NSA director Hayden's testimony on NSA and 9/11

[John Gilmore]

http://intelligence.senate.gov/0210hrg/021017/hayden.pdf

Hayden's testimony deserves to go into the cryptome archives, and
should be read by everyone on this list.

He spends ten pages explaining how NSA worked on terrorism pre- and
post-9/11, and then tells Congress that they can best help him by going
back to their constituents and understanding where the public wants to
draw the line between liberty and safety, i.e. between not being
wiretapped domestically and being wiretapped domestically.

We should help to give him a loud and clear answer to that.

	John

Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 22:30:43 -0400
To: politech at politechbot.com
From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
Subject: FC: The Echelonization of America: NSA to spy domestically?

The head of the National Security Agency said last week that Congress might 
want to aim the most powerful surveillance system in the world at American 
citizens.

Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, in a rare public appearance before the Senate 
Intelligence committee, said the ongoing terrorist threat means America 
needs to debate where to draw the line between foreign and domestic 
surveillance. Currently the NSA is prohibited from spying domestically.

Here's an excerpt:

"Where do we draw the line between the government's need for 
(counter-terrorism) information about people in the United States and the 
privacy interests of people located in the United States? This line-drawing 
affects the focus of NSA's activities, foreign versus domestic... the type 
of data NSA is permitted to collect and how, and the rules under which NSA 
retains and disseminates information about U.S. persons."

Until the 1970s, when the Senate's Church Committee revealed what had been 
going on in secret, the CIA and the NSA conducted illegal surveillance on 
American citizens. In response, Congress enacted a series of reforms, 
notably the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"These are serious issues that the country addressed, and resolved to
its satisfaction, once before in the mid-1970's," Hayden said. "In light of 
the events of September 11th, it is appropriate that we, as a country, 
readdress them. We need to get it right."

Statement:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/0210hrg/021017/hayden.pdf

-Declan
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