Trust Us

We're with the government. LATimes (08.07.07);

"The Bush administration rushed to defend new espionage legislation Monday amid growing concern that the changes could lead to increased spying by U.S. intelligence agencies on American citizens.

In a public relations push to counter criticism of the new law, senior administration officials cited a combination of legal barriers and resource restrictions that they said would keep the government from sifting through e-mails and phone calls of Americans without obtaining court warrants first.

Bush administration defends spy law

"But officials declined to provide details about how the new capabilities might be used by the National Security Agency and other spy services. And in many cases, they could point only to internal monitoring mechanisms to prevent abuse of the new rules that appear to give the government greater authority to tap into the traffic flowing across U.S. telecommunications networks."

"Under the new law, U.S. spy agencies are free to intercept the e-mails and phone calls of any person 'reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States,' even if the target is a U.S. citizen or is communicating with someone within U.S. borders. The U.S. attorney general [ed. - that would be Alberto the Trustworthy] and the director of national intelligence would make that determination, although the procedures they used to do so would be subject to review by a special court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."

"The law also compels American telecommunications companies to cooperate with the government and provide access to their networks, which account for a disproportionate share of global communications traffic — including calls and e-mails that begin and end in other countries."

Reach out and touch someone today. Or else.