Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker has a new column today on the NSA warrantless surveillance program.

"This is not about getting a cardboard box of monthly phone bills in alphabetical order," a former senior intelligence official said. The Administration's goal after September 11th was to find suspected terrorists and target them for capture or, in some cases, air strikes. "The N.S.A. is getting real-time actionable intelligence," the former official said.

Bruce Schneier has an excellent article up at Wired, The Eternal Value of Privacy, examining security and privacy in the context of the NSA warrantless surveillance program.

After examining privacy rights, and the intent of the framers of the Constitution in this regard, he writes:

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Alternet reports:

In 2001, an anonymous White House source leaked top-secret NSA intelligence to reporter Judith Miller that Al Qaida was planning a major attack on the United States. But the story never made it into the paper.

Attytood asks whether this is not the most stunning failure yet? From Alternet:

Now, in an exclusive interview, [Judy] Miller reveals how the attack on the Cole spurred her reporting on Al Qaida and led her, in July 2001, to a still-anonymous top-level White House source, who shared top-secret NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) concerning an even bigger impending Al Qaida attack, perhaps to be visited on the continental United States.

Ultimately, Miller never wrote that story either. But two months later -- on Sept. 11 -- Miller and her editor at the Times, Stephen Engelberg, both remembered and regretted the story they "didn't do."

In Miller's own words:

Firedoglake is thoroughly covering (in posts and comments) the confirmation hearing of Gen. Michael Hayden for the position of Director of Intelligence. I've been at work, and have not seen the hearings. For those of you watching, here's a place to discuss Hayden and related issues.

News reports of this mornings session: New York Times; Washington Post; Reuters (leads with Hayden credibility attacked.)

The ACLU has issued a new press release saying his nomination poses serious civil liberties concerns:

Greg Sargeant moves the story forward today. FBI spokesman William Carter refused to rule out the agencies use of National Security Letters to obtain the phone records of reporters, as ABC News' The Blotter has reported. Greg believes this is the first time the FBI has commented on the record about the issue.

My last post on the use of National Security letters is here.

The Blotter, an ABC News blog, reports that the Justice Department has disclosed that in 2005, it issued national security letters authorized by the Patriot Act to obtain phone records and other documents of 3,501 people.

Assistant Attorney General William Moschella told Congress last month that 9,254 National Security Letters were issued in 2005 involving 3,501 people.

....Federal law enforcement sources say the National Security Letters are being used to obtain phone records of reporters at ABC News and elsewhere in an attempt to learn confidential sources who may have provided classified information in violation of the law.

Barton Gellman of the Washington Post did an exhaustive analysis of national security letters in November, 2005. (See also, the FBI is Spying on You and Me.) From Gellman's article:

Following Bell Souths denial Monday, Verizon now has issued a statement disputing the allegation in USA Today that it provided the Government with customer phone records. The New York Times notes a loophole in Verizon's statement:

But the statement by Verizon left open the possibility that MCI, the long-distance carrier it bought in January, did turn over such records -- or that the unit, once absorbed into Verizon, had continued to do so. The company said Verizon had not provided customer records to the National Security Agency "from the time of the 9/11 attacks until just four months ago."

MCI, Sprint and AT&T carry the bulk of the country's long-distance and international calls.

According to a Government official:

by TChris

In response to reports that FBI agents have questioned American Muslims about their religious practices and the sermons they hear during prayer services, the ACLU made a Freedom on Information Act request for information about the FBI's surveillance of Southern California mosques and Muslims.

Local Islamic leaders said they enlisted the ACLU's help after the FBI provided little information in response to their allegations that the agency was monitoring them and their places of worship.

Islamic leaders are worried that the FBI's intrusion into religious activities might have a chilling effect upon Muslims who fear going to mosques.

In an e-mail, FBI officials said they would "address" the ACLU's request but did not say whether records would be turned over.

by TChris

Another source has confirmed yesterday's news that the FBI is snooping into the telephone records of journalists at ABC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post to determine who in the government may have leaked classified information to news outlets.

A former counterterrorism chief at the CIA, Vincent Cannistraro, told The New York Sun yesterday that FBI sources have confirmed to him that reporters' calls are being tracked as part of the probe. "The FBI is monitoring calls of a number of news organizations as part of this leak investigation," Mr. Cannistraro, who has worked as a consultant for ABC, said "It is going on. It is widespread and it may entail more than those three media outlets."

CBS reports that "this leak investigation" probably refers to the FBI investigation "of leaks of information about secret CIA prisons."

Think Progress reports that ABC investigative reporters say that the Government is monitoring their phone calls to ascertain their confidential courses.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

The ABC reporters continue:

The New York Times reports Sunday:

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.

A Newsweek poll has been released on the NSA warrantless surveillance of Americans.

According to the latest NEWSWEEK poll, 53 percent of Americans think the NSA's surveillance program "goes too far in invading people's privacy," while 41 percent see it as a necessary tool to combat terrorism.