[somelist: Questions about the illegal wiretaps]

[Justin]

On 2006-02-12T11:15:11+0000, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> I am quite convinced that the primary goal was to collect political
> intelligence.  They probably were getting good intel on the Kerry
> campaign, on some tight Senate races, and on the overall Democratic
> Party operations.  Since the Google-like search technology allows the
> system's user to search for essentially anything, and play back just
> the calls of interest, they had access to a wealth of political information.

How do FISA-approved wiretaps work, anyway?

All these NSA-bound collection points... are they always enabled,
listening for any interesting traffic?  Is non-FISA-warranted intel
ditched prior to collection, ditched at NSA, or never ditched?

Is the FISA process just:
0. Listen to some conversations.
1. Find something of interest.
2. Go to FISA with a tap request for the parties involved
3. Start flagging subsequently-collected intel with "FISA Approved"
4. Let certain people search the database at any time, but classify
anything not FISA-approved as TS/SCI.

-- 
The six phases of a project:
I. Enthusiasm.         IV. Search for the Guilty.
II. Disillusionment.   V. Punishment of the Innocent.
III. Panic.            VI. Praise & Honor for the Nonparticipants.