God, I am sick. I think that's the worst headline I've ever written in my entire life. More chicken soup....

So how come Bush and all his lackeys use weasel words about "monitoring" versus "detection"?

It would be irresonsible not to speculate. And over at Talk Left an otherwise unidentified reader posts a very, very plausible thesis:

These are not phone numbers we're talking about...These are IP addresses, email addresses.

A system is in place that basically filters on certain triggers (text, phoneme, etc.) within Internet "conversations." This is "detection" or at least it's tortured definition that was placed in this idiot Bush's mind. "Monitoring" would be recording an entire conversation, like in a phone conversation.

That system then collects information on those conversations including...ta da...source and destination IP addresses. Those IP addresses can then be stored for further investigation on other "conversations."

E.g., I start an email thread with a friend in France. I mention Al Qaeda. My conversation is "detected" and my info is stored. The system then segments my address into another system and starts a deeper "detection" on any further "conversations" for further triggers. Hence, the system could still be said to be in the detecting mode, not monitoring. If I don't mention any other "evil" words, if I simply send medical records or lusty love letters or diatribes against liberals, I'll eventually be dropped.

Ramifications:

Anybody doing anything on the Internet whose traffic gets routed overseas, no matter why, no matter how, is being sniffed. Let's just call it sniffed. Spare me the parsing of "detection" versus "monitoring."

Yikes!