Today's Baltimore Sun on the NSA...

[pcw@access.digex.net (Peter Wayner)]

As I mentioned on Sunday, the Baltimore Sun is running a long
series on the NSA. Today, the published an article that
described how the NSA routinely listens into the phone calls of
Americans. This happens in two ways. First, if the conversation
leaves the country then the NSA can intercept it. Second, the
NSA is also allowed to grab local phone calls for "training"
purposes.

The funniest part of the article mentioned that Henry Kissenger
got both ends of the stick. He relied on NSA to pass him
sensitive information about his rivals. But the head of the
Department of Defense, who got to appoint the head of the NSA,
made sure that the NSA told him what Kissenger was up to.

The strangest anecdote involved a Baltimore Sun reporter who
called Cuban diplomats from overseas. This was picked up by NSA
and the evesdropper openly chatted about it a civilian cocktail
party. The details got back to the reporter. The parties in the
Baltimore suburbs are from the pages of Fleming not from the
pages of Cheever.

There is some debate about the whole issue of snooping on
American citizens. Everyone quoted on the record says it's all
pretty upstanding and good. The paper also gives a fair amount
of ink to the argument that American citizens could be involved
in terrorism too. This seems to be logical to me.

The deepest point made was that NSA could never really assume
greater law enforcement practices because this would involve
disseminating their information to a much larger audience. Since
using secret information often reveals that you can get it,
there is little doubt that people would stop using the phone
system and the other information sponges. So much for absolute
power.

-Peter Wayner

-=-=-=
 On Friday, the last article in the series is promised to
report, "The next war will be fought with computers. NSA is
getting ready." You will be able to buy a reprint of the NSA
stories from SunSource. $3.95. Call 410-332-6962.