TSP: Will It Make Watergate Look Like a Prank?

While we’re parsing the sentences uttered, under oath, by the Attorney General, let’s once again consider the program that is under scrutiny. The “Terrorist Surveillance Program” (named in ad-speak, like the “Blue Skies Initiative,” which actually allowed more pollution), or TSP, involves both electronic eavesdropping on domestic-international telephone calls and also another element, data mining of e-mail, telephone records, and other databases.

We know that the part of the TSP that involved tapping calls was not exactly worrisome to the cabal of civil liberties invaders who oversaw the program. It was the data mining, probably the most innocuous-sounding part of the program, that was the most contentious, prompting the likes of John Ashcroft, no fan of individual privacy, to fight the program from his hospital bed.

What does this tell us about the dimensions of the “data mining?” I’d say it tells us a lot. That these guys were willing to resign if it were not stopped— the then-Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General and other top officials— this points to a very serious invasion of our Constitution. The fact that there is still so much focus on fighting additional disclosures, via Executive Privilege claims, despite the three-year time frame since the program was curtailed, the fact that the deputy AG actually had to enlist the FBI Director himself to keep him from being physically evicted from Ashcroft’s hospital room while Gonzales and Card tried to twist the AG’s groggy arm: these facts should inform us of something wider and darker about the TSP than we are aware of.

As Josh Marshall writes:

The only reason (that they will still fight its
disclosure) that suggests itself is that the political
and legal consequences of disclosure are too
grave to allow.

In fact, the Washington Post today points out how much more sinister the program is beginning to appear:

…the NSA surveillance operation was far
more extensive than has been acknowledged
by the Bush administration, which has
consistently sought to describe the program in
narrow terms and to emphasize that the effort
was legal.

I suspect that the dimensions of the domestic spying involved, when finally understood (if they ever are), will be devastating.

Comments

[Mike Mathiesen]

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