The NSA is the MSM's favorite agency to hate now. It can't be the CIA any more, given how many hard left folks we now know inhabit its halls.
OK, for anyone with half a brain, here's a quick summary of what you need to know:
- The NSA's "Domestic Wiretapping" program
There is no Domestic Wiretapping program. The NSA has been listening to calls from people located in the US placed to known Al Qaeda operatives located overseas. Note, overseas. That makes it International wiretapping, not Domestic. - The NSA Call Records "Scandal"
The NSA is using call records, purely as bulk data, to find patterns ("Wow, an awful lot of people in New York have suddenly started calling Iraq over the past two weeks. That might be indicative of something.") They're not listening to your calls. They're not keeping track of who's calling whom. They don't care if you are calling your Mom, or your wife, a hooker, whomever. It's just data analysis. (Oh, and this new "scandal" has actually been reported on in the press for almost six months now; it just wasn't on the front page of USA Today.)
Sort of like the way members of Congress who had been briefed on the program now express shock, shock that such analysis is occurring…
Why is this so difficult to understand? See, it's not. Except the mainstream media will not tell you any of it; it's suits their purposes so much better to make you believe the NSA and President Bush are evil and want to create a database of your activities for their purposes.
It's sheer vanity to believe the NSA is concerned enough about what any of us does in our boring little lives to create some type of dossier on us. Meanwhile, we continue to hamstring our intelligence agencies and will pillory those same agencies for not detecting the next terrorist attack that occurs. It was not without a sense of irony that I noticed the top two stories on the NBC Nightly News for May 11 were the NSA Call Records story, followed by Britain's admission that they knew about the London bombers but didn't have the funding or staff to track them.
Personally, I'm thankful to know the NSA is actually doing something to keep us safe. Certainly more than I could say for Nancy Pelosi or Ted Kennedy.
Read President Bush's response to the USA Today article here.
