The Daily Background

Quick preview right now. I understand that General Hayden may be before the Senate as early as this upcoming Tuesday, although nothing definite yet. Apparently Hayden has cancelled appointments with Senators to discuss his upcoming nomination, possibly to the potential fallout and new questions raised.

Expect the hearings to garner large press attention because of the recent revelations that the NSA (which he headed up) has been engaged in more illegal wiretapping on Americans than previously thought (a new USA Today article cites the figure at ‘tens of millions’ of Americans). Specter says that he’s looking forward to having the General before the Senate.

Specter also has said that he’s going to start demanding answers from Verizon and SBC/AT&T and BellSouth- the four (now three, after a merger) corporations which have been voluntarily providing private customer information to the NSA for more than four years now– in apparent violation of their terms of service agreements that customers (myself included) signed and believed were binding. Specter says that if he doesn’t get real answers from the phone companies or if they refuse to talk, he’ll subpoena them.

Finally, I understand that the Senate is going to take the issue of immigration up again, with some sort of vague agreement between Majority Leader Bill Frist and Minority Leader Harry Reid on the Dem side. Not many details on this, and I’ll have more on this reported deal before the issue comes up again.

Filed under: Hayden, Immigration, NSA Wiretaps, Z-TDB Blog