NSA Surveillance of Americans: NYT

My experiment today was to ascertain the level of the public's internet interest in the domestic surveillance story broken last week by the New York Times. Several search engines revealed a high level of coverage of the new revelation. The term "NSA surveillance of Americans" turned up 11,000 articles at LookSmart. A Google search of the phrase "spying on Americans" turned up 113,000 articles. Ask Jeeves returned 236,500 hits. Ask Yahoo! returned a more exact total: 14,414,267 sites.

There is good evidence that senators and members of congress are extremely interested in the revelation and will be actively investigating this startling practice, according to a Yahoo! story. To quote a portion of the article,

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy . . . a Democrat, voiced concern about the program and backed plans by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, for a congressional hearing.
"Electronic surveillance is an important law enforcement and intelligence gathering tool, but it can and must be done lawfully, in accordance with our laws and Constitution," he said.

At this moment Secretary of State is being questioned rigorously by Tim Russert on Meet the Press about what authority our current president has to authorize this surveillance. This story is not over yet, by a long shot.
Tags: National Security Agency domestic surveillance Patriot Act