Here are today's topics:

1. Kofe Gets Angry
2. A "Trinnie" in the hot seat
3. Technical Background on the NSA Wiretaps

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Kofe Gets Angry

Roger Simon has been a close follower of the U.N. for quite a while. Today he commented on the Secretary's end of the year press conference.

Kofi does a Nixon

Resembling no one more than Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate Scandal, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan imploded at his annual end of the year press conference today, lashing out at the media and accusing one particular London Times reporter who dared to ask questions about his son Kojo's "diplomatically discounted" Mercedes an "embarrassment" to his publication.

CNN has the video from which the following audio clip was taken.

Play clip

A "Trinnie" in the Hot Seat

Perhaps the most hated man in New York this week is Transit Union leader Roger Toussaint. As Rick Brookhiser on the Corner on National Review Online noticed:

HURRICANE ROGER Neither the Transit Workers' Union nor its leader Roger Toussaint has won many friends. The tabloids are on the warpath against them, but they are following the popular mood as much as shaping it. I'm hearing disgust in unexpected places: Ed Lover, the hip-hop radio host, was mocking Toussaint's accent. Out of the blue, my trainer called him a typical Trinnie (Trinidadian). "What do you mean by that?" I asked. "He's been here for years, but he still talks like a Trinnie; he probably eats in the same restaurant every day." (My trainer is from another island.) Seems like New York is suffering from Hurricane Roger.

Here's a short clip from a recent Hurricane Roger press conference. Thanks to Amy's Robot for the clip.

play clip

The New York Times has picked up the "racist tone" of the strike and had this to say:

And what may have begun inadvertently, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Tuesday that union leaders had "thuggishly turned their backs on New York City," took on a life of its own yesterday as minority leaders and union members attacked the mayor's conduct as objectionable, or worse. "There has been some offensive and insulting language used," said Roger Toussaint, the union leader. "This is regrettable and it is certainly unbecoming for the mayor of the city of New York to be using this type of language."

I think we all need to tone down the rhetoric a little. I understand that the union is calling for a return to work while mediation goes on. For a healthy and sober reation, lets go to that cool hand at the controls, Al Sharpton. From the same NY Times article we read:

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who called an evening news conference to blast Mr. Bloomberg, said in an interview: "How did we become thugs? Because we strike over a pension?"

"I do not think the language would have been used in a union that was not as heavily populated by people of color," he added. "And whether he intentionally did it or not, he offended a lot of people of color and he ought to address that, and come to the bargaining table."

As Frank J at IMAO said back in June of 2003:

Frank: Many people find you to be a more offensive but more entertaining version of Jesse Jackson, i.e., a racist idiot who is fun to watch. You're sort of like a Ku Klux Klan member who can juggle. So, as a racial demagogue black man, what do you think are your chances in the election?

Sharpton: Why do you call me a black man? Is it because I'm a black man?

Frank: Uh... yes.

Sharpton: Racist!

Frank: Uh... you're the racist.

Sharpton: No. I know what racism is. I am great at spotting it and... Racism!

Frank: That's just a bird flying by the window.

Sharpton: Racism!

Frank: That's just a wall outlet.

Sharpton: Racism!

Frank: That's just a desk lamp.

Sharpton: Racism!

Technical Background on the NSA Wiretaps

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit points to a post in Ars Technica which has some speculation on the technology behind the NSA wiretap controversy.

It is entirely possible that the NSA technology at issue here is some kind of high-volume, automated voice recognition and pattern matching system. Now, I don't at all believe that all international calls are or could be monitored with such a system, or anything like that. Rather, the NSA could very easily narrow down the amount of phone traffic that they'd have to a relatively small fraction of international calls with some smart filtering. First, they'd only monitor calls where one end of the connection is in a country of interest. Then, they'd only need the ability to do a roving random sample of a few seconds from each call in that already greatly narrowed pool of calls. As Zimmermann describes above, you monitor a few seconds of some fraction of the calls looking for "hits," and then you move on to another fraction. If a particular call generates a hit, then you zero in on it for further real-time analysis and possible human interception. All the calls can be recorded, cached, and further examined later for items that may have been overlooked in the real-time analysis.

In a recent press conference, Deputy Director for National Intelligence Michael Hayden said the following (via Defensetech):

And here the key is not so much persistence as it is agility. It's a quicker trigger. It's a subtly softer trigger. And the intrusion into privacy -- the intrusion into privacy is significantly less. It's only international calls. The period of time in which we do this is, in most cases, far less than that which would be gained by getting a court order.

This sounds pretty much like what I've described above. And yes, this kind of real-time voice recognition, crude semantic parsing and pattern matching is doable with today's technology, especially when you have a budget like the NSA.

The "softer trigger" here is a phrase that's on a watch list, or a call with an abnormally high volume of a certain type of vocabulary. The "agility" bit is a reference to the technology's ability to move from call to call, taking small slices. That's also probably what's behind the claim that the technology is less intrusive than a traditional wiretap, because the time slices are very short.

What he is saying here is that if someone known to be in Al Qaeda is on the phone with an American, and while speaking Arabic, suddenly says in English, "Brooklyn Bridge", the software can detect that and flag the call as suspicious. Here's more from Bill Hobbs:

Quotable

"The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes, and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General." - Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, July 14, 1994. - Via Mike's America, which points out that President' Bush's decision to have the NSA eavesdrop on phone calls between Al Qaeda terrorists and their friends in the U.S. saved the Brooklyn Bridge - and countless New York commuters - from destruction.

Still unanswered: Will a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate just who leaked the information about the NSA program to the New York Times, so that person can be prosecuted for their crime, which undermined national security, aided our terrorist enemy and put American lives at risk?

Mike's America goes on:

Bush NSA Program Nabs Brooklyn Bridge Bomber

Let's look at one of the terrorists apprehended under this supersecret NSA program: Iyman Farris, a central Ohio truck driver, plead guilty in 2003 of plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.

Had we not "connected the dots" and apprehended Farris it's quite possible that another great and historic symbol of New York City would be gone, along with countless numbers of innocent civilians, all of whose civil liberties would be terminated with their death. Would the survivors be comforted knowing that we had bent over backwards to respect the civil rights of those who commit such an atrocity?

Perhaps we should commission a poll of New Yorkers, currently using the Brooklyn Bridge to walk to work during the transit strike in that city. Do they approve of using every means available to protect that structure, their lives and their ability to get to work?

That's it for now, podcatchers.

What others have to say about: NSA, Strike, UN