Hotel Vegas
Granting Permission for 'Chronicle' to Be a Liberal Publication While Castigating Ventura for Being Ill-Informed
RECEIVED Thu., Jan. 12, 2006
Dear Editor,
The latest rant from Michael Ventura on the illegality of the NSA eavesdropping program is remarkably ill-informed [“Letters @ 3am,” Jan. 6]. A good case can indeed be made that the program was illegal (and I'm a happy member of the Republican Party), but Ventura's article did not make it.
Indeed, Ventura deserves a medal for discussing the program at such length without having the slightest idea what the program even is. As even a casually well-informed person now knows, the NSA program is not about your run-of-the-mill wiretaps, but rather a data-mining or packet-sniffing operation that analyzes vast amounts of data for suspicious patterns or words. Such a program would not pass muster for a warrant by definition.
FISA needs to be updated to incorporate the latest techniques; that doesn't retroactively excuse the Bush administration for bypassing it. That Ventura totally disregarded the reality of the program to get on his high horse about the evil Bush administration's desire to usher in the Fourth Reich does no credit to himself nor to you for continuing to publish his totally predictable screeds.
I realize you are a liberal publication; that's fine ... but there are far, far better writers who are vastly more informed and intriguing than Mr. Ventura.
The latest rant from Michael Ventura on the illegality of the NSA eavesdropping program is remarkably ill-informed [“Letters @ 3am,” Jan. 6]. A good case can indeed be made that the program was illegal (and I'm a happy member of the Republican Party), but Ventura's article did not make it.
Indeed, Ventura deserves a medal for discussing the program at such length without having the slightest idea what the program even is. As even a casually well-informed person now knows, the NSA program is not about your run-of-the-mill wiretaps, but rather a data-mining or packet-sniffing operation that analyzes vast amounts of data for suspicious patterns or words. Such a program would not pass muster for a warrant by definition.
FISA needs to be updated to incorporate the latest techniques; that doesn't retroactively excuse the Bush administration for bypassing it. That Ventura totally disregarded the reality of the program to get on his high horse about the evil Bush administration's desire to usher in the Fourth Reich does no credit to himself nor to you for continuing to publish his totally predictable screeds.
I realize you are a liberal publication; that's fine ... but there are far, far better writers who are vastly more informed and intriguing than Mr. Ventura.
Mark Coffey
