Interesting email from a reader:

Mr. Goldberg,
Yours and other posts on The Corner keep referring to Echelon as if there is no doubt about its existence. This bothers me for a few reasons.
1. Most of the Echelon hysteria sounded like typical conspiracy-minded hysteria to me. Are any of the sources very credible? I’ve never thought it so. Nearly every Echelon claim that I’ve read seemed to be rather nutty. Just consider the technical requirements of such a system. How much computing power would be required to scan the emails of every American? And with the redundancy of the internet infrastructure, at how many locations would equipment have to be installed to do such? I’m by no means an expert, but I really doubt it is possible.
2. If Echelon did exist, than the Echelon leakers should have been investigated and prosecuted. Conservatives and anyone else who wants a strong national defense shouldn’t be celebrating the Echelon stories as the hypocrisy of the left.
Finally, your polite lefty emailer has assumed that the current program is illegal. But when the Congress authorized the President to use “all necessary military force” (or something like that), shouldn’t that have included the military’s entire intelligence apparatus? NSA does belong to DoD after all. If “military force” means only killing power, than I guess that Congressional authorization only applies to using weapons, not using DoD assets to resupply those weapons or to feed the soldiers firing the weapons or to using military intelligence assets to find the appropriate targets for those weapons.
One other somewhat unrelated thing I feel I have to say: why do so many people refer to this NSA program as “domestic” surveillance. I don’t know what the legal definition is, but how can communications between one person in the U.S. and another outside the U.S. be considered domestic? Anything that crosses national boundaries is international by definition. Yes, I know the media and others prefer dishonesty for rhetorical points over accuracy that is harder to demagogue, but still.
Have a nice day.