Sorry.

"I take it you’ve never heard it referred to as the Rehnquist Supreme Court, or Burger Supreme Court -- sorry to confuse you like that -- I was simply referring to it as historians do. If you’d rather not answer my question, though, that’s fine."

"Had the agents succeeded in obtaining a special intelligence warrant in the weeks leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, they would have found materials that could have led them to al Qaeda members -- including hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi -- who had gathered for a key meeting in Malaysia in January 2000," Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), a member of the panel, said yesterday.-- WaPo

I'm broadly in favor of organizational changes that would have allowed the FBI to get at this data before 9-11. However, only a fool or a dissembler could claim it is likely that the 9-11 hijackings would have been stopped if the laptop were searched. Even if everyone in each jurisdiction and agency involved did everything "right" after this data was obtained, it's unlikely that 1) these 2 men would have been found and detained in time, and 2) that their imprisonment and questioning would have thwarted the attacks.

This fantasizing is part of the problem I have with rightwing authoritarians - in their implausible perfect world the authorities contain no slackers, no bumblers, and different governmental bureaucracies don't indulge in mission-damaging turf wars, they don't withhold information through either malice or inertia, nothing goes missing because their one "token competent" middle-aged female cubicle slave in organization chart subdivision #112 was out sick that week.

That's a fantasy. It puts More's Utopia to shame. And it is shame that is our best weapon against these normal failings common to large organizations. Without oversight at multiple levels you can't keep people on their toes in the ways that matter. That is why secret spying programs seeded through dozens of federal government bureaus are a Bad Idea. They're also anti-American, but my argument here revolves around the little stupidities we're all capable of, not the issue of honor.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I'd prefer those red stars go away.

-- jayackroyd

They're also anti-American, but my argument here revolves around the little stupidities we're all capable of, not the issue of honor.

-- Holly McLachlan

Jake007 waxed on about nuking our allies: 'I lived through it, and have read everything on it since. Knowing everything we know now, however, I may have dropped the first A-Bomb on the Russians.'

That just about says it all, doesn't it? The USA is allied with the USSR (plus Great Britain & many other nations) and this alliance has just heroically brought down Nazism (mostly due to the Soviets, who have like 200 armoured divisions in what remains of the Third Reich), we still haven't completed defeating the Empire of Japan & this dipshit would have nuked the Russians!?!?! Even before nuking the Japanese. Yeehaa!

You are obviously a semi-senile dumb-fuck. I've read alot of your ravings in past few days, but this one should be gold-plated for the 'Dipshit Hall of Fame' (tm). Bravo.

In this same issue there is an article which notes that we still don't know quite yet what the source of the Edwards 400 dollar haircut was, and yet we are told that the latest terror plot in Philly was broken up only due to the heads up sssisstance of a video store clerk.

Is our "anonymous" option on Salon Letters really as it claims?

The solution, as someone has almost mentioned, is in fact very simple. Let's all speak Arabic so the NSA can't decode what we are saying.

Holly, she's not a "token competent" middle-aged female cubicle slave in organization chart subdivision #112, she's a butterfly, flapping her wings over the NSA's virtual Phillipines.

I do NOT agree-- first, I don’t KNOW you are not going to discuss terrorism just because you type a denial here on-line.

Are you accusing me of plotting terrorist attacks? I take that as an insult. I own no weapons and do not intend to acquire any, ever.

In addition, if we have every phone call recorded, we are going to be able to go back after the next 9/11 attack and track down co-conspirators much easier, right?

No. If a conspirator is worried about this, all he has to do is set up an automated random-dialing process with his phone line (easy to do with a modem.) Then, he can produce as much extrateraneous data as he pleases, generating endless useless leads.

Not to mention: he can purchase many unrelated phone cards and never use the same one twice, he can make calls from payphones, and I believe I have read that al Qaeda members use prepaid cellphones only once, then throw them away.

Also: you know the phone box outside your house? Anyone can come by with a phone hooked to alligator clips and get on YOUR phone line, making calls to anywhere in the world. (I don't remember exactly, but I think the kid did that in Wargames.)

There is absolutely NO guarantee that phone records are valid. This is a fact of our technology, and it cannot be corrected without re-installing the ENTIRE phone network that has been built up since Edison.

As I understand the details released so far (already compromising national security), certain words like "BOMB" or "ANTHRAX" are flagged for review.

If you were a terrorist, would you say those words out loud on the phone? He can call bombs "clothes", and anthrax "cigarettes."

Meanwhile, you and I, discussing our actual security situation online, ARE getting flagged for using those words.

Who knows if a human being EVER even listens to your conversation in particular? I wouldn’t worry if I had nothing to hide.

Even if a human never hears it, who knows what sort of watchlists we may be put on automatically? Who knows if our travel will be restricted in the future, because of this very conversation we are having right now online?

Don't pretend it won't happen, there is case after case of mistaken identity in the TSA program, for the exact reasons I have discussed above: data-mining is not for security. It is for advertisers and profilers.