Photo of road to Denali via Code Poet.

NOTE: The House is pushing forward the civil suit on contempt for Miers and Bolten. Am working on getting a copy of the complaint (filed today) and supporting docs, and will have an update on that as soon as I've read and analyzed them.

Despite months of wrangling, the Bush Administration is still fearmongering to protect its secrets. Via CQPolitics:

In a letter to lawmakers Thursday, panel Chairman John D. Dingell of Michigan, and two subcommittee chairmen, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Bart Stupak of Michigan, said claims by the chief of security at an unnamed wireless carrier that the company may have given a government entity access to all of its customers’ communications, justified further delay in considering the legislation....

Yup, it's yet another illegal domestic NSA spying allegation sprung from the hydra's head. How many more of these to come? The Administration's response through Michael Chertoff: Rule of law? So?

Call your Senators and Representative today -- and tell them no telecom immunity and to stand up for the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment. Security and civil liberties protection are not mutually exclusive.

Why be concerned [via WSJ (subs. req.)]:

...According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called "transactional" data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA's enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world's main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called "black programs" whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

It isn't clear how many of the different kinds of data are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An intelligence official said the agency's work links to about a dozen antiterror programs in all.

A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance. And the constitutional question of whether the government can examine such a large array of information without violating an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy "has never really been resolved," said Suzanne Spaulding, a national-security lawyer who has worked for both parties on Capitol Hill....

The NSA uses its own high-powered version of social-network analysis to search for possible new patterns and links to terrorism. The Pentagon's experimental Total Information Awareness program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, was an early research effort on the same concept, designed to bring together and analyze as much and as many varied kinds of data as possible. Congress eliminated funding for the program in 2003 before it began operating. But it permitted some of the research to continue and TIA technology to be used for foreign surveillance.

Some of it was shifted to the NSA -- which also is funded by the Pentagon -- and put in the so-called black budget, where it would receive less scrutiny and bolster other data-sifting efforts, current and former intelligence officials said. "When it got taken apart, it didn't get thrown away," says a former top government official familiar with the TIA program.

Two current officials also said the NSA's current combination of programs now largely mirrors the former TIA project. But the NSA offers less privacy protection. TIA developers researched ways to limit the use of the system for broad searches of individuals' data, such as requiring intelligence officers to get leads from other sources first. The NSA effort lacks those controls, as well as controls that it developed in the 1990s for an earlier data-sweeping attempt.

The GOP is fighting to keep full details under wraps because they know this is illegal under FISA. Or at least, keep it muffled until the 2008 elections. Civil liberties sacrificed on the alter of electoral expediency.

Given that we are still waiting for the Phase II report -- four years later and counting -- how many are confident that Congress able to provide adequate oversight of the NSA and black programs sucking in every bit of electronic data to pass through the US? *crickets* This deserves full debate, not half-assed measures rushed through before the latest break.

Raw Story has more. As does Glenn.