During the 1990's under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon.
On Friday, the New York Times suggested that the Bush administration has instituted "a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices" when it "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without [obtaining] court-approved warrants."
But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 1990s - all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.
In February 2000, for instance, CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:
"If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency."
NSA computers, said Kroft, "capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world."
Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told "60 Minutes" that the agency was monitoring "everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs."
Mr. Frost detailed activities at one unidentified NSA installation, telling "60 Minutes" that agency operators "can listen in to just about anything" - while Echelon computers screen phone calls for key words that might indicate a terrorist threat.
The "60 Minutes" report also spotlighted Echelon critic, then-Rep. Bob Barr, who complained that the project as it was being implemented under Clinton "engages in the interception of literally millions of communications involving United States citizens."
One Echelon operator working in Britain told "60 Minutes" that the NSA had even monitored and tape recorded the conversations of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.
Still, the Times repeatedly insisted on Friday that NSA surveillance under Bush had been unprecedented, at one point citing anonymously an alleged former national security official who claimed: "This is really a sea change. It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches."
Now my question...
Why didn't the left complain about this?
We KNOW that Bush was trolling for terrorists,what was Clinton looking for?
And for more info,try these links...
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html
Read some of the press clippings on this ECHELON report:
National Post/Canada (February 19, 2000): The New Space Invaders
NY Times (May 27, 1999): Lawmakers Raise Questions About International Spy Network
La Monde Diplomatique (Jan. 1999): How the United States Spies on us all
Federal Computer Week(Nov. 17, 1998): EU May Investigate US Global Spy Network
Inter@ctive Week (Nov. 16, 1998): ECHELON: Surveilling Surveillance
WorldNetDaily (Nov. 12, 1998): Push for Hearings on ECHELON
Wired (October 27, 1998): Spying on the Spies
Baltimore Sun (October 18, 1998): Putting NSA under scrutiny
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/echelon.htm
http://www.echelonwatch.org/
"Echelon is perhaps the most powerful intelligence gathering organization in the world. Several credible reports suggest that this global electronic communications surveillance system presents an extreme threat to the privacy of people all over the world."
And here is an NSA document that mentions ECHELON
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB23/index2.html
And here from the BBC...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/654394.stm
My point is that it WAS NOT wrong under Clintons admin,so how can it be wrong now to do the exact same thing?
