Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.
Both the former analyst’s account and the rising concern among some members of Congress about the N.S.A.’s recent operation are raising fresh questions about the spy agency.
The New York Times' team, Risen and Lichtblau write that the Obama Justice Department is taking steps to rein in NSA. But there is another issue: corporate cooperation with NSA. The issue came up a couple of years ago in a Salon interview with Matthew Aid who has spent 25 years researching a detailed history of NSA. Aid, at that time, predicted the next revelations would include corporate assistance in NSA's domestic surveillance.
(Yesterday Aid, his book now available, was interviewed on the Diane Rehm show, the first time I've heard an interview there end with the interviewee responding to Rehm's "thank you" with a loud "I'm glad that's over!" Aid appeared to be more than a little dismissive of concerns about the implications of NSA's surveillance of American citizens' phone calls and emails.)
The FISA court tried to limit the NSA's activities. The NSA simply defied the law. The Bush administration made empty gestures of restraint with respect to NSA's overzealous collection of data from domestic phone and email users. But then we're reminded of that moment in Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room when President Bush's own lawyer attempted to stymie any efforts at legal oversight.
We know more, but perhaps not all, about the Bush era surveillance of the American voter. We learn now that nothing much has changed at a time when, as Risen and Lichtblau report, "recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged..." Let's see what this Justice Department decides to do -- and just how much we're told about it.
