Tinker, Tailor, Miner, Spy - Why the NSA's snooping is unprecedented in scale and scope.

Shane Harris and Tim Naftali deal with the scope of the wiretaps and spying. A little history - a lot of facts. The closing paragraph sums up the next few months...

In January, Congress plans to hold hearings into the legality of the Bush administration's eavesdropping program. Lawmakers will want to know why, if the NSA cannot do its job while remaining within the legal bounds established in the 1970s, the Bush administration did not address that problem in the context of the Patriot Act. Congress might also ask why in the rush to begin data-mining, the NSA has abandoned the privacy controls planned for the TIA. As Adm. Poindexter himself noted in his resignation letter from the program in 2003, "it would be no good to solve the security problem and give up the privacy and civil liberties that make our country great."

I think that quote deserves repeating...

"it would be no good to solve the security problem and give up the privacy and civil liberties that make our country great."