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What officials earlier said on surveillance Bush administration officials have said repeatedly that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks includes only international calls and e-mails into or out of the United States. They said it deals with those types of communication that involve at least one party suspected of being a member or ally of al-Qaida or a related terror group. Some comments related to what the administration calls the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," and surveillance in general: Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of national intelligence, and now Bush's nominee to head the CIA, at the National Press Club, Jan. 23, 2006: "The program ... is not a drift net over (U.S. cities such as) Dearborn or Lackawanna or Fremont, grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about. "This is targeted and focused. This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States. This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with al-Qaida. ... You shouldn't worry."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: "Only international communications are authorized for interception under this program. That is, communications between a foreign country and this country. ... "To protect the privacy of Americans still further, the NSA employs safeguards to minimize the unnecessary collection and dissemination of information about U.S. persons." Gonzales said they limited it to foreign conversations: "I believe it's because of trying to balance concerns that might arise that, in fact, the NSA was engaged in electronic surveillance with respect to domestic calls." In a 2004 visit to San Antonio, Texas, covered by The New York Times: Bush said eavesdropping was "limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States." ---------------------------------------------------
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