Putting It in Perspective
The invaluable Heather MacDonald explains why even paranoid conspiracy nuts have nothing to fear from the newly leaked NSA program.
Here's just a tidbit:
Since late 2001, Verizon, BellSouth, and ATT have connected nearly two trillion calls, according to the Washington Post. The companies gave NSA the incoming and outgoing numbers of those calls, stripped of all identifying information such as name or address. No conversational content was included. The NSA then put its supercharged computers to work analyzing patterns among the four trillion numbers involved in the two trillion calls, to look for clusters that might suggest terrorist connections. Though the details are unknown, they might search for calls to known terrorists, or, more speculatively, try to elicit templates of terror calling behavior from the data.
Read the whole thing.
Here's just a tidbit:
Since late 2001, Verizon, BellSouth, and ATT have connected nearly two trillion calls, according to the Washington Post. The companies gave NSA the incoming and outgoing numbers of those calls, stripped of all identifying information such as name or address. No conversational content was included. The NSA then put its supercharged computers to work analyzing patterns among the four trillion numbers involved in the two trillion calls, to look for clusters that might suggest terrorist connections. Though the details are unknown, they might search for calls to known terrorists, or, more speculatively, try to elicit templates of terror calling behavior from the data.
Read the whole thing.
posted by LadybugUSA at 12:08 PM
3 Comments:
No matter how this is explained, the moonbats will squawk. They believe that Bush is evil and will abuse the info for personal gain. They see what they want to see.
"In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and his top legal adviser argued that the National Security Agency should intercept purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail messages without warrants in the hunt for terrorists, according to two senior intelligence officials." [Cite]
No, we believe that Cheney is evil. Bush is merely a sock puppet.
"...according to two senior intelligence officials."
What officials? Are they some of the spooks that have been leaking? Does it really matter to a Bush-hater? No, of course not. Just an ambiguous mention of two unnamed officials is all the testimony a lefty needs to prove his paranoid contentions. They'll buy anything that speaks ill of this administration.
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