....Its main goal when it was launched in 1999 was to enable NSA analysts to connect the 2 million bits of data the agency ingests every hour ....The NSA initiative, which was designed to spot and analyze such hints, has resulted in little more than detailed schematic drawings filling almost an entire wall, according to intelligence experts familiar with the program. After an estimated $1.2 billion in development costs, only a few isolated analytical and technical tools have been produced, said an intelligence expert with extensive knowledge of the program. ...Trailblazer is "the biggest boondoggle going on now in the intelligence community," said Matthew Aid, who has advised three recent federal commissions and panels that investigated the Sept. 11 intelligence failures.
Consider the failure of the agency to pick up on more than 30 hits related to the September 11 attacks before they happened. And that this is the agency that Bush picked in 2001 to monitor Americans communicating with those overseas believed to be tied to Al Qaeda.
What does this tell you about Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance program, other than he violated our civil liberties and the FISA statute for nothing?
Although the Bush administration spent much of the past week defending the NSA's eavesdropping work as vital to keeping Americans safe from terrorism, virtually no attention has been paid to the agency's failure to deliver the system the NSA said was key to fulfilling that mission.
That means the government has been standing by while the agency has been gradually "going deaf" as unimportant communications drown out key pieces of information, a government official with extensive knowledge of Trailblazer told The Sun.
Who devised trailblazer in the first instance?
Trailblazer began as a signature program of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was the NSA's director from March 1999 until last spring. Early on, former officials familiar with the program said, it became clear to Hayden that the agency, with its rich history of developing cutting-edge technology, was falling behind the technology curve. He cast Trailblazer as the agency's future.
The same Michael Hayden who has been at the forefront of Bush's team trying to justify the warrantless surveillance. The same Michael Hayden who said the Fourth Amendment doesn't specify "probable cause" only "reasonable suspicion." From my earlier post based on the New York Times article on Hayden's speech defending the program:
.... "General Hayden defended the program's constitutionality. He said the lower, "reasonable belief" standard conformed to the wording of the Fourth Amendment, pointing out that it does not mention probable cause, but instead forbids "unreasonable" searches and seizures."
The last time I read the Fourth Amendment it said:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
This is a long article, but it's important to read the whole thing.
