skippy the bush kangaroo

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

the expanding chain

we learn from ballon-juice that over at the nyt spooks have speculated that our little domestic spying scandal, like topsy, just grew and grew -

what the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. the program accelerated in early 2002 after the central intelligence agency started capturing top qaeda operatives overseas, including abu zubaydah, who was arrested in pakistan in march 2002. the c.i.a. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. the n.s.a. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, they said.

in addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the qaeda figures, the n.s.a. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. while most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the united states, the officials said.

in aftermath of 9/11, we co-taught a course comparing the way the ancient athenian democracy responded to war and foreign crisis to the way the u.s. responded to 9/11. we spent some time on the phone and email with lawyers representing detainees - hoping to have one of them come and talk to the class, but were unable to arrange a campus visit (understandable given how busy they must have been).

so - if any of the lawyers who represented someone awol had declared an enemy combatant managed to be part of his awol-ness's expanding chain (let us pause for a nano-second and consider whether that is likely), then pudentilla may have become part of the expanding chain. and if pudentilla became part of the expanding chain - anyone who sent emails to or received emails from pudentilla may have become part of the expanding chain. we apologize to our correspondents - who knew inviting experts in a field of national importance and urgency to a college campus could subject you to n.s.a scrutiny.

we hope the poor n.s.a. lacky who had to pour over all the requests for recommendations and paper extensions, the details on conferences we attended, and the occasional help on the latin subjunctive that we gave to our nieces was entertained. it's kind of funny to realize that our republican senators, whom we email frequently, may thereby have become, themselves, part of the expanding chain. kind of sad, however, to think he/she wasn't using tax payer dollars to find osama instead.

today's discussion question, class - is it possible for the republican party to control the white house and not commit constitutional crimes?
posted by Pudentilla at 11:04 AM |

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