Wiretapping Experts Sift Clues in the Government's Secret Spying Programs

Four wiretapping and surveillance experts are taking turns at Slate, trying their best to make "known knowns" out of the "known unknowns" of the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

Perhaps it's best to start with Professor Orin Kerr, who, batting clean-up, writes:

Let's play a game, a game I call "guess the classified program." Here's how it will work. I'll imagine a secret government program, but I won't tell you anything about it. I'll hand you a poorly written, decades-old statute and then leak a few hints about it through the Times.

Then, you guys have to guess exactly what the program is and how it works.

Whoever wins that game will go on to the bonus round. Now I'll give you another 16 pages of legalese called the "Protect America Act." Your task: Tell me exactly how the new law changes the secret program.

Ready to play?

Oh, wait, that's the game we're already playing.

Patrick Radden Keefe, a journalist who covers spying, started things off, while former Justice Department officials in the Bush Administration Marty Lederman and David Kris follow on.

Lederman suspects all foreign communications in the tubes are being sifted, but since it gets everyone (not particular persons), it's not considered surveillance. Kris looks at the new surveillance law's logic and asks "If the government can obtain a single order authorizing wiretaps of an entire gateway switch, why can't it do so for all of the e-mail that goes through facilities maintained by Hotmail, AOL, or any other Internet service provider or telecommunications company?"

Radden Keefe comes back with a stark observation: "Our filters suck."

As they say on the internets, read the whole thing.

Photo: Ritcharnd Moskow