Talk:NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–2007)/Archive 5

NPOV

Defense of the Patriot Act does not "differ" with the NSA Surveillance Program

Claiming htat defending the international eavesdropping under powers of war (which is the administration position) does not "differ" from the defense of the patriot act. THey are separate pieces of legislation and separate pieces of law. "Differs" is POV. THe two positions are not contradicoryt. --Tbeatty 06:59, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

President Bush claimed in several of his speeches that no domestic surveillance was being done without warrants. Does saying that reflect a point of view? Would you prefer that just to be left out of the article? Metarhyme 10:04, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe the statements were that no Patriot Act surveillance could be done without a warrant if you read the whole quote. These wiretaps were not Patriot Act surveillance. The Patriot Act does not allow warrantless searches. The Administration claims that the power to wiretap international calls comes from a resolution that authorized any and all force. --Tbeatty 18:52, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

They picked one guy up in the Chicago area. To get him, would it have been OK to nuke Chicago - a little overzealous, but (any and all force) entirely proper? You can see what is wrong with that idea. I replaced your {{NPOV}} template with a {{NPOV-section}} template. Did the President say "anytime?" If he meant what you are indicating, then anytime didn't mean anytime but only except exactly what he wasn't going to get into because it was secret. The statement was misleading. You didn't answer my question, "Would you prefer that just to be left out of the article?" Metarhyme 02:36, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

The context of the quote was the "Patriot Act" and whether that authorized warrantless wiretaps. The "Patriot Act" doesn't and that's what the President was saying. A better and more apropos example would be does the power granted the President under the resolution allow him to shoot down hijacked airplanes using the military over U.S. soil? It seems obvious that after 9/11 that the power for the military to operate over U.S. soil in a combat role exists and that the President could order an airliner shot down if he believed or had evidence that it was hijacked by terrorists. He could do it without a warrant. He would never need a warrant. Now it seems odd, that with the same evidence he can't listen to thir phone calls but he could shoot them indiscrimintately even if civilian lives were lost. In fact, the "posse Comitatus" law expressly forbids the use of military in law enforcement. But the argument is that this is not "law enforcement" and shooting down an airliner is a military operation. The argument of the administration is that these phone calls pose the same threat as hijacked airplanes and is an extension of the military's role to prevent attacks from killing large numbers of civilians. --Tbeatty 03:42, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes or no please: "Would you prefer that just to be left out of the article?" Here's some samples: Metarhyme 03:59, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

“Finally, we need to renew the critical provisions of the Patriot Act that protect our civil liberties. The Patriot Act was written with clear safeguards to ensure the law is applied fairly. The judicial branch has a strong oversight role. Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone, a federal judge's permission to track his calls, or a federal judge's permission to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the U.S.”

--President George Bush, June 9, 2005, in Columbus, Ohio

“A couple of things that are very important for you to understand about the Patriot Act. First of all, any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order. Now, we've used things like roving wiretaps on drug dealers before. Roving wiretaps mean you change your cell phone. And yet, we weren't able to use roving wiretaps on terrorists. And so what the Patriot Act said is let's give our law enforcement the tools necessary, without abridging the Constitution of the United States, the tools necessary to defend America.”

--President George Bush, July 14, 2004, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin

“Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.”

--President George Bush, April 20, 2004, in Buffalo, New York

Again, it is POV to say "differs." You can reword it or leave out the quotes and comparison altogether. Drawing a conclusion that the Presidents statements about the NSA wiretaps differs from his statments about the patriot act is POV. --Tbeatty 04:52, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

You have, I take it, answered, "yes, unless a suitable edit is made." What do you think of this replacement - would you be willing to find the needed pro-administration reference? Metarhyme 05:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

The President's defense of the Program is viewed by the administration as not differing with his pre-disclosure statement, "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so,"[17] because there he was speaking in defense of the USA PATRIOT Act, however others view that and similar statements as having been misleading.[1]

Your NPOV removing edit answered my last question, "No, Tbeatty is not willing to find sources. Someone else can find sources for Tbeatty's corrective editing." Nuts. Metarhyme 06:05, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

What are you talking about? I left a placeholder for the cite which is a matter of publi record as it was a resolution passed by congress. I left the quotes. I took out POV conclusions that the administration position on wiretaps contradicts it's position on the Patriot Act and still left it in as a contrast. The section is titled "Administration Response...". What issue do you have with the edits I made? --Tbeatty 06:24, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I would just like to say that the President knows much, much more than we (American citizens) do. This is, of course, for national security purposes. Personally, I'd be angry with our President if the NSA wasn't wasn't spying on suspected terrorists. Suspected TERRORISTS. The law-abiding citizen shouldn't fear anything. The government has NO reason to spy on us. It's just not beneficial or practical.

