Be very afraid, please

Reuters

AMERICA and Israel often hint at military action to stop Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons programme. The latest rumblings, however, may be more serious. The atmosphere has been charged by a combination of factors: Iran’s expanding uranium-enrichment programme, faltering diplomatic efforts to halt it, a dying American administration and a nervous Israel. Throw in the latest war games by Israel, America and Iran—and Iran’s apparent rejection of the latest international incentives to halt its nuclear work—and some reckon the sparks could soon fly.

On July 9th Iranian television showed the test-firing of nine missiles (see picture), a day after an aide to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened to “burn” Tel Aviv and American ships in the Gulf, and strike at America’s “vital interests around the globe”, if it were attacked. More tests took place on July 10th.

This was a response to Israel’s demonstration of its own long arm in June, when about 100 Israeli jets took part in exercises that appeared to rehearse the bombing of distant targets. Western officials were struck by helicopter sorties of more than 800 miles (1,290km), about the distance from Israel to Iran, to simulate the rescue of downed pilots. Israel conducted the exercise with Greece, rather than its traditional partner, Turkey, maybe because Greece has some of the Russian SA-20 anti-aircraft missiles Iran recently bought.

In the Gulf, meanwhile, American, British and Bahraini ships are involved in a joint exercise to protect gas and oil installations. This seems to be a reaction to Iran’s threats to retaliate against any attack by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for roughly 40% of the world’s traded oil, and striking at neighbouring countries.

Does this public bellicosity really make military action more likely? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, dismissed the idea this week as a “funny joke”. And, yes, Israel could well be bluffing, waving its big stick in order to make the rewards the Europeans, Americans, Russians and Chinese are offering Iran in return for an end to uranium enrichment look more tempting. But whether or not Israel has frightened Iran, it has clearly rattled others.

France’s Total, an energy giant, said this week it was giving up plans to invest in Iran because of the risk. A top British government official puts the chance of an Israeli strike at 30%. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, was worried enough to say publicly that a third war (after Afghanistan and Iraq) would be “extremely stressful, very challenging, with consequences that would be difficult to predict”. As to whether Israel might act alone, he said: “This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don’t need it to become more unstable.”

One uncertainty is how close Iran is to being able to make a nuclear weapon (an aspiration it vehemently denies). America’s controversial National Intelligence Estimate, made public in December, said that Iran had indeed run a weaponisation programme but seemed to stop it in 2003. The Iranians continue (despite UN sanctions) to enrich uranium, but most Western experts think they have much to learn before being able to make the high-enriched variety for a bomb. America’s estimate is that the soonest Iran could make enough for one device would be the end of 2009, but that it could take five or more years longer.

Israeli officials are less sanguine. So far Iran has produced only a small amount of low-enriched uranium, but this could eventually be converted to the bomb-making sort. For all its sabre-rattling, Israel still says that diplomacy is preferable to war. But a number of political and military considerations may yet convince Israel to act alone—sooner rather than later.

One of these is the departure of the friendly Bush administration and the possible advent of a President Obama, who has promised to do “everything” to stop Iran getting a bomb but who is distrusted by many Israelis. Another is that Iran’s Russian-built reactor at Bushehr is due to start working in October. This is less worrying than the underground enrichment facility at Natanz. But if Israel intends to bomb it, it would be best to do so before it is loaded with nuclear fuel. Finally, it would be easier for Israel to act before Iran deploys its SA-20s, which may happen in early 2009.

That said, an effective attack against Iran’s buried and dispersed nuclear facilities would not be easy, even if Israel knew where all of them were. There will be no element of surprise, as when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, and a Syrian facility which America said afterwards was a secret reactor last September.

Another unknown is whether Israel would dare to strike Iran without a green or at least an amber light from the Americans. Without one, flying to Iran the direct way—through American-controlled Iraqi airspace—would be fraught with danger. An unauthorised Israeli strike that added to America’s miscellaneous woes in the Middle East would test even the closest alliance, jeopardising Israel’s relationship with its vital patron and armourer.

Against this must be weighed Israel’s visceral sense of vulnerability, sharpened not only by the Jewish state’s history but also by the implacability of Iran, whose government rules out any accommodation with the “Zionist regime” and repeatedly predicts its disappearance. Nobody can be quite sure that in a corner, confronting what it believed to be existential peril, Israel will not act—alone if necessary.

Zoom in on Iran Zoom out on the Middle East

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made headlines again yesterday, with a speech calling for the downfall of both Israel and the United States. Of Israel, the Iranian leader said, “the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime . . . has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene.”

Of the United States, he said, “the time for the fall of the satanic power . . . has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has begun.”

Amid such animosity, we decided it was time to zoom in on Iran. So today, we’ll measure the nation by the numbers and place it squarely on your mental map. Then, tomorrow and Thursday, we’ll retrace Iran’s history, from Alexander the Great to the rise of the current regime.

ran, By the Numbers

1935 - The year Iran asked the West to stop labeling the place “Persia” and to start using the name natives use: “Iran.” The language is still called Persian, though, or Farsi–from the modern province Fars (ancient Parsa, called Persis by the Greeks). Today, Persian is written in Arabic script, a holdover from medieval times, when Persian rulers fell to Islamic caliphs in Damascus and Baghdad.

1979 - The year an Islamic revolution forced Iran’s western-supported shah (”king”) into exile and Iranians voted overwhelmingly to establish an Islamic republic. In the republic, all adult citizens can vote, but clerics can veto laws and candidates deemed un-Islamic.

