Wiretap Debacle

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Atkinson, Robert" <rca53 () columbia edu>
Date: July 27, 2007 7:47:42 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Wiretap Debacle

“Wiretap Debacle” is The Wall Street Journals’ lead editorial today.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118549840246979803.html? 
mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks



An excerpt:



. . . Mr. Bush has rightly defended the program's legality, but as a  
gesture of compromise in January he agreed to seek warrants under the  
FISA process.



This has turned out to be an enormous mistake that has unilaterally  
disarmed one of our best intelligence weapons in the war on terror.  
To understand why, keep in mind that we live in a world of fiber  
optics and packet-switching. A wiretap today doesn't mean the FBI  
must install a bug on Abdul Terrorist's phone in Peshawar.  
Information now follows the path of least resistance, wherever that  
may lead. And because the U.S. has among the world's most efficient  
networks, hundreds of millions of foreign calls are routed through  
the U.S.



That's right: If an al Qaeda operative in Quetta calls a fellow  
jihadi in Peshawar, that call may well travel through a U.S. network.  
This ought to be a big U.S. advantage in our "asymmetrical" conflict  
with terrorists. But it also means that, for the purposes of FISA, a  
foreign call that is routed through U.S. networks becomes a domestic  
call. So thanks to the obligation to abide by an outdated FISA  
statute, U.S. intelligence is now struggling even to tap the  
communications of foreign-based terrorists. If this makes you  
furious, it gets worse.



Our understanding is that some FISA judges have been open to  
expediting warrants, as well as granting retroactive approval. But  
there are 11 judges in the FISA rotation, and some of them have been  
demanding that intelligence officials get permission in advance for  
wiretaps. This means missed opportunities and less effective  
intelligence. And it shows once again why the decisions of  
unaccountable judges shouldn't be allowed to supplant those of an  
elected Commander in Chief.



When the program began, certain U.S. telecom companies also  
cooperated with the National Security Agency. But they were sued once  
the program was exposed, and so some have ceased cooperating for fear  
of damaging liability claims. We found all of this hard to believe  
when we first heard it, but we've since confirmed the details with  
other high-level sources.



Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell more or less  
admitted the problem last week, albeit obliquely, when he told the  
Senate that "We're actually missing a significant portion of what we  
should be getting." That's understating things. Our sources say the  
surveillance program is now at most one-third as effective as it once  
was.



The Bush Administration bears much of the blame for this debacle. …







-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com