defined though the article makes it out that it's not considered allowed.

Some officials familiar with it say they consider warrantless eavesdropping inside the United States to be unlawful and possibly unconstitutional, amounting to an improper search. One government official involved in the operation said he privately complained to a Congressional official about his doubts about the program's legality. But nothing came of his inquiry. "People just looked the other way because they didn't want to know what was going on," he said.

A senior government official recalled that he was taken aback when he first learned of the operation. "My first reaction was, 'We're doing what?' " he said. While he said he eventually felt that adequate safeguards were put in place, he added that questions about the program's legitimacy were understandable.

Not words to give you confidence.

I'd say that civil liberties aren't meeting appropriate protections with the after effects of 9/11.

UPDATE:
Schneier has a new entry on the DOD spying and mentions the NSA activity as well.