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Bush Intel Chiefs: Wiretapping Was Legal
Earlier today, two former Bush intelligence chiefs -- John Negroponte, who was director of national intelligence, and Michael Hayden, who was CIA director -- went on MSNBC to push back against that New York Times report about wiretapping by the NSA.
Negroponte said "I have no question about the legality" of the program. Hayden used a different formulation: "National Security Agency follows the law." For whatever it's worth, those claims contradict the Times' report.
Watch:
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Josh
Zachary
"Negroponte said "I have no question about the legality" of the program. Hayden used a different formulation: "National Security Agency follows the law.""
Negroponte's statement can be taken two ways:
1. He has no question because he knows it is illegal, or
2. He has no question becaue he knows it is legal.
In Hayden's forulation, the question should have been asked: "Does the National Security Agency follow the law at all times?"
It is amazing how these people parse their words so they can mean anything.
April 16, 2009 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
It will probably be years before we find out what the NSA did during the Bush years, and what it continues to do to this day. It is fairly well established, however, that every email and phone call entering or leaving the US passes thru a location where the NSA has hardware and software set up to examine everything which passes thru. The hardware is built by a US company and the software is supplied by an Israeli company. This is pretty much the same hardware/software used to maintain the "Great Firewall of China." Some of the data which passes thru these stations is recorded and probably some is not. The criteria for choosing which data to retain is not known, nor is it known exactly what use is made of the retained data. The amount of retained data is at least thousands of terrabytes.
April 17, 2009 8:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Assume that everything, all e-mail and all phone conversations are being recorded and that all credit card transactions, bank accounts, and any other information which is in any database, including your groceries if you use a discount card is available to the NSA. Also, if your car has a GPS system, they can know where it is at any given time and how fast it is going.
Expect the worse and you won't be wrong by very much.
April 17, 2009 9:11 AM | Reply | Permalink