"The National Security Agency has conducted much broader surveillance of e-mails and phone calls -- without court orders -- than the Bush administration has acknowledged, The New York Times reported on its Web site.

"The NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained access to streams of domestic and international communications, said the Times in the report late Friday, citing unidentified current and former government officials. The story did not name the companies..."

I must interrupt this inverted pyramid with a special reminder: always read the last couple of 'graphs in a Times story first. This is often where you will find "the nugget." For example:

"One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.

"The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.

"Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. 'If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data,' he said."

I now return you to this news story in progress:

"Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to [what has been alleged to be --Ed.] Al Qaeda.

"What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

"The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

"Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality.

"Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages...

"This so-called 'pattern analysis' on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.



"The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's CAPPS program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties."


As a side note,
on this day in 1992:

"President Bush [the first] today granted full pardons to six former officials in Ronald Reagan's Administration, including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

"Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels...

"But in a single stroke, Mr. Bush swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of [special prosecutor Lawrence E.] Walsh's effort, which began in 1986. Mr. Bush's decision was announced by the White House in a printed statement after the President left for Camp David, where he will spend the Christmas holiday."