Uncle Sam Is Still Watching You
The domestic spying measure approved by Congress last week will impose new rules on government wiretapping. But it will leave largely untouched what some experts say is the most sweeping part of the secret surveillance activities ordered by President Bush after 9/11: the National Security Agency's collection of phone records and other personal data on millions of U.S. citizens. The NSA's massive "data mining" program—in which the agency's computers look for call patterns that might point to suspicious behavior—has never been publicly confirmed by the Bush administration. But industry and government officials, who asked not to be identified talking about classified matters, say the practice is a big part of what the telecoms did for the spy agency, and a key reason the companies fought so hard for the immunity from lawsuits granted by the new bill.
After 9/11, the White House asked MCI (now Verizon), AT&T, Sprint and Qwest for help obtaining call records on U.S. numbers found in laptops and cell phones captured in Qaeda hideouts. Normally such data is easy to come by for law enforcement, but in the post-9/11 world, the premium was on speed. So the White House bypassed the established legal protocols. Qwest balked, but the other three carriers went along—because, as one industry official put it, "nobody wanted to be responsible for the next terrorist attack."
Over time, requests for call records grew into the thousands—often two or three calls removed from the original targets. And, without court oversight, the demands for these and other personal data ultimately sparked fierce protests from inside the Justice Department itself.
Congressional and industry sources say the effort was subsequently put on firmer legal footing, with requests approved through still-secret court procedures. But data mining has continued—and even expanded—with little oversight or debate. Thanks to other secret post-9/11 orders, the NSA's computers have access to—and crunch—wire transfers, bank transactions and reams of other personal financial data collected by the Treasury Department, says a former top official. (An NSA spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.) But regardless of the legal standards used to collect the information, privacy experts say there are still troubling questions about the government's accumulation of so much personal data. "This affects far more people—and has a lot more risk of sweeping in innocent contacts—than the actual interception of phone calls," says Jim Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy group. "It's bizarre that this has not been discussed more." Or addressed in the hotly debated new law.
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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