"Domestic Spying"

The New York Times and the Washington Post both have front-page stories this morning about the President authorizing the National Security Agency

...to rapidly monitor the phone calls and other communications of people in the United States believed to have contact with suspected associates of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas, according to two former senior administration officials. Authorities, including a former NSA director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, were worried that vital information could be lost in the time it took to secure a warrant from a special surveillance court, sources said.

The NYT is the source of this article. The Times said they delayed publishing the article for a year at the request of the administration. The other noteworthy aspect of this article is there are no "on the record" sources, everyone with supposed knowledge of the program requested anonymity.

Today's revelation doesn't sound like such a bad idea, on the surface. Time is of the essence in intelligence; minutes and hours lost matter greatly. The NSA has extraordinary technical capabilities that make the agency a natural to perform this sort of surveillance. The main issue with this revelation isn't exactly that such intelligence gathering and monitoring is going on, it's who's doing it. By law, both the CIA and the NSA are prohibited from conducting domestic surveillance except in very limited circumstances.

I find it very interesting that this story is breaking now. As the Post's article states:

The revelations come amid a fierce congressional debate over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Patriot Act granted the FBI new powers to conduct secret searches and surveillance in the United States.

and

Public disclosure of the NSA program also comes at a time of mounting concerns about civil liberties over the domestic intelligence operations of the U.S. military, which have also expanded dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The House renewed the Patriot Act Wednesday; there's a threat of a filibuster in the Senate. Curious timing, indeed.

There's an additional reason I'm not too concerned (yet) about this issue.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she is "dismayed" by the report.

"It's clear that the administration has been very willing to sacrifice civil liberties in its effort to exercise its authority on terrorism, to the extent that it authorizes criminal activity," Fredrickson said.

It's a good sign the ACLU is "dismayed." These days I'm FOR whatever the ACLU is AGAINST. It's not a hard and fast rule here at El Casa Pennington, just a guideline. And it's usually correct. Your Mileage May Vary.