636,300 - Iran’s total area, in square miles (1,648,000 sq km). That’s slightly larger than the state of Alaska, and nearly four times the size of Iraq. The country sits on a vast waterless plateau, ringed by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the population lives at the foot of these mountains.

70 million - Iran’s total population. That’s more than France or the United Kingdom, but less than Germany or Turkey. It’s a youthful country–about half of its people are under 25–and increasingly urban. In 1950, about a quarter of the population lived in cities. Now, more than 60 percent do.

7.7 million - The population of Tehran, Iran’s largest and capital city. More than 13 million people live in its metropolitan area, at the southern foot of the Elburz Mountains, not far from the Caspian Sea. More than half of the country’s growing industry is based there.

89 - Percent of the population that is Shi’a Muslim. Nearly everyone else is Sunni Muslim. The Shi’ite branch of Islam is the official state religion, and the nation’s post-revolution constitution guarantees Islamic principles of government.

85 - Percent of government revenues that come from oil. Only Saudi Arabia exports more crude than Iran, which is also one of the world’s leading natural gas exporters.

Iran, On the Map

Get a printable map of Iran’s mountainous geography:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_physical.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s mixed ethnicity:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_ethno.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s population centers:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_pop.pdf

–Michael Himick

A deep sea singer returns

Whale watchers worldwide got a bit of good news this week, with the release of a new study that says humpback whales are making a comeback in the North Pacific.

According to the study, the number of whales in the North Pacific may have reached 20,000 for the period between 2004 and 2006. That’s up from a total of fewer than 1,500 whales 40 years ago, when humpback hunting was banned.

Experts still worry that some humpback subgroups are taking longer to bounce back, but one described the news as “definitely very encouraging in terms of the recovery of the species.” It’s certainly enough to make us want to dive in for a closer look at one of the ocean’s marvelous mammals.

Uproarious Rorquals

Humpbacks hail from the family of whales called “rorquals,” which includes the fin whale, the sei whale, and the blue whale, the world’s largest animal. Blue whales can grow to 100 feet (30 meters) and weigh up to 330,000 pounds (150 metric tons), bigger than any dinosaur we’ve yet discovered.

At 45 feet (14 meters) and 80,000 pounds (36 metric tons), humpbacks aren’t nearly as big as cousin Blue. But they can really sing. In fact, according to a 2006 study, humpback whales sing grammatically, combining sounds into phrases, and phrases into songs, according to complex rules called a “hierarchical syntax.” It’s similar to our ability to combine words into clauses and clauses into sentences.

Humpbacks can dance, too. They are among the most acrobatic of whales, sometimes leaping entirely out of the water. Such breaching is common among males during mating season, when humpbacks migrate from polar feeding grounds to tropical breeding grounds. It’s also during mating season that humpback males sing their syntactically sophisticated songs, presumably in pursuit of humpback gals.

Straining for Snacks

Like all rorquals, humpbacks are baleen whales. They feed by taking huge mouthfuls of seawater–literally tons of it–then forcing the water out between hundreds of plates of baleen (a.k.a. “whalebone”) that hang from the roofs of their mouths. The baleen plates work like a sieve, letting water out but keeping krill and other munchable marine life in.

To catch that seafood dinner, humpbacks sometimes use a special technique called “bubblenetting.” First, one or more humpbacks swim in a circle beneath a school of fish, blowing bubbles that float up to form a wall around their prey. Then the humpbacks swim up through their “bubblenet,” slurping the fish-filled water as they go.

It’s clever, and tremendously effective. A humpback whale can catch, and eat, as much as 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of food in a day. But that’s not too surprising–coming from a creature smart enough to sing in syntax.

–Steve Sampson

No peeking

Congress and the White House continue to wrangle over a new version of the law that covers the nation’s wiretapping program. The question of the moment is whether people should be able to sue private telecom companies who cooperated with the government after 9/11 and may, in the process, have violated their customers’ privacy rights.

The bigger question, though, is just how far the people’s right to privacy goes–and how to strike a balance between that right and the needs of national security. After all, privacy is every U.S. citizen’s constitutional right, right?

Well, maybe. The U.S. Constitution never specifically says that citizens have a right to privacy. Yet it does say they have rights that aren’t specifically mentioned in the Constitution–and the Supreme Court has ruled that privacy is among them.

Never Enumerate Your Rights

How can the Constitution protect rights it never names? Well, the framers were clever fellows. They realized people might read an enumerated list–like, say, the Bill of Rights–and assume the list was supposed to be exhaustive. So, to make sure their list wasn’t read that way, they wrote a rule against doing so and added it to the list. That rule is the Constitution’s Ninth Amendment, which reads:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Some scholars read those words strictly as a prohibition that prevents the government from doing whatever it wants as long as it doesn’t violate your enumerated rights. Others argue they imply positive constitutional protection for one or more unenumerated, yet important, rights–such as the right to defend yourself, the right to move from one place to another, and the right to privacy.

Private Penumbras

Many of the Constitution’s amendments are privacy-related. The First Amendment preserves your right to practice your religion and speak your mind. The Fifth Amendment preserves your right to remain silent and your right to private property. The Fourth Amendment preserves “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

In a 1965 privacy rights case, Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruled that these “various guarantees create zones of privacy.” Striking down a Connecticut statute that forbade the use of contraceptives even by married couples, the Court held that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” (A penumbra is a partly shaded region at the edge of a shadow.)

Basically, the Court held that the spirit of one of the Constitution’s amendments, or several together, can cast shadows long enough to cover a right–such as marital privacy–that the Constitution doesn’t mention. And, under the Ninth Amendment, such rights are “retained by the people” without being enumerated. Future rulings extended Griswold’s notion of privacy beyond marriage, to strike down fornication and sodomy laws.

Penumbral Problems

Critics of Griswold argue that penumbral privacy rights are a fiction conjured from constitutional shadows. Even some privacy proponents stay away from penumbras, arguing instead that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees privacy by promising not to “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Privacy, they say, is essential to liberty.

In fact, the Supreme Court followed that line of reasoning in the most controversial privacy-related case of all: 1973’s Roe v. Wade. According to the majority opinion in Roe, “this right of privacy . . . founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty . . . is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” Clearly not everyone agrees with that argument, either.

–Steve Sampson

Terror Fight Blurs

Line Over Domain;
Tracking Email

By SIOBHAN GORMAN
March 10, 2008; Page A1

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Congress now is hotly debating domestic spying powers under the main law governing U.S. surveillance aimed at foreign threats. An expansion of those powers expired last month and awaits renewal, which could be voted on in the House of Representatives this week. The biggest point of contention over the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is whether telecommunications and other companies should be made immune from liability for assisting government surveillance.

Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key bulwark against foreign terrorists and that it would be reckless to constrain the agency’s mission. The NSA says it is scrupulously following all applicable laws and that it keeps Congress fully informed of its activities.

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA’s own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge’s approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA’s enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world’s main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called “black programs” whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

It isn’t clear how many of the different kinds of data are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An intelligence official said the agency’s work links to about a dozen antiterror programs in all.

A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance. And the constitutional question of whether the government can examine such a large array of information without violating an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy “has never really been resolved,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a national-security lawyer who has worked for both parties on Capitol Hill.

NSA officials say the agency’s own investigations remain focused only on foreign threats, but it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic and international communications in a digital era, so they need to sweep up more information.

The Fourth Amendment

In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, then NSA-chief Gen. Michael Hayden has said he used his authority to expand the NSA’s capabilities under a 1981 executive order governing the agency. Another presidential order issued shortly after the attacks, the text of which is classified, opened the door for the NSA to incorporate more domestic data in its searches, one senior intelligence official said.

The NSA “strictly follows laws and regulations designed to preserve every American’s privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” agency spokeswoman Judith Emmel said in a statement, referring to the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA in conjunction with the Pentagon, added in a statement that intelligence agencies operate “within an extensive legal and policy framework” and inform Congress of their activities “as required by the law.” It pointed out that the 9/11 Commission recommended in 2004 that intelligence agencies analyze “all relevant sources of information” and share their databases.

Two former officials familiar with the data-sifting efforts said they work by starting with some sort of lead, like a phone number or Internet address. In partnership with the FBI, the systems then can track all domestic and foreign transactions of people associated with that item — and then the people who associated with them, and so on, casting a gradually wider net. An intelligence official described more of a rapid-response effect: If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city — for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans — the government’s spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.

The haul can include records of phone calls, email headers and destinations, data on financial transactions and records of Internet browsing. The system also would collect information about other people, including those in the U.S., who communicated with people in Detroit.

The information doesn’t generally include the contents of conversations or emails. But it can give such transactional information as a cellphone’s location, whom a person is calling, and what Web sites he or she is visiting. For an email, the data haul can include the identities of the sender and recipient and the subject line, but not the content of the message.

Intelligence agencies have used administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI — which don’t need a judge’s signature — to collect and analyze such data, current and former intelligence officials said. If that data provided “reasonable suspicion” that a person, whether foreign or from the U.S., was linked to al Qaeda, intelligence officers could eavesdrop under the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The White House wants to give companies that assist government surveillance immunity from lawsuits alleging an invasion of privacy, but Democrats in Congress have been blocking it. The Terrorist Surveillance Program has spurred 38 lawsuits against companies. Current and former intelligence officials say telecom companies’ concern comes chiefly because they are giving the government unlimited access to a copy of the flow of communications, through a network of switches at U.S. telecommunications hubs that duplicate all the data running through it. It isn’t clear whether the government or telecom companies control the switches, but companies process some of the data for the NSA, the current and former officials say.

On Friday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a letter warning colleagues to look more deeply into how telecommunications data are being accessed, citing an allegation by the head of a New York-based computer security firm that a wireless carrier that hired him was giving unfettered access to data to an entity called “Quantico Circuit.” Quantico is a Marine base that houses the FBI Academy; senior FBI official Anthony DiClemente said the bureau “does not have ‘unfettered access’ to any communication provider’s network.”

The political debate over the telecom information comes as intelligence agencies seek to change traditional definitions of how to balance privacy rights against investigative needs. Donald Kerr, the deputy director of national intelligence, told a conference of intelligence officials in October that the government needs new rules. Since many people routinely post details of their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace, he said, their identity shouldn’t need the same protection as in the past. Instead, only their “essential privacy,” or “what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs,” should be veiled, he said, without providing examples.

Social-Network Analysis

The NSA uses its own high-powered version of social-network analysis to search for possible new patterns and links to terrorism. The Pentagon’s experimental Total Information Awareness program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, was an early research effort on the same concept, designed to bring together and analyze as much and as many varied kinds of data as possible. Congress eliminated funding for the program in 2003 before it began operating. But it permitted some of the research to continue and TIA technology to be used for foreign surveillance.

Some of it was shifted to the NSA — which also is funded by the Pentagon — and put in the so-called black budget, where it would receive less scrutiny and bolster other data-sifting efforts, current and former intelligence officials said. “When it got taken apart, it didn’t get thrown away,” says a former top government official familiar with the TIA program.

Two current officials also said the NSA’s current combination of programs now largely mirrors the former TIA project. But the NSA offers less privacy protection. TIA developers researched ways to limit the use of the system for broad searches of individuals’ data, such as requiring intelligence officers to get leads from other sources first. The NSA effort lacks those controls, as well as controls that it developed in the 1990s for an earlier data-sweeping attempt.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who led the charge to kill TIA, says “the administration is trying to bring as much of the philosophy of operation Total Information Awareness as it can into the programs they’re using today.” The issue has been overshadowed by the fight over telecoms’ immunity, he said. “There’s not been as much discussion in the Congress as there ought to be.”

Opportunity for Debate

But Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the committee, said by email his committee colleagues have had “ample opportunity for debate” behind closed doors and that each intelligence program has specific legal authorization and oversight. He cautioned against seeing a group of intelligence programs as “a mythical ‘big brother’ program,” adding, “that’s not what is happening today.”

READ THE RULING

While the Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the legality of data-sweeping relies on the government’s interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls — but not actual conversations — to be collected without a warrant. Read the ruling.¹

The legality of data-sweeping relies largely on the government’s interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls — but not actual conversations — to be collected without a judge issuing a warrant. Multiple laws require a court order for so-called “transactional’” records of electronic communications, but the 2001 Patriot Act lowered the standard for such an order in some cases, and in others made records accessible using FBI administrative subpoenas called “national security letters.” (Read the ruling.²)

A debate is brewing among legal and technology scholars over whether there should be privacy protections when a wide variety of transactional data are brought together to paint what is essentially a profile of an individual’s behavior. “You know everything I’m doing, you know what happened, and you haven’t listened to any of the contents” of the communications, said Susan Landau, co-author of a book on electronic privacy and a senior engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. “Transactional information is remarkably revelatory.”

Ms. Spaulding, the national-security lawyer, said it’s “extremely questionable” to assume Americans don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy for data such as the subject-header of an email or a Web address from an Internet search, because those are more like the content of a communication than a phone number. “These are questions that require discussion and debate,” she said. “This is one of the problems with doing it all in secret.”

Gen. Hayden, the former NSA chief and now Central Intelligence Agency director, in January 2006 publicly defended the activities of the Terrorist Surveillance Program after it was disclosed by the New York Times. He said it was “not a driftnet over Lackawanna or Fremont or Dearborn, grabbing all communications and then sifting them out.” Rather, he said, it was carefully targeted at terrorists. However, some intelligence officials now say the broader NSA effort amounts to a driftnet. A portion of the activity, the NSA’s access to domestic phone records, was disclosed by a USA Today article in 2006.

The NSA, which President Truman created in 1952 through a classified presidential order to be America’s ears abroad, has for decades been the country’s largest and most secretive intelligence agency. The order confined NSA spying to “foreign governments,” and during the Cold War the NSA developed a reputation as the world’s premier code-breaking operation. But in the 1970s, the NSA and other intelligence agencies were found to be using their spy tools to monitor Americans for political purposes. That led to the original FISA legislation in 1978, which included an explicit ban on the NSA eavesdropping in the U.S. without a warrant.

Big advances in telecommunications and database technology led to unprecedented data-collection efforts in the 1990s. One was the FBI’s Carnivore program, which raised fears when it was in disclosed in 2000 that it might collect telecommunications information about law-abiding individuals. But the ground shifted after 9/11. Requests for analysis of any data that might hint at terrorist activity flooded from the White House and other agencies into NSA’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters outside Washington, D.C., one former NSA official recalls. At the time, “We’re scrambling, trying to find any piece of data we can to find the answers,” the official said.

The 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks criticized the NSA for holding back information, which NSA officials said they were doing to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens. “NSA did not want to be perceived as targeting individuals in the United States” and considered such surveillance the FBI’s job, the inquiry concluded.

FBI-NSA Projects

The NSA quietly redefined its role. Joint FBI-NSA projects “expanded exponentially,” said Jack Cloonan, a longtime FBI veteran who investigated al Qaeda. He pointed to national-security letter requests: They rose from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to a Justice Department inspector general’s report last year. It also said the letters permitted the potentially illegal collection of thousands of records of people in the U.S. from 2003-05. Last Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau had found additional instances in 2006.

It isn’t known how many Americans’ data have been swept into the NSA’s systems. The Treasury, for instance, built its database “to look at all the world’s financial transactions” and gave the NSA access to it about 15 years ago, said a former NSA official. The data include domestic and international money flows between bank accounts and credit-card information, according to current and former intelligence officials.

The NSA receives from Treasury weekly batches of this data and adds it to a database at its headquarters. Prior to 9/11, the database was used to pursue specific leads, but afterward, the effort was expanded to hunt for suspicious patterns.

Through the Treasury, the NSA also can access the database of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, the Belgium-based clearinghouse for records of international transactions between financial institutions, current and former officials said. The U.S. acknowledged in 2006 that the CIA and Treasury had access to Swift’s database, but said the NSA’s Terrorism Surveillance Program was separate and that the NSA provided only “technical assistance.” A Treasury spokesman said the agency had no comment.

Through the Department of Homeland Security, airline passenger data also are accessed and analyzed for suspicious patterns, such as five unrelated people who repeatedly fly together, current and former intelligence officials said. Homeland Security shares information with other agencies only “on a limited basis,” spokesman Russ Knocke said.

NSA gets access to the flow of data from telecommunications switches through the FBI, according to current and former officials. It also has a partnership with FBI’s Digital Collection system, providing access to Internet providers and other companies. The existence of a shadow hub to copy information about AT&T Corp. telecommunications in San Francisco is alleged in a lawsuit against AT&T filed by the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, based on documents provided by a former AT&T official. In that lawsuit, a former technology adviser to the Federal Communications Commission says in a sworn declaration that there could be 15 to 20 such operations around the country. Current and former intelligence officials confirmed a domestic network of hubs, but didn’t know the number. “As a matter of policy and law, we can not discuss matters that are classified,” said FBI spokesman John Miller.

The budget for the NSA’s data-sifting effort is classified, but one official estimated it surpasses $1 billion. The FBI is requesting to nearly double the budget for the Digital Collection System in 2009, compared with last year, requesting $42 million. “Not only do demands for information continue to increase, but also the requirement to facilitate information sharing does,” says a budget justification document, noting an “expansion of electronic surveillance activity in frequency, sophistication, and linguistic needs.”

The ghosts of campaigns past

Voters in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island go to the polls on Tuesday to choose their preferred presidential candidates from both major parties. With 444 Democratic delegates at stake, and 265 Republican ones, it’s a big day for both parties.

But what if you’re fed up with all of your current political party options? What it you want to tell Republicans and Democrats alike to take a hike? And what if you don’t like Ralph Nader, or smaller groups like the Greens, the Libertarians, or the Constitution Party, either.

Never fear. We’ve scoured American history to find you four more major political party options. If only you’d been born in another time, you might have found a home in one of these other, now defunct, packs of partisans. Then again, a quick look back might convince you that your current options really aren’t the worst imaginable ones.

Anti-Masonic Party

Born: 1826
Died: 1838
Most members became: Whigs

Mission: To stop the purported subversion of America’s public institutions by the secretive society of Freemasons, to which President Andrew Jackson belonged (Anti-Masons were generally anti-Jacksonians). The party got its start in a scandal following the mysterious disappearance of a New York bricklayer, who was purportedly preparing to reveal the Freemasons’ secrets.

Claim to fame: First “third party” in U.S. history. It was also the first party to hold a national nominating convention and to present voters with a party platform.

Perfect for: People who distrust Microsoft, the CIA, or any other secretive organization that might just be bent on total world domination.

Free-Soil Party

Born: 1848
Died: 1854
Most members became: Republicans

Mission: To prevent the spread of slavery into territories acquired by the United States in the Mexican War (1846-48). In 1846, Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot introduced his “Wilmot Proviso,” which would have banned slavery from the southwest. The proviso never passed Congress, but it helped launch the Free-Soil Party, whose members believed in “free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.”

Claim to fame: The Free-Soilers won multiple congressional seats in 1848 and helped swing that year’s presidential election to Whig candidate Zachary Taylor. During the 1850s, the budding Republican Party, which adopted the Free-Soil mission as one of its major planks, largely absorbed the party.

Perfect for: Decent slavery-hating human beings–especially those who know how to farm.

Know-Nothing Party

Born: 1849
Died: 1860
Most members became: Republicans in the North,
Democrats in the South

Mission: To prevent “foreigners” and Catholics–basically, the newly arrived immigrants of the time–from gaining equal rights. In 1849, the anti-immigrant Order of the Star Spangled Banner set up shop in New York City. Soon the secretive order was opening new branches all over the United States. When asked about the organization, members were told to reply that they knew nothing (hence the name).

Claim to fame: Perhaps the largest and most politically effective organization of xenophobes and anti-Catholics in U.S. history. In 1855, 43 members of Congress were Know-Nothings (insert your own joke about how many members of Congress know nothing now). The party was ultimately undone by the same sectarian strife that led to the Civil War.

Perfect for: Racists, xenophobes, and other people who actually know nothing.

Bull Moose Party

Born: 1912
Died: 1916
Most members became: Republicans, when the party’s central figure, Teddy Roosevelt, rejoined the GOP

Mission: To enact the direct election of senators, women’s suffrage, controls on monopolies, restrictions on child labor, and tariff reform. The party formed when progressive Republicans split with the more conservative wing of the GOP, led by then-president William Howard Taft.

Claim to fame: Fought for progressive policies that, for the most part, everyone else has since taken up. The Bull Moosers nominated Teddy Roosevelt for president in 1912 and won 25 percent of the popular vote. That was more than enough to split the GOP, and Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson won.

Perfect for: People who are highly progressive by early 20th-century standards (or those who advocate the return of Teddy Roosevelt to politics).

–Steve Sampson

That’s no movie robot– that’s a real great white shark

An Austrian man died this week after being bitten by a shark not far from the Bahamas–in waters that had been baited to make it more likely that he and other divers would come face to face with sharks.

The incident launched a worldwide debate among divers, conservationists, underwater photographers, and other shark enthusiasts about whether such “uncaged” dives with sharks should be allowed. While they debated the pros and cons of close encounters with ocean predators, we decided to learn more about the scariest shark of them all: the great white.

Feel the Fear

Known to scientists as Carcharodon carcharias, the great white shark is one of the most feared predators on Earth. Spanning up to 20 feet (6 meters) and weighing up to 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg), it is built to kill.

It primarily likes seals, sea lions, turtles, smaller sharks, and other fine-flavored denizens of the deep. If you’re an animal on that list and a great white gets a whiff of your succulent aroma, you’re in a sea of trouble.

A Nose for Trouble

Great whites have a highly acute sense of smell. Their nostrils, called nares, aren’t used for breathing–that’s what gills are for. Instead, white sharks use their nares to sniff the water, picking up scents at a distance of a quarter-mile (0.4 km) or more, and then tracking them to their source.

A big part of every great white’s brain is dedicated to sniffing. If you’re a prey animal and you’re bleeding, don’t bother looking for a Band-Aid. A great white can smell extremely small amounts of blood in the water from a long way off–and it figures wounded prey is easy prey.

An Eye for the Fishies

The great white’s eyesight is also excellent for hunting. Like cats, great whites come equipped with a tapetum lucidum (literally, “bright carpet”), a special reflective layer behind the retina that magnifies light and enables the shark to hunt in the dark. This adaptation makes shark eyes several times more light-sensitive than human ones.

Great whites even have extra shark-senses to help them zero in on dinner. Their snouts are dotted with small pits, called ampullae of Lorenzini, that detect the electrical fields of fish and other creatures. And, running in a “lateral line” down each side of their bodies are motion sensors. Great whites can still sense what they can’t see.

The Better to Eat You With, My Dear

Still, the great white’s real weapon of bass destruction is a terrifying set of teeth, which can grow to a length of three inches (8 cm). Shaped like triangular, serrated blades, they’re arranged in six rows of around 26 teeth each, though these numbers can vary from specimen to specimen. A great white sheds and regrows its teeth throughout its life, ensuring a fresh and healthy supply for every feeding frenzy.

A great white’s bite packs tremendous power, and in the case of larger and potentially dangerous prey, it typically takes one bite, retreats, and waits for the animal to bleed to death before settling down to dinner. They’re fearsome predators, no doubt. But they’re more into ambush attacks than epic battles between creatures at sea.

Scary as they are, we probably have less to fear from great whites than they have to fear from us. They’re now protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Meanwhile, shark attacks on humans are rare. Statistics say you’re more likely to get zapped by lightning–or killed by a deer crashing into your car–than you are to be mercilessly hunted by a shark.

“What’s the status of that ceasefire?”

Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will announce on Friday whether the Mahdi Army will continue to observe the unilateral ceasefire he declared last summer. Since then, violence in Iraq has decreased, even as al-Sadr has reportedly worked to improve the Mahdi Army’s image among everyday Iraqis and to assert more control over the group.

Despite those efforts, and despite his obvious influence over the recent ceasefire, al-Sadr has always insisted that the Mahdi Army isn’t simply his to command. Instead, he says, it “belongs to the Mahdi.” The Mahdi? Who’s the Mahdi?

Islam’s Redeemer

The Mahdi–Arabic for “divinely guided one”–is the redeemer who’s supposed to straighten things out at the end of time. Along with the prophet Isa, Islam’s version of Jesus, the Mahdi is supposed to usher in a golden age here on Earth, just after the defeat of the Antichrist and just before the Final Judgment. (Yes, many Muslims believe that Jesus will one day return–though their view of the Second Coming is pretty different from the Christian one.)

Belief in the messianic Mahdi is common among both Sunnis and Shi’ites. But they disagree about the particulars of his story. And that disagreement ties in with the history of the Sunni-Shi’ite split, which basically began as an argument over who should lead all Muslims after Muhammad’s death in 632.

Infallible Imams

Shi’ites believe Muhammad clearly made Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, successor. But a group of Muslim elders gathered and selected Muhammad’s father-in-law instead. For a time, Ali stayed out of the public eye, but a small community of shi’a (Arabic for “followers”) soon surrounded him and deferred to him as their imam, or guide. These shi’a eventually became the “Shi’ites,” and they developed unique ideas about the nature of Imams–and about the Mahdi, too.

In Sunni usage, an “imam” is generally just the person who leads each mosque in prayer. But for Shi’ites, the Imam is a sort of sinless saint, specially connected to God and set apart from the rest of humanity as an infallible guide. Every such Imam is directly descended from Muhammad, through Ali and his wife Fatima. According to Twelver Shi’ism (the dominant Shi’ite branch), a succession of twelve infallible Imams ended in the 9th century, when the final one, Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Hujjah, disappeared.

But he didn’t die. Rather, they say, he was concealed, or “occulted,” by God and will reappear as the Mahdi when the End Time comes. Other Shi’ite sects recognize fewer legitimate Imams, and so say different things about the Mahdi. Sunni tradition doesn’t recognize any infallible Imams, and tends to put less emphasis on the Mahdi.

Apocalypse Now?

But don’t tell any of that to Muqtada al-Sadr. The young Shi’ite cleric says the Madhi is back and America knows it. In fact, al-Sadr has repeatedly suggested that the real goal of the Iraq invasion was to capture and kill the Mahdi, on whom U.S. forces supposedly keep a detailed file. The Mahdi Army says it has to fight–to help bring Allah’s kingdom to Earth.

Not surprisingly, al-Sadr isn’t the first Muslim leader to call upon the Mahdi in a time of crisis. In fact, Mahdi-centered movements have cropped up throughout Muslim history, from the Spanish reconquest of Spain in the Middle Ages to the British invasion of Sudan in the late 19th century. But the world hasn’t ended yet.

–Steve Sampson

Judah Ben-Hur knew which sport was super

Tens of millions of viewers tuned in last night to watch the Super Bowl–the biggest “big game” on America’s sports calendar. Amid all the bone-crushing competition and superfluous spectacle, we couldn’t help but think about the most brutal and popular game in ancient Rome.

If you’re thinking gladiatorial contests, we have a surprise for you. Yes, the gladiators were popular, but the real action was down the road–in the Circus Maximus. That’s right. The Romans’ biggest “big game” was chariot racing.

ast Times at the CircusRoman chariots raced on tracks called “circuses” (because of their oval shape). The greatest of these, the Circus Maximus, started out simply as a flat space between two hills on which spectators sat. Eventually, it was ringed with bleachers–first of wood, then of stone. Admission was free, and there were seats for as many as 250,000 people. By comparison, the Colosseum sat no more than 50,000.

Most races featured quadriga teams–four horses yoked to each chariot. Up to twelve chariots per race took off from an elaborate starting gate, then sped along a sandy track. The chariots were lightly constructed of wood and, with four horses pulling together, they moved like lightning. But there were seven laps in a race (totaling three or four miles), and the corners were tight, so drivers had to rein their teams just right if they hoped to win–or even live to race another day.

Death Before Defeat

High-ranking Romans weren’t allowed to race in the Circus, so drivers tended to be low born–most were former slaves. With a cash purse riding on every contest, chariot racing was a way for talented men to make a lot of money and climb the social ladder.

Chasing wealth and glory, drivers often threw caution to the horse-sped wind. They wore helmets and wrapped leather around their chests for safety. But they also tied the reins around their waists to free their hands, and that could spell trouble. If a chariot capsized and a driver found himself dragged behind his team, his only chance was to cut the reins with a special curved dagger he wore for that purpose.

With so many teams taking tight turns at high speeds, it wasn’t unusual to see a driver get hurt. The Roman poet Martial wrote a verse in honor of the charioteer Scorpus, who won more than 2,000 races. His career ended abruptly when he took a turn too fast, flipped his chariot, and died.

Curse You, Ben-Hur!

Now, what could make chariot racing even more thrilling? Try team rivalries. Every chariot driver in the Circus Maximus belonged to one of four stables, known by their colors: red, green, white, and blue. Each stable had a star driver, and his teammates worked hard to make sure he won.

Fans identified strongly with favorite teams, and did what they could to cheer its star to victory (or heckle a hated rival to defeat). Archaeologists have even found ancient curse tablets in which fans tried to sabotage their favorite team’s rivals by means of the dark arts.

With so much passion invested in the sport, it’s no wonder that politicians found a way to exploit it. The famous phrase “bread and circuses” refers to the Roman method of distracting disaffected folk with free food and spectacular races at public expense. Better to pay for racing than put down revolt.

In front of a half-tough crowd

President Bush will deliver his final State of the Union address tonight. Well, maybe not his final one. After all, nothing in the Constitution says the State of the Union has to be an annual affair. Article II, Section 3 just says the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Nothing in there about doing it once a year. Nothing in there about making a speech, either. In fact, presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson put their statements in writing. So, how did the State of the Union address get to be the way it is? It all started with George Washington.

Precedents for Presidents

In 1790, President Washington delivered the first State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress convened in New York City (then the nation’s capital). At 1,085 words, Washington’s address is among the shortest ever. After hearing the president’s proposals, Congress debated, drafted, and delivered a courteous reply promising its cooperation.

So such speeches went until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president. Jefferson thought Washington’s approach reeked of royalty. (In fact, the idea for the State of the Union address did derive from a British tradition in which the king opened Parliament with a “Speech from the Throne.”) What’s more, Jefferson thought the Congress had better things to do than debate replies to presidential speeches.

Rather than speaking, Jefferson submitted his message in writing–saving Congress from “the bloody conflict which the making an answer would have committed them.” The next 24 presidents followed Jefferson’s lead rather than Washington’s, delivering written “information” instead of speeches.

Memorable Moments

In 1823, James Monroe used his written message to Congress to lay out the Monroe Doctrine, which declared that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”

In the midst of the Civil War, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln used his message to propose emancipation of the slaves. “The fiery trial through which we pass,” he wrote, “will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.”

Finally, in 1913, Woodrow Wilson decided to follow Washington’s lead and not Jefferson’s. He gave a speech to both houses of Congress–reestablishing, as he put it, that “the President of the United States is a person, not a mere department of the government hailing Congress from some isolated island of jealous power.”

Media Darlings

Ten years after Wilson’s speech, Calvin Coolidge delivered the first State of the Union address to be broadcast by radio. But most agree that the master of the radio address was Franklin Roosevelt, who in 1941 famously looked forward to a future founded on four freedoms: “The first is freedom of speech and expression. . . . The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. . . . The third is freedom from want. . . . The fourth is freedom from fear.”

President Harry Truman delivered the first televised State of the Union speech in 1947, but he didn’t do it in prime time. The first president to take full advantage of the power of prime-time TV was Lyndon Johnson, in 1965. The following year saw the first televised opposition response immediately following the address. So much for carefully debated replies.

Correction Appended

Even as stocks ended five days of losses with a surprising recovery on Wednesday, officials began moving to defuse another potential time bomb in the markets: the weakened condition of two large insurance companies that have guaranteed buyers against losses on more than $1 trillion of bonds.

Regulators fear a possible chain of events in which the troubled bond insurers, MBIA and Ambac, might be unable to keep their promise to pay investors if borrowers default on their debt.

That could leave the buyers of the bonds — including many banks and pension funds — on the hook for untold billions of dollars in losses, shaking confidence in the financial system.

To avoid a possible crisis, insurance regulators met with representatives of about a dozen banks on Wednesday to discuss ways to shore up the insurers by injecting fresh capital, much as Wall Street firms have turned to outside investors recently after suffering steep losses related to subprime mortgages.

While it is unclear what steps, if any, the banks and regulators may ultimately take, the talks focused on raising as much as $15 billion for the companies, according to several people briefed on the discussion who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.

The notion that the failure of even one big bond insurer might touch off a chain reaction of losses across the financial world has unnerved Wall Street and Washington. It was a factor in the Federal Reserve’s decision on Tuesday to calm investors by reducing interest rates by three-quarters of a point, to 3.5 percent.

