January 17, 2006
Dead ends
Posted by
Mark Kleiman
Whatever the NSA was doing in the way of warrantless snooping doesn't seem to have especially productive, at least according to the people on the receiving end:
"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."