Rename redux

The President has been referring to this as "the NSA terrorist surveillance program" and "the terrorist surveillance program" every time he talks about it over two months now. When are we going to start following our own guidelines and accept that the head of the Executive branch knows what his own programs are called? See [2] for an example, or type in "terrorist surveillance program" on the Whitehouse web page search form and sort by date. There's room for debate on whether the words should be capitalized, but there's little doubt that the administration has picked a public name for this. --Syberghost 14:49, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up again, Syberghost. You're preachin' to the choir here. I totally agree. It is obligatory, (if we are to follow our own guidelines) that this article be renamed. To continue to refer to the program as anything other than the established, official name is inherently POV. Either change the title of this article or change the WP guidelines, but let's be consistent.--WilliamThweatt 15:55, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

There is a world of difference between whatever a president decides to call something and an official name. That's why this name change was brought up before, debated and decided against. Nareek 17:02, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Nareek, I have two points in response to your statements above. 1) Contrary to what you stated above, the official name is, by definition, exactly what the president decides to call any program of his administration. 2) The fact that this was decided against before had nothing to do with correctness, or compliance with WP policy guidelines. Remember, a majority merely indicates consensus, not what is right or wrong. All the previous vote demonstrated is that this article is frequented more often by editors with a POV to advance. I'm glad people with their liberal extremist views can only win votes here on WP and not in the "real" world.

Most of the arguments in that debate were claims that nobody in the administration had ever called it that. This can be documented to be untrue. So why wouldn't the debate resume? We have guidelines. This article doesn't meet them. That can be documented to be the case. If our guidelines mean nothing, then we're reduced to revert wars. -Syberghost 17:15, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

We were well aware during that debate of the language Bush and others in the administration were using. Nareek 17:27, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

"the official name is, by definition, exactly what the president decides to call any program of his administration."

Actually, the United States is a country where the official names of government programs are set by law, not by presidential whim. Nareek 18:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

If that is indeed the case (and I'm not conceding that it is), please cite the "law" that names this program "NSA warrantless surveillance program".--WilliamThweatt 19:39, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe this is a country where official names are based on the president's whims?

I've never seen the official name of the program in question, not being privy to the NSA's organizational chart. The name of this article is an accurate description of the controversy, as determined (like everything else on WP) by WP editors through the WP editorial process--which you now want to go through again, because the arguments you made the first time around didn't carry the day. Nareek 21:05, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Just for the record, this is a country with three co-equal branches of government, and not only can all three name their own programs whatever they want, but the decisions of many federal agencies carry the force of law unless countermanded by one of the other two branches. I realize there is precedent for us not naming articles that way, however; "Operation Desert Storm" redirects to another name, for instance. But that latter name isn't something Congress dreamed up, either. I'm not privy to the NSA's organizational chart either, but I bet it doesn't say "NSA warrantless suveillance controversy". -Syberghost 16:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely. This first discussion about this issue was based in no way on an examination of the Wikipedia Naming Conventions, but rather on the POV of specific editors. If this article is to attain any credibility, its name must reflect the official name bestowed upon it by the United States Federal Government, right now, this name is the creation of Wikipedia, not reality.--RWR8189 23:19, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Shall we advance the theory that any name should at least be appropriate and correctly describe the subject: Terrorist surveillance program since many innocent people have been subject to this program this is an entirely incorrect description Warrantless surveillance we have surveillance and no warrants were issued. This exactly desctibes what has been done.

