If this is true, as is being reported in multiple papers, then it seems the assistant Attorney General (.pdf linked), the President and Vice President have been misleading Congress, as well as the public. Asst. Attorney General William Moschella has this week written Senate and House intelligence committee leaders, "As described by the President, the NSA intercepts certain international communications into and out of the United States of people linked to al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization." But SIGINT experts are telling the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and the NYT, that the NSA is likely monitoring far more than that. As Bruce Schneier tells the LAT today:

"It's really obvious to me that it's a look-at-everything type program," said cryptography expert Bruce Schneier, who has written several books about security.

Schneier and others suspect that the NSA may be turning its satellites toward the United States and gathering vast streams of raw data from many more people than disclosed — potentially including all e-mails and phone calls from the United States to certain other countries. [...]

One former senior Pentagon official who has overseen such "data mining" said he also believed the NSA was probably conducting such wholesale surveillance.

On second reading, what's most interesting in Assistant Attorney General Moschella's recent letter, is that Moschella does not say that he himself is saying that the interception of international communications by US persons was confined to those "linked" to al Qaeda. Moschella is saying, "As described by President Bush, the NSA intercepts...." In other words, Moschella is saying Bush himself owns that statement.

More from Reuters.

Posted by Laura at December 25, 2005 11:51 AM