On Wed, 21 Dec 2005, R. A. Hettinga wrote: " The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes it difficult to conduct surveillance of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents unless they are suspected of being involved in terrorist or other hostile activities. That is too restrictive. Innocent people, such as unwitting neighbors of terrorists, may, without knowing it, have valuable counterterrorist information. Collecting such information is of a piece with data-mining projects such as Able Danger." This says it all - they want the authority to look at "innocent people" without restriction. Forget it. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF Just once, can't we have a nice polite discussion about the logistics and planning side of large criminal enterprise? - Steve Thompson