As to the President determining official names, does that mean that if he chooses to call torture enhanced interrogation, we no longer are allowed to call it torture? If the President says that thing you are sitting on is an apple, does that mean we are not allowed to call it a chair? Nomen Nescio 23:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

First of all, those are ridiculous analogies that amount to nothing more than the proverbial red herrings. A more appropriate analogy would be if the President's daughter was named Patricia and a majority of WP editors voted that her article should be titled "Fatty Patty" because that is how they perceive that she is most commonly referred to. The proper course would be to name the article "Patricia" and redirect "Fatty Patty". Likewise, this made-up name needs to be redirected to the official name of the program.--WilliamThweatt 23:51, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

We are not discussing broad concepts with commonly associated and understood names. We are discussing a program of the United States Federal Government which the President authorized, and the federal government has given an official name to.

We even do similar things as you suggested about torture in articles such as Extraordinary Rendition --RWR8189 23:38, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Except it's not the official name--when the phrase first came up, it was with Bush saying "what I would call a terrorist surveillance program"--and the official White House transcript accordingly put it in lower case letters. It's no more the official name of the program than "Grand Old Party" is the official name of the Republican Party.

I would also note that the subject of this article is not the program itself but the controversy over it being conducted without warrants. Presumably the NSA listens in on conversations in other countries between suspected Al-Qaeda contacts; because warrants are not required for such surveillance, that's noncontroversial and not part of this article. On the other hand, if it turned out that the FBI as well as the NSA were listening in on U.S. conversations, that would belong in this article as well, even though it would have to be a different program (since a different agency). So even if "Terrorist Surveillance Program" were the official name of the NSA program--which it does not seem to be--it would not be an accurate description of the scope of this article.

So far, you haven't put forth any arguments that weren't heard and rejected before--though I must say the idea that government programs are like the president's kids is a novel analogy. Nareek 01:59, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

If it turned out the FBI is involved then the current name of this article would be compromised as well. So I really don't see that as a valid criticism.

It doesn't matter when the government decided to name and/or make public the official name of the program, all that matters is that the federal government currently refers to its own program by the name they have bestowed upon it.--RWR8189 04:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe somebody can provide a sources in which Bush named it as terrorist surveillance as he signed the order. Otherwise we should stick to the name it was given before the WH tried to rename it when it was confronted with the controversy. Nomen Nescio 16:29, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Nice attempt at subterfuge by trying to reframe the argument. As it was a "secret program" (necessitated by national security), it had no name that the public was aware of before the classified details were (most probably illegally) leaked. As such, the WH didn't "try to rename it" as you say, they simply put forth a name for their program.--WilliamThweatt 16:38, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

No, I only try to show that nobody knows what the "official name" of the program is. While that has been a major argument for the use of terrorist surveillance. What I am trying to say that it is impossible to know whether it really was named as such, or that it was invented to counter public relations problems. Either way, it still is a misnomer, since the program not only tracks terrorist but innocent people and petty criminals too. Nomen Nescio 16:42, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Please provide documentation for a single case of it tracking innocent people and petty criminals. -Syberghost 17:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

As requested:[3][4][5][6]

• However, the New York Times reported yesterday that although the NSA flooded the FBI with telephone numbers and email addresses of Americans they believed were linked to al-Qaida, eavesdropping failed to detect any terrorist networks inside the US. Virtually none of the individuals turned out to have links to terrorists.[7]
• Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.[8]
• In other words, this widespread wiretapping of Americans is not restricted to a small number of people who are chatting with al-Qaeda associates; it is prying into the communications of innocent Americans and burdening U.S. law enforcement with worthless tips that divert investigative resources away from more promising leads.[9]
• Scott Tooley, a Republican, and former Congressional aide and law school graduate, educated at renowned Christian universities, has filed suit against the President, Vice President and relevant federal agencies for their illegal surveillance programs.[10]

Nomen Nescio 19:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

The majority of your links have nothing whatsoever to do with this program; however, two of them do, so you have indeed fulfilled my request. Thanks. -Syberghost 19:46, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

New to this area, and admittedly not up to speed, it seems to me that this article is fine as it is - BUT should somebody [Syberghost or someone else] do an article titled as per the 'offocial' title of this Act [as named by our President]. The history material of the actual act could be moved out of here [including the 'leak' to the news] and linked here, as here could be linked to the article on the Act. --Dumarest 20:10, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I already created Terrorist surveillance program last week after Nareek's argument that this page is limited to the controversy itself, not the program in general.--WilliamThweatt 21:12, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Language is politics. The President never came up with "terrorist surveillance program" until after it was revealed publicly. Arguments over it are political, the president is one one side of that political debate, and his wording was selected specifically to serve his political purposes. The president is one of many servants of the Constitution; his word is not the sine qua non authority on all aspects of the government. To rename a purportedly objective article in conformity with the politically framed wording finely crafted by spinmeisters in one side of a political debate would violate NPOV policy.

Additionally, we have nothing more than the President's assurances that only terrorists have been targeted - just as we had the President's assurances that the mission was accomplished, that Iraq had active biological and nuclear weapons programs, that New Orleans had all the resources it needed on the night before Katrina struck, that no one could have predicted the levees would fail, and that Brownie was doing a heckuva job. As our distinguished Dutch friend has pointed out above, factual reporting has already firmly established that thousands of thoroughly innocent, ordinary Americans have already been surveilled. All politics aside, and purely from the perspective of an encyclopedia trying to ensure that it reports factual information, the only source we have informing us that the NSA program is only being used on terrorists is well-established as a notoriously unreliable source. - Reaverdrop 19:36, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

related to rename redux - electronic surveillance vs. wiretaps

Regardless of what the program itself (and thus the article) is called, the controversy discussed in this article is whether the program violates or conflicts with FISA -- and FISA relates to "electronic surveillance" not "wiretaps". Thus, I tried to make this clear in several places where the use of "wiretap" seemed especially inappropriate, particularly, for example, where the discussion is about the AG having been asked in 2004 to approve "wiretaps" when in fact what was asked was to reauthorize the program of electronic surveillance. I've tried to change "wiretap" to "electronic surveillance" in these few places a couple of times but Kevin Baas seems to have a problem with this, has reversed my changes, and suggested I bring it to talk. So, here it is.

I think the use of "wiretap" in these places is anachronistic and misleading -- the issue underlying the NSA program is how and under what authority to approve electronic surveillance, shouldn't the article reflect this under the Wiki rules? Also, "electronic surveillance" is not only more accurate, but makes it clear that it includes email and other communications. Although "wiretap" is sometimes used to include these other forms, the general usage implies phone taps.

Indeed, in addition to the factual issues re the AG above, one of the changes that Kevin seems also to have a problem with is where I changed "phonetaps" to "electronic surveillance" on line 22 -- but here clearly "phonetaps" is inaccurate since the paragraph goes on to talk about monitoring "internatonal phone calls and international email". Surely, it can't be that the old language "phonetaps" is more accurate than my changing it to "electronic surveillance" in this usage. (Also in line 22, I tried to change "making calls to people outside the country" to "international communications of US persons and sources" -- again, I believe (in this case I am sure) that my language is more accurate than that which Kevin reverted to).

Finally, as argued under "rename redux" discussion, the article is called "NSA warrantless surveillance controversy" because it involves warrantless surveillance -- it is not called "warrantless wiretap controversy" because that would be inaccurate. Shouldn't the text be accurate as well?

So, IMHO, Kevin is defending inaccuracies and resisting corrections to original semantic infiltration that should have been corrected earlier. One thing that is absolutely clear as well is that his justification of reversion based on "vagueness and confusion" introduced by my changes is fallacious. I suggest that under any fair reading my changes are more accurate and clear.

216.254.113.14 21:27, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I haven't read your full post yet. I appreciate that you brought discussion to the talk page since you made a change that was disputed. however, i do not appreciate language like "One thing that is absolutely clear". (If it's absolutely clear, why mention it?) That language, to me, represents a hostility and stubbornness not conducive to the collaborative improvement of articles.

Now let me list my argument for the word usage. Now I understand the desire for the most abstract, general terms. It's a philosopher's desideratum, and I love knowledge, myself. But I think in this context, practical considerations are more important. Such as simplicity of language, readability, specifity, focus on the subject, etc.

Being that the only form of electronic survellience under discussion here is phone taps, it does not subtract from the accuracy of what is being done to say that "phone taps" are being done. And in any case, it is more useful to the reader to know that phone types are being done than some sort of "electronic survellience", which the reader may not understand the scope of, except insofar as the controversy relates to FISA. So there are, for the sake of fleshing my reasoning out here, two ways to inform the reader that phone tapping is a form of electronic suvellience AND the administration's actions in question with regard to the NSA are phone tapping, exclusively (does not involve any other kind of electronic survellience):

1. Say once that the only form of electronic survellience in question is phone tapping, and every where else, where the empirical act of phone-tapping, which is a form of electronic survellience, is under discussion, use "electronic survellience" to implicitly refer to phone-tapping.

