Eavesdropping Quotes
Referring to President William McKinley who was extremely sensitive to public opinion:
The first non-PRI President in over 70 years.
There are many who do not agree with Hayden’s thesis that there was a national consensus about the degree of compromise with Constitutional rights. It is the case that the 3 Presidents maintained a continuity, but there was no great outcry of public opinion for roundups and arrests of Muslims after 9-11. The government never at the time revealed the data on what they were doing. When that became public, it was clear that there was no consensus as was the case with torture. The military authorities who interned American Citizens of Japanese Origin argued that there was little public opposition but many citizens did not even know it was happening, and the ones who did, for the most part, thought that it was only the suspected saboteurs and spies who were interned, not American citizens who were suspected of nothing; not little children; not 90 year old men and women. When the facts were known Americans did form a national consensus—that it was one of the worst practices in which the United States ever engaged.
He was trying to assuage the anger and anxiety when it became public that the NSA had been monitoring all the calls of American citizens and not only suspected terrorists. He made the distinction between metadata and content. He claimed NSA was gathering the phone numbers of the parties on the call, the time and duration, but not listening in to the contents. Critics asked how he could be sure and that if the agency were gathering all the data, they could easily listen to any. Later the agency admitted that it had “inadvertently” examined the content of some communications.
