Lies of the Times

The headline reads:

Bush Aide Defends Eavesdropping on Phone Calls

The story is about the latest NSA leak regarding a data-mining operation on phone records from 3 major U.S. phone companies. Here is the lead:

WASHINGTON, May 14 — President Bush's national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, insisted today that a newly disclosed government effort to compile data on millions of telephone calls in search of terrorist-linked calling patterns was a legal and "narrowly designed program" that did not involve listening to individual calls.

Here's a little bit of insight for the clowns writing headlines at the New York Times. If you are writing about a program that does not involve "listening to individual calls," you really can't call it "eavesdropping." According to dictionary.com, eavesdropping is:

To listen secretly to the private conversation of others.

There is no sound logical reason to call it eaves dropping if they aren't listening to calls, unless you want to create a false impression that the NSA is listening to everyone.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 02:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment