1999: is NSA really obeying the rules?

* earlier i asked about when domestic spying began in the US - Don in the comments pointed to this 1999 interview with paula zahn, bob barr and john pike on Fox, ostensibly about Echelon:

ZAHN: Congressman Barr, how much is the government snooping on all of us?

BARR: By all accounts that we've been able to tell, far too much and without any oversight or reasonable or probable cause basis on which to listen in to...

And the only basis apparently on which the government is listening in on these conversations is the computer picks up a certain key word that you don't know what it is. It then scoops up those communications, feeds them into a computer and uses them for heaven knows what. But this, if in fact the government is doing this, and there have been a number of reports that it is, that raises very serious concerns about the government spy agency snooping on American citizens without proper constitutional and legal safeguards in place.
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Well, we haven't been able to prove anything yet because the agencies are refusing to acknowledge even the existence of the program. And that is why I have called for and thus far have been successful in legislation in obtaining a requirement that the NSA, the National Security Agency, simply provide to the Congress the legal basis on which it is conducting such surveillance...

ZAHN: Mr. Pike, Congressman Barr said we sometimes don't know what the words are that would trigger the government looking at our e-mails. Do you have any suspicions?

PIKE: Well, I think that obviously just about anything that's in the news these days having to do with out national security is the sort of thing that our foreign intelligence agencies are properly looking for. They, after all, are at the forefront of our defense against international terrorists, international crime, arms smugglers, drug kingpins. And obviously, when we're trying to track down Osama bin Laden or go after Colombian drug cartels, the National Security Agency is going to be monitoring international communications looking for information that will help us bring them to justice.

ZAHN: But what's the purpose of monitoring domestic e-mails? What are they trying to learn from the average e-mailer?

PIKE: Well, the National Security Agency almost certainly is not monitoring purely domestic communications. They are, however, trying to monitor most international communications, and unavoidably since Americans are a very chatty people, that's going to involve law and under international -- and under regulation, they're not supposed to retain information about the American side of that communication. They can't retain information on U.S. persons. And if they follow those regulations, I don't think that Americans would have nearly as much to worry about as Osama bin Laden does.

ZAHN: Congressman Barr, is there any indication any of these online companies are cooperating with the government to help them eavesdrop on our communications on a daily basis?

BARR: Well here again, we don't know. But the problem is, Paula, you cannot separate out the way the computers switch domestic conversations off of international satellites and vice versa constantly, you could have a purely domestic conversation or e-mail transmission from one point in the U.S. to another, and it might at some point in that instantaneous transmission go over an international telecommunications satellite.

So saying that, well, the government doesn't really listen in on communications from one point in the U.S. to another or involving U.S. persons, we don't think is accurate. We think that this is scooping up, vacuuming up vast numbers of domestic American conversations without any probable cause or reasonable basis, and that's what worries us.

ZAHN: Congressman, what is one key word you think they're looking for right now -- besides anthrax?

BARR: Probably something as simple as the word "militia" or "bomb" or "gun." Those are some that I've heard used. And if in fact they are scooping up that broadly, this has very little to do with Osama bin Laden. They always like to say that because they want to scare people. But if they are in fact scooping up every communication that they can involving computer transmissions and digitized phone conversations that mention these sorts of words, you can very easily see that you are talking about millions of communications every day.

ZAHN: Isn't that kind of creepy, John Pike? You've have to tell me in 10 seconds or less.

PIKE: As long as the rules are conformed with, I think we're OK. The question is whether NSA's really obeying the rules.

(thnx don)
Very interesting. It almost sounds like they have been doing this domestic snooping since way back when. It almost sounds as though Echelon was sucking up all communications from everywhere, and then (ostensibly) dumping all the purely domestic communications without listening. If that is true, then it was probably just a matter of flicking a switch after 911 to include all domestic communications.

(It's kinda funny to see that OBL and anthrax were the scary things way back in 1999.)

update from Don in the comments:

" 4 points/questions:

1. The NSA has been involved in unregulated monitoring for at least 6 years. In light of revelations of journalists phone records being pulled ("Think of it more as backtracking"), how far back do the stored records go?

2. The denials were in force on domestic monitoring (and the program, for that matter) in 99. Considering the lack of oversight on the NSA then, and that it took over 4 years from the nominal start date of Oct 2001 for it to come out that domestic phone records were being kept now, should they have been any more believable in 99?

3. Originally Echelon was a 5 nation project: US, UK, CA, AU and NZ. The EU later ratified temporary participation on September 5, 2001. Considering what happened 6 days later, is there any significance to their having done so on that date, and was participation extended?

4. Just revealed, German foreign intelligence spied on German journalists "until a few months ago," while the US is after EU call records. Are there Echelon/NSA ties here and, aside from the EU (and US), are any other nations keeping these records?"

thnx don. great catch on the 'backtracking' - i meant to mention that one.

and good question about other nations using echelon. it's kinda difficult to imagine that all those countries would give the US access to the records without being able to piggyback on the technology.