ETCETERA
NIGHTCAP
Can You Hear Me Now?
By Harry Kirsbaum
alk about strange bedfellows.
Since when do you find Glenn
Beck, Michael Moore, Rush
Limbaugh and Al Gore agreeing on
anything?
Yet, here they are, opposing the
National Security Agency surveillance
program, which includes cell phone
calls, text messages and PRISM, the
email reading service.
Those who support the program
would make President Obama's pre-
ferred State of the Union address seat-
ing chart easy to put together: Sen.
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wedged
between Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)
Obviously, the Fourth Amendment
— which deals with probable cause
and unreasonable search and seizure
— is much more complicated than the
Second Amendment, which, depend-
ing on your political affiliation, allows
citizens to carry AR-15s and 100-round
magazines, or muskets and a pair of
rounded scissors.
T
I don't think that people are upset
that the NSA (also known as No Such
Agency) is catching terrorists through
cell phone calls and email. I think it's
the order in which they gather the
intelligence.
What we're used to: Some law en-
forcement agency comes across some
person of interest, or clue to a future
terrorist activity, and a secret Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court war-
rant is issued to search the emails, text
messages and phone calls of those
involved, in hopes of gathering intel-
ligence to stop an act of terrorism.
What we don't like: The Federal gov-
ernment's law enforcement agencies
are using intelligence gathered by col-
lecting databases of every phone call,
text message and email made or writ-
ten by everyone. The databases are
entered into a sorting program that
finds links or anomalies to suspicious
people or locations. A FISA warrant is
then issued to listen in on the conver-
sations or read the emails to thwart a
terrorist act.
It's A+B=C versus B+A=C. Same
result, but a different order in getting
there.
We've given up some expectation of
privacy on the Web since hackers be-
gan hacking 15 minutes after the World
Wide Web was created on Aug. 6, 1991.
The Patriot Act widened the power of
FISA, the law enforcement community
and intelligence agencies, and made
the rest of us more paranoid.
So it confuses me why people are so
outraged at the latest charges to the
NSA, which has kind of been in its job
description all along.
People who still think that their cell
phone calls, emails and text messages
are being destroyed as soon as we
hang up or delete them should ask
Milan Federal Correction Institution in-
mate #44678-039, aka former Detroit
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, how he feels.
The FBI subpoenaed phone company
records to get the saved text messag-
es that eventually got him locked up,
but they most likely could have gotten
them from the NSA all along. Because
Kwame didn't call or email anyone on
a terrorist watch list (although many
of the people on his contact list are
now serving time), the NSA wasn't
interested.
There's a certain amount of comfort
to be taken from the fact that the
Feds don't have the time to read or
listen in on the billions of phone calls
produced by the millions of email and
cell phone customers in the United
States. They're too interested in dig-
ging up Jimmy Hoffa's body. And if
their surveillance program worked
so well, they could have spotted the
Tsarnaev brothers before they reached
the Boston Marathon finish line.
So I won't worry. The NSA can listen
in on my weekly calls to Uptown
Parthenon for Jimmy salads, and keep
a printed record of my daily "Hove
you" text messages to my wife, if that's
what they really want. And if it keeps
our country safe.
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40 July 2013 I
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