Effwit Right, Ignatius Wrong
In a piece on this blog back on Dec. 28 entitled Ignatius Strikes Again, I disputed the WaPo ace op-ed man's thesis (i.e. propaganda) about why Bush violated FISA.
Ignatius was claiming that the NSA had developed such whiz-bang tools that the now antiquated laws no longer applied. I explained otherwise:
(M)ost, if not all, of these "advances" are only modifications of techniques that have been around for many years. The legal concepts in play are fully accounted for by existing provisions (and restrictions) of law.
Well, lo and behold, Kevin Drum, writing in Washington Monthly quotes no less an authority than former NSA Director Michael Hayden in a speech yesterday making my exact point:
Here's another point related to General Hayden's admission today that the NSA's domestic spying program isn't some kind of dazzling high tech black op, but merely garden variety wiretapping that was done outside normal FISA channels because NSA couldn't meet the "probable cause" standard normally needed to get a warrant issued.
Administration apologists have argued that the White House couldn't seek congressional approval for this program because it utilized super advanced technology that we couldn't risk exposing to al-Qaeda. Even in secret session, they've suggested, Congress is a sieve and the bad guys would have found out what we were up to.
But now we know that's not true. This was just ordinary call monitoring, according to General Hayden, and the only problem was that both FISA and the attorney general required a standard of evidence they couldn't meet before issuing a warrant. In other words, the only change necessary to make this program legal was an amendment to FISA modifying the circumstances necessary to issue certain kinds of warrants. This would have tipped off terrorists to nothing.
Ignatius' agenda of promoting the national security state was old 15-20 years ago.
But that doesn't make it any less sweet to slap him down whenever possible
Ignatius was claiming that the NSA had developed such whiz-bang tools that the now antiquated laws no longer applied. I explained otherwise:
(M)ost, if not all, of these "advances" are only modifications of techniques that have been around for many years. The legal concepts in play are fully accounted for by existing provisions (and restrictions) of law.
Well, lo and behold, Kevin Drum, writing in Washington Monthly quotes no less an authority than former NSA Director Michael Hayden in a speech yesterday making my exact point:
Here's another point related to General Hayden's admission today that the NSA's domestic spying program isn't some kind of dazzling high tech black op, but merely garden variety wiretapping that was done outside normal FISA channels because NSA couldn't meet the "probable cause" standard normally needed to get a warrant issued.
Administration apologists have argued that the White House couldn't seek congressional approval for this program because it utilized super advanced technology that we couldn't risk exposing to al-Qaeda. Even in secret session, they've suggested, Congress is a sieve and the bad guys would have found out what we were up to.
But now we know that's not true. This was just ordinary call monitoring, according to General Hayden, and the only problem was that both FISA and the attorney general required a standard of evidence they couldn't meet before issuing a warrant. In other words, the only change necessary to make this program legal was an amendment to FISA modifying the circumstances necessary to issue certain kinds of warrants. This would have tipped off terrorists to nothing.
Ignatius' agenda of promoting the national security state was old 15-20 years ago.
But that doesn't make it any less sweet to slap him down whenever possible
posted by Effwit at 4:26 PM
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