It seems that the U.S. Department of Justice finally responded to Congressional questions about the NSA’s domestic surveillance program. Of course, most of those responses amount to, “We can’t tell you that.”
Now, there has always been a great deal of confusion over this program, because critics keep referring to it as wiretapping, when there have been indications all along that in order to even reach the point of wiretapping conversations, the Feds first needed to gather inordinately large volumes of data on thousands, if not millions, of people, and then sift through that data for indications of who they should be outright wiretapping.
With that in mind, read their response to the second question from Democrats, from the full set (pdf) available via The Raw Story.
2. What criteria is used by NSA staff to determine whether one party to the communication is a person working in support of al Qaeda?
Under the Terrorist Surveillance Program, decisions about what communications to intercept are made by professional intelligence officers at the NSA who are experts on al Qaeda and its tactics, including its use of communications systems. Relying on the best available intelligence and subject to appropriate and rigorous oversight by the NSA Inspector General and General Counsel, among others, the NSA determines whether one party is outside of the United States and whether there is probable cause to believe that at least one of the parties to the communication is a member or agent of al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization.
Read that emphasized part again, because it appears to reaffirm information about the program such as that revealed by the Washington Post last month — namely, that the program casts an exceedingly wide net just in order to determine whether or not someone is worth monitoring.
There’s no real way to make that determination, of course, without going on a data-mining fishing expedition, which inherently requires gathering private information and communications from a massive number of Americans in the hopes that somewhere in there will be some worth listening too more closely.
You simply can’t “[determine] whether one party is outside of the United States and whether there is probable cause to believe that at least one of the parties to the communication is a member or agent of al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization” without first collecting and/or monitoring that communication.
The very manner in which they describe the program makes the point: They collect and monitor first, and only then get around to determining whether or not “one party is outside of the United States” and “at least one of the parties … is a member … of al Qaeda.”
Update: Think of it this way: These responses discuss the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. But we need to back up a step, because in order to even trigger that Program, there needs to be something such as a Terrorist Communications Identification Program — and that would be where the real crime lies.
