Whistle Down the Wind
Keep it secret, keep it safe

Daily Kos diarist Ken the Troll points us to this story from ABC's revamped Nightline, in which the (or one of the) leaker(s) from the NSA about the non-warranted wiretaps authorized by President Bush (NYTimes reporter James Risen has noted that he had over 10 sources for his story) comes forward, with some scary thoughts

Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet.

[...]

Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.

"If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing."

[...]

President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.

But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.

"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.

Guess I should stop complaining about the government in my conversations with my pal DGA in Belgium. This comedy routine from the faux President Bush at WeeklyRadioAddress.com seems not too far fetched suddenly:

I am pleased to report that over 1 million new terrorists have been identified by the FBI through this sensible policy. As I have said, anyone who is not with us is with the terrorists. Todd Benkman of Sioux City Iowa, for example, said in a phone conversation on March 16th of this year, I quote, "I do not agree with some of the things the President is doing." Let me repeat that: I do not agree with the President. The FBI now has a detailed dossier on this terrorist. We know about his numerous phone conversations with his wife, Stacy, regarding their plot to take members of their family to Disneyworld this summer and, quote, "have a blast on Space Mountain."

[UPDATE - 9:05am PST] Just came across this report over at Raw Story on how the NSA--which is charged with tracking foreign intelligence--was spying on a Baltimore peace group associated with the Quakers:

The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore anti-war group, according to documents released during litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of protesters' balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction, RAW STORY has learned.
[...]
The documents came as a result of litigation in the August 2003 trial of Marilyn Carlisle and Cindy Farquhar. An NSA security official provided the defendants with a redacted Action Plan and a redacted copy of a Joint Terrorism Task Force email about the activities of the Pledge of Resistance activities.
[...]
The Baltimore Pledge of Resistance is part of the national Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which works with the Baltimore Emergency Response Network and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) -- part of a national group committed to nonviolent civil resistance to stop the war in Iraq. The Pledge lobbies Maryland congressmembers via letters, phone calls, faxes, emails and face-to-face meetings; members of the group are periodically arrested for peaceable protests.

Documents turned over by the NSA indicate that the group was closely monitored. In one instance, the agency filed reports approximately every 15 minutes from 9:30 AM to 3:18 PM on the day of a demonstration at the National Vigilance Airplane Memorial on the NSA Campus in Maryland.

According to an NSA email dated July 4, 2004, the agency collected license numbers and descriptions and the number of people in each car and filed a report about them gathering in a church parking lot for the demonstration. NSA agents also logged their travel to the demonstration, including stopping as a gas station along the way. A canine dog unit was used to search a minivan when it was stopped on the way to the demonstration - nothing was found.