Wired:

But for the quickest and most honest account of Bush's illegal policies, they say don't look to the incoming president. Watch instead for the hidden army of would-be whistle-blowers who've been waiting for Inauguration Day to open the spigot on the truth.

"I'd bet there are a lot of career employees in the intelligence agencies who'll be glad to see Obama take the oath so they can finally speak out against all this illegal spying and get back to their real mission," says Caroline Fredrickson, the ACLU's Washington D.C. legislative director.

New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh already has a slew of sources waiting to spill the Bush administration's darkest secrets, he said in an interview last month. "You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on January 20. [They say,] 'You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.'"

Why wait? As I keep saying, the 100 days started the day after the election.

So far, virtually everything we know about the NSA's warrantless surveillance has come from whistle-blowers. Telecom executives told USA Today that they had turned over billions of phone records to the government. Former AT&T employee Mark Klein provided wiring diagrams detailing an internet-spying room in a San Francisco switching facility. And one Justice Department attorney had his house raided and his children's computers seized as part of the FBI's probe into who leaked the warrantless spying to the New York Times.

Of course, it's a shame that President-elect Obama voted to grant the telcos retroactive immunity for the felonies they committed under Bush's warrantless surveillance program. But -- to momentarily play Polyannta here -- maybe that makes it easier for at least some of the truth to come out. And we can take comfort that Obama's shown he'll throw anyone, anyone at all, under the bus if it suits his purposes. So jail time for Bush officials and telco executives is at least a possible outcome, even if it's an improbable possible.

NOTE I guess what I would expect is for the Obama White House to take a page from the Nixon playbook on this: The "modified limited hangout" route. If they can give a kick in the ribs to the Republicans while they're down, look like they're cleaning up the mess, and conceal any role the Democrats on the Gang of Eight may have had, that's well worth throwing a telco executive or two to the wolves, especially since everyone who's ever tried to get customer support from a telco hates them, and all the campaign contributions have already been collected. Then, most of the surveillance continues on as before, since it's too useful an executive power to surrender, everything's jake with the angels, and all sleep the sleep of the just.

Or Obama might surprise me, and totally clean house. We can't know, since past performance (FISA) is no guarantee of future results.