To understand the nature and scope of electronic surveillance it is first necessary to understand the need that businesses have to keep track of every consumer-based electronic transaction.

Telephone companies, for example, use the term provisioning to describe the ability, in real time, to initiate a call, identify the callers, allocate resources for the call across multiple communications providers and track the time, message length, volume of data and anything else necessary to charge for the call. Information like that is as valuable in identifying and tracking persons of interest as are the contents of a given message. Once it is captured, this information is kept for purposes of billing, auditing, marketing, research and development.

The same real time requirements apply to banking, credit card companies, Internet companies and any other type of company that makes money on the basis of electronic transactions.

This information is the raw data for much of the activity associated with our government's surveillance of its citizens. Even the technology and business infrastructure necessary to aggregate and sort through this data is a normal component of business.

Not many people are aware that a single company, Amdocs, provides billing, customer relationship management (CRM) and operational support systems (OSS) for the majority of phone companies in America and many of its Internet service providers (ISPs). There is little or no awareness of of the existence of Verint, a company that manufacturers and installs much of the wire tapping equipment built into America's phone systems. And the public is almost totally unaware that a number of surveillance projects originally implemented by DARPA's Information Awareness Office under John Poindexter, still continue under different government organizations, even after TIA (Total Information Awareness) was defunded by Congress in 2004.

It did not take a giant database in the sky for the government to accomplish the level of surveillance described by projects like the Total Information Awareness project. What it did take was secrecy on the part of our government when secrecy could be assured, legal "permissions" when secrecy could not be assured, and the full compliance and cooperation of businesses that were already in the process of gathering such information.

The fact that this surveillance occurred is not the result of technology. The technology was already there. This illegal surveillance occurred because of policy decisions that were made and enforced by the government using information provided by corporations that, in the best case, were either unable or unwilling to say "No," and in the worst case, more than willing to say "Yes." That, and the complicity of Congress.

All the crap and lies that came from this great public servant and how bad his memory was and yet no resignation from him and no outcry about all this from anyone?

The PBS think will be just the same, more smoke and mirrors to fool some really dumb people into thinking look how they are going after the president.

Typical corruption politics have big show hearings and then everything goes away quietly.

This stuff gets old after 4 months since the election and still no changes in the way business is done in the district of criminals and no change coming.

But how can this be?

Because the democrats are also corrupt and therefore silent.

Forget hearings and public investigations - the Republicans will simply lie, and the fawning and complicit right wing media will rationalize and sugarcoat their criminality like Yoo does. This works because the base can sleep well at night knowing Dear Leader is looking out for them while actively searching for the "evildoers". That's what they're doing, right? Just looking for the bad guys.

I wonder what the reaction would be from Mr. and Mrs. Average Republican if they found out the government was listening in to their phone calls, or reading their mail/email, or monitoring the websites they go to. Because that's what we're really talking about here.

The next President needs to open the books: publicly and openly expose every domestic spying program initiated in violation of FISA - specifically and in detail, including the manner and method in which the information was collected and what it was used for. Those Americans whose information was illegally obtained should be able to search these records to see exactly the level of government intrusion they've allowed into their lives.

Let's see the Republicans stonewall that.

I find the posts by veteran novice and Paul Rosenberg quite intriguing on the concept of NSL's being used for domestic political spying. As I was shoveling literal horses**t this morning, I was thinking about it further, and began to wonder why the fruits of this activity were not actively bandied about in the 2006 election. Two possibilities come to mind:

1) Try as they might, Rove's minions could not come up with anything beyond some already revealed cash in a refrigerator in Louisiana and they are still reeling from a bad case of reality whiplash, because there simply wasn't anything there.

2) Material has been collected, but in the grand tradition of J. Edgar Hoover, it is being used privately to hold off any real attacks on the entire cabal.

Sadly, I lean toward believing option 2 as a more complete descripton of the current course of events.

Either the president is under the law or he is a dictator. And you also punked out on the facts--the FISA law allows for IMMEDIATE wiretaps and EX POST FACTO approval. So why did the president break that law and ignore them OTHER THAN TO SET THE PRECEDENT THAT HE WAS ABOVE THE LAW. Answer, that one, and I'll take you seriously. Of course, you won't, because you'd like to live under a right-wing dictatorship.-- James Levy

So you think Bush did a Chavez just to announce he was "above the law"? Please. Get a grip. This post encapsulates a basic problem with liberal thinking. Yes, FISA has the approval process you've outlined, but it requires already knowing who to surveil. I believe it also restricts said surveillance to specific phones leaving large gaps in communication from that person.

Unfortunately, in this war the combatants are undercover saboteurs. We could just let them roam around if you like. Are you willing to go on record as wishing to abandon the phone record search for terrorists? No listening in on overseas calls? What other insulation from discovery would you like to provide these people?

Moussaoui's laptop was kept closed because of difficulty fulfilling then FISA requirements, and you know what happened next. Was that acceptable by you? You are certainly entitled to your opinions, but you are responsible for the aftermath should those opinions be enacted.