Cryptographer Matt Blaze wrote The Metadata is the Message. He hypothesizes about the NSA wiretap programs based on the various published articles. A recent Newsweek article included this about the visit to Ashcroft's hospital bed:
"Two knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that the clash erupted over a part of Bush's espionage program that had nothing to do with the wiretapping of individual suspects. Rather, Comey and others threatened to resign because of the vast and indiscriminate collection of communications data. These sources, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence matters, describe a system in which the National Security Agency, with cooperation from some of the country's largest telecommunications companies, was able to vacuum up the records of calls and e-mails of tens of millions of average Americans between September 2001 and March 2004. The program's classified code name was 'Stellar Wind,' though when officials needed to refer to it on the phone, they called it 'SW.' (The NSA says it has 'no information or comment'; a Justice Department spokesman also declined to comment.)"
He goes on to describe the historical rationale for easier access to call metadata than content and how that translates in the Internet era. He ends with...
"If this was indeed what was going on -- and the recent Newsweek sidebar seems to corroborate it -- it would represent a much more invasive reach into the private lives of innocent Americans by the NSA than previous reports about the program have been able to confirm. And if AT&T really provided the government with sweeping access to the calling records of all its customers, that would be a huge personal disappointment -- not only a violation of the law, but a betrayal of the fundamental privacy values instilled into me from my very first day at Bell Labs, and that, I had genuinely believed, were embedded in the core of the company's culture."
On a related note, Daniel J. Solove wrote The Year in Privacy Books: 2008.
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