Simon W. Moon said:
Some of the folks were American citizens.
Some folks who have suspected of having terrorist ties turned out not have had such ties.
Since these are facts, there is no spin.
But that's where the problem lies with warrants...
The NSA monitors calls where one party is outside of the US...I'm sure we can agree that this number will be in the millions..Although I don't know the specifics, it seems that the NSA locks in on certain keywords and conversations get spit out of the computers so the human element can analyize them...
Now how many conversations get spit out everyday?...every hour?...thousands?...tens of thousands?...hundreds of thousands?...
And out of those conversations, how many does the "human element" believe there's a need to go further with monitoring them for a terrorist conversation?..Ten thousand a day?...Hundred thousand a day?...
How the heck are you going to get a warrant for every one of these?...72 hours?...You'd be lucky to get them all in within 72 days!...
Every judge in the nation could be utilized and we still wouldn't have the paperwork complete...
Now...
Let's be real "conservative" here and say the estimate of these conversations the computer spits out is one thousand a hour...24 thousand a day out of millions and millions of international(with the US being one side) is hardly out of the realm of plausability...BTW - This part has been legal for decades...This is hardly breaking news...
How long does it take for the "human element" to recognize a conversation may be terrorist related?...Once again, we'll go low and say 5 minutes...That's 5,000 minutes a hour folks...and that's JUST on the initial analyzation...I'm sure once the first contact makes a connection, it doesn't go straight to some secret FISA court for warrants...Imagine if the first contact thought there may be a connection because of something inconsequential...he'd be laughed right out of court!...
So it goes up the ladder...a supervisor...probably another one after that...it might go through 5 or more hands before we'd even start thinking about a warrant...Once again, let's be conservative and say this takes an hour...
Now this is just ONE case...
How many go up the line and get stopped by the top person(people?)...Well that's about 50 minutes going through this and deciding against getting a warrant...Now they start all over with the next case...and remember...when it gets to the upper management side there's probably a line forming 6 miles long...
Also remember...this is going on 24/7...this just ain't one eight hour day, then it stops at the 5 o'clock whistle...
Now how long does it take by the time it gets from the top person's hands to the court?...How many "typers" would be needed to draw up each case?...Added up, I'm sure that's a few hundred more hours of administrative stuff before it gets to a judge's hands...
Even if a steady stream is going to the courts in this manner, how long does it take a judge to see if the warrant has merit?...5 minutes?...10 minutes?...I'm sure some judges are slower than others...It would be dumb to just "sign off" on each one in twenty seconds...this is a "case by case" basis...
And ALL of this is going on BEFORE an individual gets targeted for specific monitoring...
How long has this process taken?...An hour and a half minimum?...could be few...I don't know...
But I do know this...In a day and age of $10 phone cards and disposable phones, by the time that warrant is signed to target an individual, that phone could be LONG GONE...any numbers connected to it rendered moot...
The warrant has become meaningless...You now have a piece of paper to checkup on a phone sitting in a dumpster...congratulations...
You know what the whole arguement is for the ones who cross their fingers and wish Bush falls for this?...
"
F--- national security!....At least we have the correct paperwork!"...:roll: