On NSA Domestic Spying

Salon has an interview with intelligence historian Matthew Aid. He and james Bamford are the two experts on the NSA.

The NSA last did domestic surveillance in 1976 via Project Shamrock. It was this revelation that led Congress to pass the FISA act in 1978. After that most domestic surveillance was done by the FBI, but after 9/11 they were out of favor. The FBI's Carnivore program required approval from the Attorney General for every tap. To run it as the NSA's program has been run would have required approval from the AG as well both the Civil Rights and teh Criminal Divisions of the Justice Department. To avoid all that the administration used the NSA instead of the FBI for the program.

To me the most interesting point was about telling Congress:

"They can claim that they briefed individual members of Congress but there's a difference between briefing a few members of Congress and briefing a full committee...What happens is that you're [privately] briefed about the program, and then even if you object to the program, you can't do anything about it because you can't tell the whole committee. Our system only works when information is given to the full committee...They deliberately did it this way so the intelligence committees couldn't do anything about it."

So when the administration feeds you crap about Congress being briefed, don't believe it.