Arrest James Risen - Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times

This has now moved beyond the ridiculous into the surreal. It is like this guy (Risen) is trying to single handedly destroy every effective intelligence gathering tool we have. And it appears that he is lying or at least intentionally misleading the public. When you see this sentence in connection with eavesdropping what doy you think:

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

Of course it is written to make people think that the President lied when he outlined how many calls had been intercepted and eaves dropped on. It isn't until much later in the article that we find the actual explanation:

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

So they aren't actually listening to a call or looking at e-mail they are analyzing calls to and from specific numbers for patterns or linkages that will lead to terror cells. This is the same technique that in part lead to the capture of Saddam Hussien. Of course it is blown now.

Technorati tags: New York Times, CIA Watch, Politics, Current Affairs