:: Deepquest ::

A week after a domestic-spying scheme by the National Security Agency was disclosed, the details remain shrouded in secrecy.

President Bush forcefully defended the operation in a press conference on Monday, but offered few clues about how it worked in practice. Neither did Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, except to say that “it is probably the most classified program that exists in the United States government.”

But some technologists and civil libertarians, using clues that dribbled out in press briefings and news articles, are concluding that the operation involves widespread monitoring of millions of e-mail messages and telephone conversations that cross any U.S. border.

Some officials have hinted that the eavesdropping has spanned technology far more advanced than telephones.
“The clues are piling up that vacuum-cleaner style dragnets are what’s at issue,” John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a mailing list message on Thursday. “Perhaps they’ve pointed the NSA vacuum cleaner straight into all U.S.-based international telecommunications.”

The longstanding purpose of the NSA is what intelligence agencies call “signals intelligence.” In practice, that means vacuuming up data that can be gleaned through eavesdropping on microwave links, satellite signals, and fiber and copper underwater cables. In the past, NSA officials have assured jittery politicians and the public that its massive, supersensitive electronic ear is not aimed at U.S. citizens.

more from [url=http://tb.news.com/tb.cgi/2100-1028_3-6006326] news dot com[/url]