More on wiretapping

[mdlbear]

Although the outrage is only now hitting the headlines, they've actually been pretty open about it for months, as this article and its references make clear. (From finagler.) The Washington Post had an article in early February that says straight out that "NSA rules since the late 1970s, when machine filtering was far less capable, have said 'acquisition' of content does not take place until a conversation is intercepted and processed 'into an intelligible form intended for human inspection.'"

So the government has been spying on us for years, and the plain facts in the press have largely gone unnoticed until suddenly King George has an appointee to shift the blame onto. At this point there are only two likely possibilities:

1. He'll stonewall the hard questions, claiming "national security", get approved anyway, and the invertebrates in the Senate will slink back to their holes.
2. He'll drop out rather than answer the hard questions, to be replaced with someone even worse but less well-known.

I knew my phone was being tapped thirty-odd years ago. Welcome to the goldfish bowl.