When the news of the White House/NSA wiretapping scandal hit the front pages, there was a public backlash. Pundits' heads spun, lawsuits were filed, and congressional hearings were scheduled. When Alberto Gonzalez testified he told us that the programs had ended and gave us his word that no new programs would be authorized without FISA approval, "scouts honor." Now we had Gonzalez "promise" that our telephones would not be unconstitutionally tapped, but to make sure we couldn't do anything about it, Congress passed immunity laws for telecommunication companies who had allowed our private conversations to be monitored.
Many had questions about how the NSA had operated the program. When whitsleblower Mark Klien, a former AT&T employee, revealed schematics he uncovered detailing the system at an AT&T office, we saw just how the system was structured. Klien was just a contract worker for AT&T when he first became suspicious. He noticed a room being built with a large amount of cables leading into it, yet no one in the office knew what is was being used for, nor did they have access to it. It turned out that the NSA had constructed the room to route all traffic into it. The data was then funneled through a data crunching system designed to scan everything coming in and pull data out that was flagged by a set criteria created by the NSA. So to boil it down, all your calls went into an NSA secret room where keyword software would initiate recordings. Now you know why AT&T needed lawsuit protection: otherwise their entire consumer base would have a case against them.
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After the death of 8 CIA officials during Wednesday's bombing in Afghanistan, a U.S. intelligence official has said that the deaths will be avenged: "This attack will be avenged through successful, aggressive counterterrorism operations."
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