Mike McConnell wants to spy on 100% of Internet traffic.

"Americans will have to trust the government not to abuse the authority it must have in order to protect our networks, and yet, historically the government has not proved worthy of that trust."

Here are the parts of this that I don't understand. What do you mean "will have to trust" and "must have"?

Here's the trad press follow-up on McConnell's long interview yesterday in The El Paso Times.

A regional paper (the Globe) and the PST Los Angeles Times. Nothing today from either Pravda on the Potomac or Izvestia on the Hudson. But then, what did we expect?
Yesterday, the very well paid, insured, and seemingly credulous Eric Lichtblau repeated McConnell's line that the warrantless surveillance program was "surgical": Read more…

I mean, come on:

President Bush used his weekly radio address Saturday to urge Congress to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 so the law can better keep pace with the latest technology used by terrorists. [T]he Bush administration says its latest request is narrowly drawn and urgently needed to stymie terrorist threats.

"Narrowly drawn," eh? By who? John Yoo? David Addington? Some elf in Shooter's dank basement? Or maybe they dug up some memo from the '80s when Roberts or Scalito were gnawing away at the foundations of the Republic at Justice?

"The proposal would make clear that court orders are not necessary to effectively collect foreign intelligence about foreign targets overseas," the national intelligence director, Mike McConnell, wrote congressional leaders Friday.

Er, no, they aren't, I agree. They are necessary to prevent the administration from pursuing its Master Plan, which goes by the name of Doing Whatever The Fuck We Want Whenever We Want To Do it.

But really, how black can the farce get? Read more…