When did these prosecutions begin? How early in the Bush 1st term were indictments beginning to be handed down? Even before taking office, in 2000, his National Security team was laying the groundwork for an expansion of data collection.

Joseph Nacchio of Qwest communications has submitted sworn testimony and (redacted) documents to support that testimony that the NSA was implementing a broad data collection program in February 2001, Qwest’s lawyers advised Nacchio that the program was not legal and Qwest would not participate. Nacchio would later be prosecuted for insider trading after the company’s stock value tanked when NSA pulled out of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts already in place.

Domestic surveillance, outside of FISA authority, was already in place well prior to the events of September 11th 2001. How plausible is it, that the orignal target of this surveillance was not criminal, but political?

In this context, therefore, since their target was domestic politics, their surveillance would completely miss the very real terror threat this country faced…missing the terror threat from abroad because their real interest was in consolidating power at home.

Your work is invaluable Marcy, but I suspect that even you might have difficulty accepting that…the roots of Bush’s criminal spying activity stretch well beyond that which which is relevant to the unspeakable horrors of September 11th, and their overreaching reaction to that terrible day. Look beyond September 11th, Bush and Rove, above all else, are political animals. And Rove’s permanent republican majority was more than a pipe dream.

The modern sherlock Holmes.

(Btw, the next time you’re on teevee, forget bj’s — just go racial and sexist, then msnbc will make you a full time guest, just like Herr Buchanan)

Bob in HI

Yogi might be the perfect analyst for this degree of lunacy. Probably something along the lines of: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, let’s make sure Dick takes the fall.”

But then, Dick probably has a few mirrors himself. God only knows what they say… (Off the top of my head: “Listen, G*d, don’t f*ck with me. And if you don’t believe me, go ask Tenet or anyone at CIA.”) …

I defer to the techies like WO, EW, Mad Dog and many others on this stuff though.

The ODNI was stating there what it thought data mining was, and wasn’t.

It was (to them per their definintion): “pattern-based queries, searches or other analyses of 1 or more electronic databases” in order to “discover or locate a predictive pattern or anomaly indicative of terrorist or criminal activity”

It was not (to them, per their definition): “various types of link analysis tools. These tools start with a known or suspected terrorist or other subject of foreign intelligence interest and use various methods to uncover links between that known subject and potential associates or other persons with whom that subject is or has been in contact.”

Or as EW put it, playing 6 degrees of Osama was not being treated by ODNI as data mining and therefore not subject to prohibitions on datamining by statutes.

My point on random was that it would have been something other than either of those two examples. Maybe using a search pattern, but not necessarily one that was generated with a basis and arguable intent to “discover or locate a predictive pattern or anomaly indicative of terrorist or criminal activity” but instead to more directly just pull communications of US targeted persons without a probable cause or reasonable basis that you were pulling terrorist communications.