{"id":6417,"date":"2006-01-23T16:55:48","date_gmt":"2006-01-23T21:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6417"},"modified":"2006-01-23T16:55:48","modified_gmt":"2006-01-23T21:55:48","slug":"it-wasnt-data-mining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/it-wasnt-data-mining\/","title":{"rendered":"It wasn’t data mining"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why did the White House avoid oversight and warrants when implementing its warrantless-search program? One possible answer came by way of the New York Times<\/a> in late-December, when the paper explained that the administration worked with telecommunications companies to trace and analyze large volumes of telephone and Internet communications, without warrants, after 9\/11. It suggested an explanation as to why the administration couldn’t get a warrant — it was data mining and there was no specific target for which a warrant could be issued.<\/p>\n

But Gen. Michael Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, said today that this explanation is wrong<\/a>. Unfortunately, he didn’t offer a compelling alternative.<\/p>\n

The nation’s deputy national intelligence chief today defended a controversial domestic spying program as “targeted” and “focused” on the al Qaeda terrorist network, denying that it casts a “drift net” over Americans’ telephone and e-mail communications. […]<\/p>\n

Hayden stressed that the program “is not a drift net over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont, grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about. This is targeted and focused.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really? Because it certainly doesn’t sound like it. According to the FBI, there’s nothing “targeted and focused” about it — the program produces a flood of useless tips<\/a> involving conversations of innocent Americans. In bureau field offices, the NSA material is viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more “calls to Pizza Hut,” one official, who supervised field agents, said.<\/p>\n

At least with data mining, I understood why the administration didn’t want to go to a FISA court judge. An administration lawyer couldn’t very well ask for a warrant to cover the millions of people whose calls might go through a telecom “switch.” But if Hayden is right, and there was no data mining, we’re back to the beginning in understanding why, exactly, the administration found it necessary to circumvent the law.
\n
\nWhat’s the answer? As Kevin noted<\/a>, the administration didn’t seek warrants because they knew the FISA judges, who routinely approve every request that comes before them, had minimal legal standards the administration couldn’t meet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The standard laid out by General Hayden — a “reasonable basis to believe” — is lower than “probable cause,” the standard used by the special court created by Congress to handle surveillance involving foreign intelligence.<\/p>\n

….General Hayden said that the difference in the legal standards…played an important role in determining whether to go to the FISA court or not.<\/p>\n

The 1978 law allows the agency to seek a warrant up to 72 hours after wiretapping begins when speed is of the essence. But even in an emergency, General Hayden said, the law required that the attorney general approve a wiretap before it could begin. But “the attorney general’s standard,” he said, “is a body of evidence equal to that which he would present to the court,” meaning that an emergency application would also have to show probable cause.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The data mining answer was, in most respects, less offensive. In Hayden’s explanation, the administration could have asked for a warrant, but found the legal standard too high. And rather than ask Congress to change the standard, the administration, as Kevin noted<\/a>, just went ahead and did what it wanted to do anyway.<\/p>\n

Hayden’s remarks in DC today were supposed to be a key part of the administration’s defense of the program. As far as I can tell, it makes the controversy worse, not better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why did the White House avoid oversight and warrants when implementing its warrantless-search program? One possible answer came by way of the New York Times in late-December, when the paper explained that the administration worked with telecommunications companies to trace and analyze large volumes of telephone and Internet communications, without warrants, after 9\/11. It suggested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}