Linkz that made me smile: a comment to this Orin Kerr post about how the administration has been blatantly lying about using shifting rationales for its extra-FISA surveillance.
One of the goals of the military is to confuse the enemy and keep him off balance. At times you want to appear weaker than you are, sometimes stronger than reality. We bluffed Russia with the Star Wars program and won. Could this NSA thing be similar? Tell the world that we are listening to comunications that the enemy thought were protected. If they adapt and abandon working forms of comunication the end result is identical without actually having the program. It sounds too WW2 british so I doubt thats its the real story. It is fun to think about though.
Mmmm. Now, I'm trying to imagine some high-level al-Qaeda discussions during which the minutiae of FISA warrants figure prominently.
71-Hour Ahmed: "Sure, but a call from that international cell-phone would already be covered by FISA's 72-hour rule!"
Abu Death2Israel: "Then let's call from this other number, which conveniently falls through the cracks of the AUMF resolution!"
(71-Hour Ahmed and Abu Death2Israel, together): "Hahahahahahahah!!!!"
Advantage: Islamosphere.
jholbo-at-mac-dot-com
We bluffed Russia with the Star Wars program and won
Star Wars is still going on and still failing, so i assume the wonderful commenter wants the NSA to continue in perpetuity the spying on random american phone lines without bothering to tell anyone and not finding out anything significant.
way to keep up a democratic republic there, man!
Posted by: almostinfamous | March 03, 2006 at 03:56 PM
I just want to record my appreciation of your deployment of the name "71-Hour Ahmed".
Posted by: Tom Scudder | March 05, 2006 at 08:01 PM
This is so totally why we need secret laws.
If the america-hating liberal terrorists can find out about the laws, they can avoid breaking them, and then where are we?
Posted by: JS Narins | March 06, 2006 at 09:48 AM
Which is ironic, really, given that it was apparently a senator's (truthful) announcement that we were eavesdropping on UBL's satellite phone that made him stop using it, completely choking off that particular source of intelligence.
It may well be that stopping AQ using cellphones confers on us some advantage - at minimum, it must be more of a hassle running a conspiracy by courier. But it's worth considering why Churchill didn't stand up one morning in Parliament in, say, 1941, and announce "OMG we're cracking Enigma! ROTFOTHOCLMAO*! Kriegsmarine TOTALLY PWNED!!!"
It was because, fun as it would have been to force the Germans to replace every Enigma machine, it was more fun to know exactly where the U-boats were, allowing us to win the war.
(*rolling on the floor of the House of Commons laughing my ass off)
Posted by: ajay | March 06, 2006 at 11:22 PM
wow, ajay's bringing teh funny.
Posted by: belle waring | March 07, 2006 at 04:49 PM
Doesn't all this mean that Al Qaeda will just learn to be more careful with their communications? They could speak in code, or they could just speak in Arabic since we apparently don't have enough translators. Even better, they could speak in code in Arabic. That'll really throw off the incompetent Bush administration.
Posted by: Erika | March 08, 2006 at 02:41 AM
WaPo says the satellite phone thing is an urban myth, sorta.
Posted by: Matt Weiner | March 08, 2006 at 12:44 PM