2. Say once that phone tapping is a form of electronic survellience, covered by FISA, and every where else, where the empirical act of phone-tapping, which is a form of electronic survellience, is under discussion, use "phone tapping" to explicitly refer to phone-tapping.

I think explicit references are generally easier to follow than implicit references, so for all practical purposes, I prefer the status quo. Kevin Baas^talk 22:00, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

you wrote: "I changed "phonetaps" to "electronic surveillance" on line 22 -- but here clearly "phonetaps" is inaccurate since the paragraph goes on to talk about monitoring "internatonal phone calls and international email". I didn't notice this. But the word phonetaps being used in one part of a paragraph and the phrase "internatonal phone calls and international email" being used in another does not neccessarily make it innaccurate or inconsistent. That depends on the syntatical relationship between the two. It may be the case in this instance, I haven't looked yet, but if it happens to be, I'll concede that. Kevin Baas^talk 22:19, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

you also wrote: (Also in line 22, I tried to change "making calls to people outside the country" to "international communications of US persons and sources" This change is what finally made me make up my mind. what is "international communications?" how are they international, and what means of communication does that entail? business transactions? writting school books and sending them across borders? television? and what is a "source"? the sentence structure implies that a source is not a person. And if you must be a person to be a terrorist, how could a source be a terrorist? what the hell is a "source"? And why do you say U.S. in one part of the sentence, and "international" in another? Is that inconsistent? What is the syntatical relationship between the two? I really can't answer all these questions, and I wouldn't expect the average reader to be able to. And I certainly wouldn't expect them to be able to infer that the adminstration was/is tapping phones of people "making calls to people outside the country" from that. And the administration was/is, and a lot of people don't know this. So it's important that the article tells them that without them having to jump through all these logical hoopes to maybe (but probably not) infer that. Kevin Baas^talk 22:19, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Line 22 refers to what a newspaper says. The proper solution is to use the wording that the newspaper uses. Kevin Baas^talk 22:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

So, we have discovered the crux of the dispute. You say in your earlier comments "Being that the only form of electronic survellience under discussion here is phone taps" and "the only form of electronic survellience in question is phone tapping" and then premise the rest of your convoluted argument on whether "phone taps" are explicitly or implicitly implicated in "electronic surveillance". Unfortunately, your asserted premise is clearly -- or absolutely, if you prefer -- false. (BTW, I see that you consider yourself a postmodernist, thus I understand why you might object to "absolute clarity", but that's the problem with postmodernism, isn't it?)

In any case, the NSA program is not only about phone taps. Even the quoted paragraph from the NY Times article following the disputed change on line 22 makes that clear by referring to "email". You acknowledge this but then assert something about "syntatical relationship between the two" to justify the inconsistancy. In any case, it is clear (absolutely, as well) that the NSA program uses a variety of electronic surveillance technologies, including automated data and traffic analysis. See, for example, Shane Harris, NSA spy program hinges on state-of-the-art technology, NAT'L J. (Jan. 20, 2006).

The bottom line is that technically, legally, and as a matter of policy, the issue at hand (and the subject of this Wikipedia entry) is "electronic surveillance" and not "phone taps". Although you could argue that modern usage of "wiretap" might implicitly include some other forms of surveillance (perhaps even email), it is simply not as accurate as "electronic surveillance" that explicitly includes things like email interception and packet-sniffing. And, neither "phone tap" nor "wiretap" explicitly or implicitly include traffic analysis, a core surveillance component of the NSA program.

You seem a bright young man but I wonder if your enthusiasm hasn't got the better of you here. Despite the postmodernist claim for absolute relativity, there are some semantic distinctions still worth making. The use of "wiretaps" is just not as accurate or clear as "electronic surveillance". Indeed, the use of "wiretap" (and certainly "phone tap") is so narrowly focused as to be itself misleading when discussing the NSA program.

So, while you may prefer the status quo, it "ain't right" even appling your on argument based on an analysis of what is implicit and explicit. Let me be clear here -- this is not about being abstract; rather it is about accuracy -- focused, to the point, but encompassing of all the activities of "electronic surveillance" in the program.

