Unclassified Report on Bush Surveillance Program Released

Last Friday, an unclassified version of a report drafted by the Inspectors General Offices of five US federal agencies was released to the public. Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has written an entry about the report on EFF's DEEPLINKS Blog. Perhaps one of the most interesting lines that Opsahl pulls out of the report is an indication that "most officials in the intelligence community 'had difficulty citing specific instances where [the surveillance] had directly contributed to counterterrorism successes.'" That revelation is perhaps all the more disturbing in light of reports (see, e.g., this article from the New York Times (registration required)) that some of the surveillance activities under the program violated US law.