Do you think it should be illegal for our government to use Yahoo or Google to search for information that may expose an attack here in the US? It is a basic fundamental question. These search engines use sophisticated and proprietary SW to rapidly run through the billions of pages of information now out on the world wide web to bring to you, and anyone, the supposed gems of the internet for you to analyze. It is how our national security agencies identify new threats and understand what they are thinking, since the web is one of the new tools in modern warfare.

No sane person is going to reject the idea that authorities should monitor the information that is out there for public access to try and determine al Qaeda’s next move. We KNOW they used information we once had on the web to plan their attacks here. That is why you don’t see school layouts or government facility layouts or have access to names of people at a NASA center anymore – this information became less public so it cannot be leveraged by our enemy.

Sadly, many times our enemy is those amongst us who are in denial there is a threat at all. To them the acts of 9-11 were of no big consequence, and there is no real threat by terrorists who want to make 9-11 look like a cake walk. In the warped and dysfunctional minds of these people, it is those who are trying to protect this country who are the enemy. They scream ‘foul’ when they learn America might use something like Google to find out who might be trying to kill the next 3,000+ Americans:

A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former government officials briefed on the program.

It is not known precisely why searching in the databases, known as data mining, raised such a furious legal debate, including a threat by top Justice Department officials to resign.

But such databases, compiled by American companies and stored in the United States, contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans. Though the databases do not include the content of the calls and messages, their examination by the government can raise privacy issues.

The National Security Agency’s data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it figured in the March 2004 debate helps to clarify the clash last week between Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senators who accused him of misleading Congress and who called for a perjury investigation.

This is an extension of the disastrous leak of NSA surveillance program that the NY Times and liberals exposed a couple of years ago. In that fit of suicidal, partisan “gotcha” Surrendercrats (aka Democrats) tried to create a scandal where there was none. The fact is before 9-11 we ignored communications between terrorists overseas and their counterparts here. We never followed up, naively thinking it would be OK, no one would try and attack us here. After 9-11 and 3,000 people paid with their lives as an offering to this ignorant way of thinking, we determined we MUST investigate those communications between al-Qaeda and those they would contact, and risk their own detection and death in the process. People forget that to detect the communications also can me to find the ends of the discussion. Both ends. To make contact risked exposure – something true now, but not before 9-11.

We investigate these calls and communications with terrorists and people here in the US to stop the next 9-11. Anyone who claims otherwise better have rock solid, indisputable truth. So one has to wonder about the searching of public records. Google and Yahoo are search engines which work on publicly available records. Is anyone truly claiming that the terrorists can use Google and Yahoo but the FBI and NSA cannot? What kind of warped thinking can make sense out of that?

So what about data mining? Data mining is a name for a class of search engine software. They are, in the general sense, the same thing. Functionally they are identical. What differs is maybe the records they search. You may not call the process a database uses that searches fingerprint records ‘data mining’ or ‘googling’, but it is basically the same thing. The searching of records to find specific information on individuals or their actions is the essence of the legal argument – not the method used to do the sort.

This is the liberal ‘logic’. It is focusing on word games while at the same time we need to stop people out to kill us in large numbers. Is it illegal to search newspapers? Of course not. Is it illegal to have to pay for the newspaper to be able to search it? Of course not. So is it illegal to pay for information any al-Qaeda terrorist with money could purchase? Of course not. The US buys information like this all the time. So once the US government buys the information, can it use any search tool it wants (or owns) to process the data? Yes, it can.

Purchasing and processing information is not illegal. It is the next step where the law enforces restrictions on government (restrictions certain whistle blowers and news outlets violate all the time). The government cannot leak data to the media (though liberal Senators take great pleasure in doing so all the time). The government cannot just use incriminating information without probable cause. And the handling of information it gleans must follow processes and procedures (ask OJ Simpson). Collecting evidence is not illegal. The liberals know that. They think Americans are to damn stupid to know that.

Americans are not stupid, by a long shot. And they have been witness to the damage being done by these liberal Chicken Littles in recent articles that have exposed the damage (not the program) done to our national defenses, our ability to stop the next 9-11. The NSA Surveillance Program, once exposed, exploiting the technology we invented to make the world better:

Six years after 9/11 , U.S. intel officials are complaining about the emergence of a major “gap” in their ability to secretly eavesdrop on suspected terrorist plotters. In a series of increasingly anxious pleas to Congress, intel “czar” Mike McConnell has argued that the nation’s spook community is “missing a significant portion of what we should be getting” from electronic eavesdropping on possible terror plots. Rep. Heather Wilson, a GOP member of the House intelligence community, told NEWSWEEK she has learned of “specific cases where U.S. lives have been put at risk” as a result. Intel agency spokespeople declined to elaborate.

…

The post-Watergate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) required a warrant for eavesdropping on people in the U.S. But after 9/11, the administration asserted that warrants weren’t needed to surveil communications involving suspected terrorists even inside the U.S. The controversy over “warrantless wiretapping” made intel officials gun-shy about eavesdropping even on messages they would have regarded as fair game before 9/11.

The witch hunts by the Democrats are emblematic of their general dysfunction on national security. Unable to come up with a way to win the war instantaneously and without blood shed, these mavericks of idiocy have decided to target those Americans trying to stop the next 9-11. These people are doing all they can to avoid abuse of their positions. They only eavesdrop on highly probable terrorists overseas and then, once THE TERRORIST makes contact in the US they follow up the contact. They do not run random searches in the US. It makes sense to determine what a person in the US is doing talking to Bin Laden (or one of his generals). It is fair game to intercept all communications world wide that intersect Bin Laden (or one of his generals). To argue otherwise means all the security processes and lines we put in place and must live with are USELESS. Why search the shoes of a child getting on a plane with his family if your not going to tap Bin Laden’s phone or email and find out why he is talking to Mohammed Atta in Florida (and sending money).

Liberals are national security idiots. They want power and could care less how many 9-11’s it takes to get Bush out of office so they can be the ones on the funeral pyre with the bullhorn. They are that obsessed and vain. Trust me. Anyone who is crazy enough to expose the NSA surveillance program to create a faux scandal is willing to do anything to win an election.

I can only say this so many times. Searching Bin Laden’s communications is not a crime, telling him we were doing it so he can change tactics was a crime. Not ignoring communications between terrorists overseas and their contacts here is not a crime (it should be a crime to ignore these things), but telling them we are listening so they can adjust their activities in order to make sure their plans against us succeeded is a crime. It is not a crime to defend this nation from attack. It is a crime to help those trying to kill us to succeed by exposing our defenses so they can get around them. This is the reason Democrats will not win in 2008. They are abetting those trying to kill us. They are doing it in Iraq (by trying to surrender while we succeed), in Pakistand (where Hillary says we cannot go if not asked by Musharraf) and here in the US (where they are tearing down our defenses and trying to empty GITMO of its mass murderers). Heaven help them if an attack gets through and it was their actions that allowed it to succeed. Because nobody else will help them – that much is for sure.