Don't take any of this personally, nor as hostility. Sometimes, even in linguistics, things are just right or wrong if you examine the known facts. Further, there is no reason for Wikipedia to continue the same error that the MSM perpetuates when they use "wiretaps" instead of "electronic surveillance". The point, if there is any to wiki production, is to fix "bugs" -- "wiretaps" as applied to the NSA program is a linguistic bug.

As to your recent change to reflect the lead in of the Times story -- if we are goijng to use the language of the Times article then let's at least use it accurately -- I've inserted the entire line. Your previous paraphrasing did not make it clear that the use of "domestic spying" and the conclusion that "it is "ordinarily subject to warrant requirements" is an assertion of the Times, not a fact.

Your mileage may vary but the facts still favour "electronic surveillance".

216.254.113.14 23:27, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I like the changes. And I'll concude that I was "overly enthusiastic", and made errors due to assumptions.

To clarify, I did not "assert something about "syntatical relationship between the two" to justify the inconsistancy" I certainly asserted something aobut syntatical relationships between the two, but may purpose was not to justify or diminish, I asserted this to point out that one should not confuse logical consistency with semantic consistency. one does not neccessarily imply the other, lack of one does not neccessarily imply lack of the other. The syntax determines the logical relationship. for instance, given the semiotics "A" and "B", the syntax would be something like "A is in B", and although A and B are not semantically consistent, the syntax plus the semantics produce no logical contradictions.

and speaking of semantics and logic, you said ""it is "ordinarily subject to warrant requirements" is an assertion of the Times, not a fact." - I would say rather "not neccessarily a fact." If it was absolute fantasy I would say that a newspaper is the wrong context for it (the editorial page notwithstanding).

To be more specific regarding what words to use - i think "set theory" is a useful intellectual tool here. "electronic survellience" is the largest set in this example, "wire taps" is a subset of it, "phone taps" is a subset of "wire taps" (though actaully not fully contained within in this day and age - because of cell phones (no wires)), "email [whatever]" might be considered a "wire tap", or one might prefer "data tap" as it is fairly deterritorialized, but in any case is not a "phone tap". etc. Now the larger the set expressed, the less informative it is, and therefore to maximize informativeness of the article, it is optimal to, in each particular instance throughout the article, use the smallest set possible that is not inaccurately small. This was the motivation behind my unsound argument. Kevin Baas^talk 00:51, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Kevin--

Well, I guess I should graciously accept your post and move on, however, because you have invested time in this, let me respond to some of your earlier "points". However, after this post, it is time to move on. You (Kevin) write:

you also wrote: (Also in line 22, I tried to change "making calls to people outside the country" to "international communications of US persons and sources" This change is what finally made me make up my mind. what is "international communications?" how are they international,

"international communications" would be those that are "inter" and "national" , between nations or across borders. In this case they are communications with one end in the US.

and what means of communication does that entail? business transactions? writting school books and sending them across borders? television?

Well, "electronic surveillance of communications" seems pretty clear -- i.e., the interception of some form of electronic communication.

and what is a "source"? the sentence structure implies that a source is not a person. And if you must be a person to be a terrorist, how could a source be a terrorist? what the hell is a "source"?

A communications "source" is the source of that communication, i.e., a phone number, email account, or communication node (for example, an IP address). A "US source", which is what FISA is concerned with in addition to US persons, is a US phone number or node. A terrorist "source" is a phone number, email address, IP address, or other "node" which is known or suspected to be used (or have been used) by someone suspected of being a terrorist.

And why do you say U.S. in one part of the sentence, and "international" in another? Is that inconsistent? What is the syntatical relationship between the two?

No, it is not inconsistent. The law -- in this case FISA and the Fourth Amendment -- apply to "US persons" and intercepts "in the US" (i.e., US sources). Purely domestic conversations under the NSA program were still subject to FISA warrants as pointed out in the article itself. The NSA intercepts that were not subject to FISA (under the EO) were of "international communications" (i.e., one end not in the US) from a "US person" or a "US source" (where the other end was a suspected terrorist or source). Hardly inconsistent.

I really can't answer all these questions, and I wouldn't expect the average reader to be able to. And I certainly wouldn't expect them to be able to infer that the adminstration was/is tapping phones of people "making calls to people outside the country" from that. And the administration was/is, and a lot of people don't know this.

