spies like us
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush insisted Tuesday that the United States does not listen in on domestic telephone conversations among ordinary Americans. But he declined to specifically discuss the government's alleged compiling of phone records, or whether it would amount to an invasion of privacy.
"We do not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval," Bush said in an East Room news conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
"What I've told the American people is we'll protect them against an al-Qaeda attack. And we'll do that within the law," Bush said.
The president's new press secretary, Tony Snow, later insisted that Bush's comments did not amount to a confirmation of published reports that the NSA's surveillance was broader than initially acknowledged and that it included secretly collecting millions of phone-call records. heh heh heh heh