Does your version of the Internet not come with Google? Anyway, here’s one post that you might check out. Keep in mind that someone who gains his knowledge from TV is hardly in a position to analyze any level of harm or non-harm to national security.

A few chuckleheads have tried to paint the Plame leak as an act of whistleblowing against the CIA.

I don’t know if Josh Gibson is the most credible person on this point. But how about this hypothetical exchange:

Reporter: How about those gripping revelations about White House malfeasance from Joe Wilson?

Harried WH Staffer: Smell the coffee – when Joe Wilson tells you that, in the intel dispute between the White House and the CIA, the CIA was right, you ought to realize – his wife is at the CIA, in the area that sponsiored his trip. In fact, she may have sent him on the trip. Whose side do you think he’s on? Is he really going to tell the press that his wife’s department screwed up? In fact, here’s your headline – “CIA Spouse Vouches For CIA in Dispute With White House”. Pretty strong.

Now, that more or less catches the spirt of Rove’s “Don’t get too far out on Wilson” remark. Pincus said that his leaker was trying to steer him off of Wilson, not towards a story. Woodward probably got his leak from the State Dept., and is deeply skeptical of the WH conspiracy theory.

So if Risen’s characterization of his leakers is dispositive, why can’t we rely on Pincus and Woodward in the Plame case?

I don’t know about whistleblowing against the CIA, but it might have been a useful reminder to the media to check their sources. for hidden agendas.

Or does anyone think that Wilson’s wife being in the area that was central to the dispute does not suggest anything whatsover about Wilson’s motives in leaking?

And if you think that data-mining and technics like scanning for key-words in phone communications is something new – I think it was described in some TV series I watched a couple of years ago.

Huh? Have you read nothing at all about the NSA program? Everyone who has written about it points to all sorts of interesting details indicating that it is something truly new. (See Orin Kerr’s posts.) I’ve never heard of anyone who thinks that the program was just some routine thing where the NSA simply forgot or decided not to get a warrant.

But if you exercise your short-term memory, you might recall the earlier bit of that sentence: “The NSA has been doing {X}.” THAT leaked portion of the sentence is what can harm national security.

But before the recent revelation the common perception was: “The NSA has been doing {X} WITH a warrant.” Thus the only new piece of info here is “without a warrant”; “the NSA has been doing {X}” part has not changed – thus nothing of value has been revealed to the bad guy to prompt him to change his behavior.

Correct?

And what particular ways are those?

One presumes it’s ways that have been deployed against non-’US persons’ and/or those outside the borders of the US for a while, where no such constitutional limits exist. After all, the US is very big on its appropriation of sites of dubious national jurisdiction. Ask the MPs who try to visit ‘RAF’ Menwith Hill.

Not the point at all. What helps a terrorist cell is knowing that particular types of communications are being monitored in particular ways. The warrant/no-warrant question is a red herring.

That shouldn’t be so hard to understand.

Here’s an easier way to explain the problem to the likes of Theora Jones: The recent revelation is this: “The NSA has been doing {X} without a warrant.” Theora deftly points out that it doesn’t harm national security for terrorists to learn the “without a warrant” part of that sentence. No shit, Sherlock.

But if you exercise your short-term memory, you might recall the earlier bit of that sentence: “The NSA has been doing {X}.” THAT leaked portion of the sentence is what can harm national security.

The simplest deduction following from knowing that the Bush administration is monitoring without warrants is that they are a damn pack of arrogant fools. They could use the existing law’s exemptions or go get a better law. Anyhoo, the “arrogant fools” explanation is most likely to have been right.

As for why you think terrorists would not have been sneaky as possible with telecomminications before the NYT story… well, that might have something to do with you being a cretin.

But that is more related to a specific revelation rather than the “NSA knows everything” revelation from pre-Christmas.

Because they are schmuks who should be impeached.

Read harder.

Tell me what certain numbers you would now avoid calling in what particular pattern – based on the information that has come out so far.

Why wouldn’t they try to route their communications in the safest way possible and avoid using phones where possible before any of this has come out?

Oh how clever, to repeat something you saw on Atrios.

Problem is, neither you nor Atrios show any sign of understanding the issue. The harm is not merely that the public knows that the government was monitoring without a warrant. The harm is in the deductions that one can make from that fact. One asks oneself (if one is intelligent, that is), “WHY is the government monitoring without a warrant? Perhaps that might be because they are doing some sort of data collection that wouldn’t justify a warrant in any particular case.” And then, with the further information that inevitably has come out, one finds that this is indeed the case. And THIS is what gives potential terrorists the knowledge that 1) they shouldn’t call certain numbers in a particular pattern; 2) they should be sure to route their communications through off-shore switches, or stop using phones altogether; etc., etc., etc.

None of that is to say that the monitoring is a good thing. Let me repeat for the stupid: None of that is to say that the monitoring is a good thing. It’s probably illegal, as far as I can tell. But at the same time, publicly revealing the nature of the monitoring IS obviously a security risk. That’s not even a hard question.

Well, Gary, once again: if this is true, if that’s the argument, why aren’t the administration officials making it? Or did I miss it? Give me a link.

Thanks.