Barry Steinhardt on ACLU's map and NSA surveillance

Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/2006/01/31/new-white-paper/


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Politech] NSA surveillance: EFF lawsuit; new white paper 
by ACLU
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:16:37 -0500
From: Barry Steinhardt <bsteinhardt@aclu.org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
CC: jstanley@aclu.org
References: <43DFE5BA.3070706@well.com>

Declan,

You are right-- in part. No one outside of the Government and the
providers themselves can confirm which specific companies are
cooperating with NSA's "program".  Our map very intentionally does
not point to at any specific company or companies. Although if any
company would like to make a pledge not to cooperate with the NSA's
warrantless and illegal communications spying, we would be happy to
publicly applaud that pledge on the map and our other materials.

What the map shows are the various access and interception points
that are likely involved in the NSA's surveillance.Many of  those
points have been described over the years in reports from well
informed journalists  like James Bamford and government reports like
those  prepared for the European Parliament. Several of the nations
involved in what had been called the Echelon program have also
admitted to its existence.

Most recently, there have been a series of articles in the New York
and Los Angeles Times, as well at the Washington Post and the James
Risen book, describing how the program has evolved and now has
extraordinary direct access to the communications infrastructure.

The citations for the various reports and articles are all available
on NSAwatch. at http://www.nsawatch.org/scandal.html. We can only
hope that more details will emerge as a result of further reporting
by the journalistic community, the litigation brought by the ACLU,
EFF and others, and by the probings of a responsible Congress.

Barry Steinhardt
Posted by Declan McCullagh on Jan 31, 2006 in category privacy