News of Wednesday’s meeting helped rally stocks, which had been down as much as 3 percent but ended up about 2 percent. Shares of MBIA jumped by nearly a third and Ambac jumped 72 percent, although they both remain far below their levels before the extent of the mortgage debacle became known.

Traditionally, bond insurance has been a low-risk business. State and municipal bonds rarely defaulted, so the insurers paid out few claims for such debt. But in recent years the bond insurers increasingly have guaranteed debt related to subprime mortgages, a business that they thought was safe but has turned out to be risky.

Now, as many subprime borrowers are defaulting, insurers could be obligated to cover some of the losses on securities backed by these loans.

Eric R. Dinallo, the New York insurance superintendent who regulates MBIA, called Wall Street executives on Tuesday to set up the meeting at his office in Lower Manhattan. He led the session on Wednesday and suggested that the group move in as little as 48 hours to get a deal done ahead of any downgrading of the bond guarantors by credit ratings firms.

According to two people, Mr. Dinallo said he would talk with the bankers one on one and reconvene the group — which included executives from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch — on Thursday or Friday. Neither federal officials nor executives of the two insurers attended the meeting.

“Regulators are furiously trying to come up with a plan,” said Rob Haines, an analyst at CreditSights, a research firm, who was not at the meeting.

Mr. Dinallo could face resistance from banks that do not have significant exposure to the guarantors and thus have less incentive to put up money. It is also unclear how executives and shareholders of the companies would react to the plan and the prospect of ceding control.

Sean Dilweg, the commissioner of insurance in Wisconsin, which regulates Ambac, sat in on the meeting but said he would be working with Ambac directly. Mr. Dilweg said he met separately on Tuesday with executives at Ambac, which is based in New York but chartered in Wisconsin.

“Eric is looking at the overall issue, but I am pretty confident that we will work through Ambac’s specific issues,” Mr. Dilweg said in a telephone interview. “They are a stable and well-capitalized company but they have some choices to make.”

Other options open to the banks include providing lines of credit and other backup financing to the guarantors. A chief goal of any rescue would be to help the companies regain or keep triple-A credit ratings, which are seen as vital to their business.

Late last year, Mr. Dinallo encouraged Berkshire Hathaway, the company controlled by Warren E. Buffett, to enter the bond insurance business. At the time, Mr. Buffett said he did not want to invest in existing guarantors because of their financial problems, and he started his own firm instead.

Since then, the troubles have worsened. Last week, Fitch Ratings downgraded Ambac’s credit ratings to double-A, from triple-A. MBIA still has a triple-A rating from the three agencies; the others are Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service.

While $15 billion might seem like a large amount of money for banks to commit to bond guarantors at a time when many investors have lost faith in them, Mr. Haines said it would be smaller than the billions the banks might have to write down if the companies lost their top ratings or incurred major losses.

“It’s a calculated kind of risk,” he said.

A spokesman for Ambac did not return calls seeking comment. A spokeswoman for MBIA declined to comment.

Analysts say it is unclear how much money would be needed to capitalize the companies adequately. Ratings agencies have changed their requirements several times already as they update their assumptions of defaults and losses on mortgage securities.

“What is needed to do the job is to solidify the market perception of a triple-A rating,” said Sean Egan, founder of Egan-Jones Ratings, a firm that says the companies may need to raise as much as $30 billion.

A recent effort by some banks to help a smaller bond insurer, ACA Capital, has not gone smoothly. The banks have twice agreed to give the company, which was downgraded to triple-C from single-A, more time to come up with an acceptable plan.

State regulators are under pressure to help solve a problem that many critics say could have been avoided with closer supervision. The insurers’ problems are also spilling over into the municipal bond market, making it harder for cities, counties and states to raise money for projects.

On Wednesday, for instance, some short-term insured municipal bonds, which typically trade at a premium to other bonds, were trading at a discount of as much as 1.5 percentage points to similar uninsured bonds, said Michael S. Downing, an account manager at Thomson Financial.

The companies have defended their assumptions. They also note that losses on the bonds that they insure would have to rise substantially before they would have to pay claims, and even then they would make interest and principal payments over the life of the bond, not all at once.

MBIA has estimated that in the worst case, which it described as a one in 10,000 event, it expects to incur losses of $10 billion, a fraction of the $673 billion it has insured.

Still, losses of that magnitude could strain the company’s finances, and the difficulties continue to mount. On Wednesday, Moody’s said it was considering downgrading a company, Channel Re, that reinsures more than $40 billion of insurance contracts written by MBIA. If the reinsurer is downgraded, MBIA, which owns more than 17 percent of Channel, would have to acknowledge fresh losses.

“If you are a bond insurer or bank you can never really eliminate the risk that you originated in entirety, unless you sell it,” said Edward J. Grebeck, chief executive of Tempus Advisors.

Economists’ two cents on economic stimulation

“Economic stimulation” is the phrase of the day. Last week, President Bush outlined a $150 billion program to boost the U.S. economy. This weekend, leaders from both parties promised a bipartisan effort to pass stimulating legislation. Meanwhile, stock markets worldwide plunged–thanks partly to fears of a U.S. recession.

When the economy starts to slide, it’s natural to look for ways to stimulate it. The trick is coming up with the right strategy. Fortunately, the world is full of economists ready to give you advice. Unfortunately, they rarely agree with each other, so you’ll have to choose from their competing theories. Here a quick review of three fiscal policy ideas you could adopt–if you decide to run for office.

Idea #1: Create Jobs</