Mining of Data Prompted Fight Over Spying

[marmar]

from the NY Times, via Truthout:


Mining of Data Prompted Fight Over Spying
By Scott Shane and David Johnston
The New York Times

Sunday 29 July 2007

Washington - A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.

The N.S.A.'s data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it figured in the March 2004 debate helps to clarify the clash this week between Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senators who accused him of misleading Congress and called for a perjury investigation.

The confrontation in 2004 led to a showdown in the hospital room of then Attorney General John Ashcroft, where Mr. Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff, tried to get the ailing Mr. Ashcroft to reauthorize the N.S.A. program.

Mr. Gonzales insisted before the Senate this week that the 2004 dispute did not involve the Terrorist Surveillance Program "confirmed" by President Bush, who has acknowledged eavesdropping without warrants but has never acknowledged the data mining.

If the dispute chiefly involved data mining, rather than eavesdropping, Mr. Gonzales' defenders may maintain that his narrowly crafted answers, while legalistic, were technically correct.

But members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who have been briefed on the program, called the testimony deceptive. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/072907Z.shtml

[Stalwart]

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[Sam Ervin jret]

2. Government data mining, different than private data mining

we can they can't. After Nixon Gov. not allowed to collect data on its own only purchase it from others, not keep. But that was not good enough. Govt. Misdirection of data and data mining was discovered by AT&T employees. Oh Oh against the LAW !!!