Written by: Joe Adgie

Chances are, your view on the National Security Agency is of a big, bad agency that listens to all of your phone calls, knows all the websites you visit, and where you are at all times, no matter where you are or how wired you are.   According to the NSA, this is not the case. Bill Combs, a representative with the NSA, states that the above, for varying reasons, are unconstitutional, and any representative of the NSA that oversteps their bounds are dealt with very harshly. Furthermore, according to Combs, this is just not feasible.   “A lot of folks [have the idea] that the NSA is a giant vacuum,” Combs said, “that we suck up everything.”   Combs asked the assembled News Fellows how many of them actually thought that the NSA checked on everyone’s phone calls, text messages, and assorted methods of communication. None raised their hands. “Can we really physically do that?” asked Combs. “No, no, we can’t do that, so we’ll build a giant data center and hide all of your stuff, that’ll be great, so we’ll hide all of your stuff every day for the rest of your life, and everyone else in the country, and oh by the way, we really do foreign stuff, so we’re going to hide all their stuff too.”   “When are we going to go back and listen to all of that?”   Combs attributed this to “common sense.”   Combs noted that the NSA would only be interested in your data if you were talking to a known terrorist on a regular basis.   “We are targeting that terrorist,” Combs said. “And when folks talk about an American getting caught up in all that stuff, you probably shouldn’t be talking to a terrorist every day. And chances are, 99.999 percent of Americans aren’t talking to terrorists every day, so guess what? We don’t care. We are listening to the  bad things from bad guys overseas.”   Combs also noted that American citizens, no matter where they are, are “untouchable” from NSA surveillance.   “I don’t care if you’re vacationing in Iran, why the hell you’re doing that I don’t know, that’s your own decision, I’m not listening to that. You’re an American citizen.”   Further, known terrorists and assorted bad guys are forbidden from NSA eavesdropping on American soil.   “Necessarily what you read or what you’re saying isn’t true,” Combs said. “There’s a lot of rules.”   Combs noted the harsh consequences of willingly breaking those rules.   “We go to jail,” Combs said. “We get fired.”   Combs also noted that while some of what was reported was true, the willingness of breaking the rules was not as much. “There’s 2800 times that we supposedly broke the rules,” Combs said. “If you look at it, we self-reported those things.”   Combs also noted that most of those violations were “fat-fingered” errors or instances where a foreign rogue actor had arrived on US soil without knowledge of the NSA.   How true is all of this? It’s difficult to say. Tomorrow, I’ll try to give you the other side of the story, as well as some thoughts from Senator Johnny Isakson.