Times Spins Again on NSA

Posted on December 24, 2005

Cross-posted from Right on the Right:
As if the New York Times didn’t seem slimey and untrustworthy enough, they’re now continuing to spin the NSA story. For the most comprehensive coverage, check out MICHELLE MALKIN who has a good legal and logical grasp of the situation. First off, let’s just get a general idea of the garbage that the New York Times printed

SPY AGENCY MINED VAST DATA TROVE, OFFICIALS SAY

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system’s main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said….

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

And now of course the left is going to make the case, that this was a large conspiracy. They are going to say that there’s no way to know if they were using this to actually check for terrorists. The Times is spinning this to make it look like the NSA is listening in to the average American. Malkin pointed out a few key errors in the Times article, such as:

The Times does not say whether “American-based switches” refers to switches located on American soil or switches owned and operated by American companies that may be located offshore. (This lack of clarity–on both technical and legal matters–has been a hallmark of the Times’ Chicken Little journalism.) This distinction may be legally important; for reasons I discuss below, the Bush administration might have had strong reasons to favor channeling traffic through switches located outside the U.S.

It should be pointed out that the Boston Globe came out with a SIMILAR REPORT that said it’s possible that all domestic to international communications were intercepted electronically then filtered. The administration has made it very clear that that is not what is happening, and Malkin points out that both reports seem to directly contradict the original report, which said:

While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands since the program began, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.

I can tell you what’s happening here. The Times realized that it’s original story did not cause enough controversy. The Times was hoping this story would ignite calls for impeachment, but they overlooked the fact that President Bush did not break the law. Now they’re trying to spin it and make it worse. This to me shows a desperate attempt by the liberal media to take a system being used to keep us protected, and turn it into a civil-liberties destroying tyrannical program. Obviously they’re failing, because people can call them out on these things now. They are wrong. Period.

Malkin has huge amounts of info on this, HERE.
Excellent take on things at Rightwing Nuthouse

» Filed Under Border Control/Homeland Security, News

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Comments

3 Responses to “Times Spins Again on NSA”

Joseph (Lionhearted Liberal) on December 24th, 2005 11:57 pm

Merry Christmas Jay and all!
Jay on December 25th, 2005 12:00 am

Thanks Joseph, Merry Christmas to you too.
GoMommyGo on December 27th, 2005 1:09 pm

If the Times’ goal is to bring down Bush, why did they sit on the story?