NSA whistleblower says journos were targeted
As the credits roll on the Bush administration, a former NSA analyst who helped blow the whistle on the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program in 2005 has come forward again with allegations that the agency deliberately targeted and intercepted the communications of American journalists. He also described the data mining program, first revealed in 2006, used to target suspicious communications by filtering the metadata of all communications, foreign and domestic, passing over US wires.
In an interview with MSNBC's Keith Olberman, Russell Tice, who was fired by the NSA in May of 2005, explained that he had been tasked with monitoring the communications of specific groups, which he described as an attempt "to try to harpoon fish from an airplane," which he contrasted with the "collecting all the fish" approach of data miners. Among those targeted, said Tice, were American reporters and news agencies. "We looked at organizations supposedly so we would not target them," Tice explained. "What I was finding out was that the collection on those organizationswas 24/7, 365 days a year. It made no sense. I started to investigatethat; that's about the time they came after me to fire me."
