Obama and White House "Slobberknocked" To Learn How Tough Their Hand-Picked-to-Write-a-Cover-Up NSA Review Panel Actually Was On Them

Very interesting.

The most important finding (per Allah) is that the warrantless hoarding of everyone's cellphone metadata has been deemed, by the panel that was supposed to serve as a fig-leaf fake, as "not essential."

In fact, they seem to question whether the NSA's claims that such data actually foiled any terrorists attacks, anywhere, ever, is correct. The NSA claims it's happened a few times, but I have never seen any concrete evidence of that. The panel says that most such data is helpful in a negative manner, that is, to establish a negative, that a known terrorist suspect is not in contact with co-conspirators in the US, thus alleviating worries among NSA officials, and, one imagines, allowing them to better assign resources.

Now, that's not nothing at all, but that is a far, far cry from "prevented terrorist attacks." If it requires spying on everyone to establish a few negative propositions, then this program requires far, far too much.

Read the whole thing. I'm tired and sick and done. Open thread!

posted by Ace at 08:14 PM

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