… I was able to get a SIM card that let me on the networks … I would not expect anyone to be able to track a phone to a person …

Yea, that’s true. I was going to do a comment like yours but wasn’t sure if anyone was still around to read it.

I was going to say that if you were … I don’t know, Boris and Natasha, you could buy a bunch of SIM cards and keep swapping them out

You’ve previously pointed out that the US hasn’t had a good, public debate about Internet security. IMHO, the news in this post underscores your prescience, yet again.

As to the rest, agreed. I will add that this just wasn’t hard to peg. For instance, the logic might could go like this:

Gee FISA isn’t being used here, but they said “inside the US telecommunications infrastructure”. Um, what the hell is the basis here?

Actually, I guess that is what you said…..

To start with, I question her reference to the Gange of 8, since it has been mentioned over and over that only a “made up” Gange of 4 was briefed and that not only did Bush skip briefing the full intel committees, as required by the National Security Act for covert domestic programs, but he also skipped EVEN briefing the full Gang of 8, as required for covert action programs that were too sensitive to initially brief to the full committees.

Instead, he just blithley made up a “gang of 4″ and Pelosi (who as a former member of the Gang of 4 who was being briefed and then a member of the Gang of 8 that was NOT being briefed, knew what kind of violations were taking place) just went along with it. I will say to give Harman some credit that when the program came out she commission the Cong. Research report on why the full intel committees were required to be briefed and she kept pushing for that, even though it still hasn’t really happened since DOJ is still refusing to turn over info in compliance with the Act.

But what fascinates me is what the hell she meant (if anything) by saying they were told that there was a “NSA effort to track al Qaeda communications using unique access points inside the US telecommunications infrastructure”

What did she think that meant? Something other than the fact that NSA and telecoms had installed these rooms that pretty much let NSA have EVERYTHING? To me, “unique access points” sounds like NSA was doing the accessing too – that the telecoms basically just let them set up shop on the telecom lines to take anything they wanted from these “unique access points” What could she have imagined “unique access points” meant other than splitting off EVERYTHING for NSA —- and how could they have begun to believe such a thing was legal, much less a prudent use of “adding more hay to the pile where the needle is lost” when there are all kinds of backlogs of untranslated (or really poorly translated) intercepts?

Who could have possibly known it was freaking illegal?

And to add fuel to the fire – From sailmaker’s comment at TPMMuckraker:

Her bio says she is a JD Harvard Law, and served as special council to the DoD, served on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, and she served in the Carter administration when FISA was passed.

This is no blond bimbo…

It must be true that the water in DC has magical properties in that everyone who drinks of it seems to forget everything they’ve ever learned.