New at Reason
Jacob Sullum tries to make sense of the presidential policy on wiretaps.
Comments to "New at Reason":
Old Hand | January 24, 2007, 11:52am | #
Well, dear Mr Sullum,as it seems, 72 hours are not a lot of time when it comes to the surveillance of foreign intelligence TODAY -- as opposed to the good old days of the cold war.
You see, it takes quite a bit of time to translate communications from Arabic, Pashto, Kafiri, Urdu, Farsi-e Darbâri etc. into English, not to to mention the task of analyzing said communication.
If I remember rightly from the 9/11 report, it usually takes up to two weeks for the FBI to get translated transcripts of wiretaps in urgent cases, due to the lack of linguists. Perhaps the NSA is faster, however I doubt it -- this kind of work can not be done by computers, so a lot of numbercrunching muscle doesn't mean much.
Mike Laursen | January 24, 2007, 6:57pm | #
One could argue that a lack of linguists to quickly translate transcripts in urgent cases is a sign of mismanagement, lack of foresight, and misplaced priorities in FBI management. In fact, I'll just go ahead and argue that.