Well, that is not exactly accurate. What they are doing in the NSA program is intercepting -- not "tapping" -- communications to and from suspect terrorist persons or sources outside the US. Say, for example, al Zarqawi's cell phone number. Calls to and from that number were intercepted and subject to some level of analysis (not necessarily "tapped", which implies that the content was monitored -- in some cases it was but in others only traffic was monitored).

In some cases the legitimate and legal monitoring of foreign numbers (i.e, legitimate foreign intelligence targets not subject to FISA) also intercepted the communications of US persons or sources (numbers. addresses, etc.) communicating to or from those foreign nodes. In those cases there is a question as to how FISA applies and how to reconcile the FISA procedures with the automated monitoring of a legitimate foreign surveillance target (the retroactive warrant procedures under FISA are probably inadequate because of specific legal problems with how those would apply). The president's EO authorizes the NSA to continue those intercepts without FISA warrants in these specific cases. Anyway, that is what this "controvercy" is about, not the random monitoring of US persons "making calls to people outside the country" as implied by the language you defended earlier.

So it's important that the article tells them that without them having to jump through all these logical hoopes to maybe (but probably not) infer that.

No, what is actually important is that the subtleties be reflected through language that more accurately reflects what the facts are. If it is unclear it needs to be expanded by those who do understand the issues, not reduced to a politically charged, but technically, legally and policy inaccurate, term just because someone "prefer[s] the status quo". Unfortunately, that is exactly why Wikipedia has trouble being taken seriously. In this case, happily, it occurred in a circumstance where we both invested the time in Talk to resolve it -- but it many cases it doesn't.

Anyway, I'm going to end this now. Wiretap is the wrong term to use. I suspect that any disagreement with this conclusion would stem from a misunderstranding of what is actually going on in the NSA program and in the technical, legal, and policy debate about the controversy. The fact that your misimpressions result from the MSM's misuse of the same terms is understandable but doesn't change the facts. In any case, the point of Wikipedia is to fix those "bugs".

Having taught semantics and semiotics at the graduate level, and having a degree in mathmatics as well, I'll resist engaging you on the points in your latest post -- perhaps we will have the opportunity to cross again in another context and we can discuss these then. Nevertheless, I can't help but point out that "not necessarily a fact" is just a mealy-mouthed way of saying "not a fact" ;-)

216.254.113.14 01:25, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Gentlemen, it seems you have settled your disagreement, but I would like to add something here. Actually it has nothing to do with the above argument, it's more of an observation realized as a result of this argument (which, by the way, was quite entertaining--which IMO has become the only thing this article and talk page are useful for). Kevin, this is not an attack on you so please don't take it as such, but, with your indulgence, I would like to use two comments from your arguments to demonstrate my point.

Above you wrote:

• "you wrote: "I changed "phonetaps" to "electronic surveillance" on line 22 -- but here clearly "phonetaps" is inaccurate since the paragraph goes on to talk about monitoring "internatonal phone calls and international email". I didn't notice this" (bold emphases added)
• "That depends on the syntatical relationship between the two. It may be the case in this instance, I haven't looked yet, but if it happens to be, I'll concede that"(again, bold emphases added)

Forgive me, Kevin, for using you as an example, but at least you were honest. In watching this page for the past 5 months, I believe these statements are representative of nearly every editor that happens upon this page. They change words, insert comments, revert those of others without even reading the whole article or even the very next sentence. This has resulted in an article that is so convoluted and inconsistent, so badly formatted, so disorganized and unbelievably long that it is of no real value. It would be interesting to take a quick poll and see just how many editors have read this article in its entirety (recently or even at all). I'd wager the results would be revealing.

And for those that have (or do now, just to be able to say you have), do you really get anything out of it? I say somebody should freeze the page and totally rewrite everything. (I would say just erase it all and start over, but the very little that would qualify as well-written, NPOV, informative text would be lost).--WilliamThweatt 01:52, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, agreed. I hope the article validation/review tools that are currently being worked on will help stabilize articles against errors like this. The main reason for my reversion was that I remembered the NYT article and felt that the revision to the now famous "line 22" did not elucidate the legal nuances of the issue as clearly as the prior version, and this is an area of great confusion among the general populace (the average reader), so instead of looking into the others edits more carefully and particularly and possibly preserving them, and as they were few and minor, I just did a full revert. It turns out that line 22 was the only issue that needed to be resolved, and the article is now better (IMO). I should have made my contention more clear earlier - only now can i articulate it succinctly. I was concerned about misrepresentation/obfuscation.

On another not, I have one small, tangential, contention remaining: "not neccessarily fact" - So if the newspaper reported that the sky is blue, the sky would ipso facto not, in fact, be blue? As a computer programmer, when I mean "not neccessarily", i mean that a is sometimes, but not always, false/true, and I consider this to be an important distinction from "not", which means simply that a is always false/true, so much that i will interject this would to assure logical accuracy, and thus reliable communication. The de facto meaning certainly depends on how people will interpret this, but in that they will most certainly be suprised by this uncommon usage of the word "neccessarily", it is in any case informative. Kevin Baas^talk 02:33, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

--

I'm sorry, I just can't resist. What I should have said was that "not necessarily a fact" is just a mealy-mouthed postmodern way to say "not a fact." A fact at one time was thought to be a real occurrence, something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed. Thus, to assert something as fact was to assert its truth value. In the postmodern world, of course, truth is not necessarily true. This opens up opportunities for all sorts of interesting possibilities, including the "fake but accurate" school of journalism among others, see, e.g., Maureen Balleza & Kate Zernike, Memos on Bush Are Fake But Accurate, Typist Says, N.Y. TIMES (Sep. 15, 2004).

216.254.113.14 03:50, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Ah, but it is wrong to assume that postmodernists simply erase the word "truth" from their vocabulary. How useful is that? That is not what is done. Rather, the philosphical nuances of the word, the meaning of it, is altered. One is reminded of scientific truth (though they don't really use the word) and how that differs from theistic truth. Scientific truth is a measure of verifiability and falsifiabilty. This shift in paradigm makes some things less true and others more true than the theistic paradigm. For instance, God cannot be "true", because his existence is not falsifiable. Postmodern truth is sort of an extension of scientific truth. One might say it denies Origin and "innate" truth.

Roughly speaking, to say that something is true, in the postmodern sense, is to say that, for all practical purposes, there is a negligibly low negentropy between the signifier and the signified (i.e. a high degree of redundancy between them). The "truth" of a proposition, or, more abstractly, "code", or "narrative", is a matter of reliable communication, which is the subject of information theory. For instance, if I send you the letter "A" and you recieve "A", the copy you recieved is "true" insofar as it has a high degree of mutual information with the copy I sent. If you told someone that you recieved "B", while you had actually recieved "A", that message would be "false" because the signifier has a low degree of mutual information with the signified. (I know I'm using these terms loosely)

If a newspaper article's signifiers have a high degree of mutual information with the signified, then the article is to that degree "true". Who wrote the article, or that the article is in a newspaper, is completely irrelevant.

In summ, postmodernism does not reject "truth" (so long as the "t" is not capitalized), rather, it redefines it. The postmodern stance is that truth is not an innate quality of a system, but is, like complexity, a matter of the relationship between two (arbitrary) systems, neither having superior ontological status, except insofar as postmodernists try to reframe ontological questions in terms of bodies taking some specific action in an environment. Kevin Baas^talk 01:53, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. However, by saying in 363 words of pomo jargon what I had already written in eleven -- that is, "[i]n the postmodern world, of course, truth is not necessarily true” -- you have added much redundancy to the signal, but, I'm afraid, little noise.

In communications theory (the kinder, gentler parent set of information theory), Bateson's Rule holds that noise is the only possible source of new patterns (i.e., learning) in systems, so its absence here is unfortunate.

To be clear, I never suggested that postmodernists "reject truth," quite the contrary, as was implicit in my earlier post, I think they view it much as did Winston Smith’s employer – re-definable so that its utility (that is, its degree of mutual information) determines its value.

One of the great tragedies throughout history has been that while there are many brilliant young mathematicians, there are no brilliant young philosophers. Why do you suppose that is? Maybe it is because they have confused the central limit theorem with knowledge creation. Art without artists is at best pastiche and a horse designed by committee, still a camel.

Ellsworth Toohey, too, was a central-limit-theorem-man, but I like Roark.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

216.254.113.14 04:59, 4 April 2006 (UTC)