Despite the current politically driven outrage over the NSA Terrorist Surveillance program, few seemed to raise any objections to it when it was conceived..

Two judges on the secretive court that approves warrants for intelligence surveillance were told of the broad monitoring programs that have raised recent controversy, a Republican senator said Tuesday, connecting a court to knowledge of the collecting of millions of phone records for the first time.
[...]
Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that at least two of the chief judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had been informed since 2001 of White House-approved National Security Agency monitoring operations.

"None raised any objections, as far as I know," said Hatch, a member of a special Intelligence Committee panel appointed to oversee the NSA's work.

Hatch made the comment in answering a question in an interview about recent reports of the government compiling lists of Americans' phone calls. When pressed later, Hatch suggested he was also speaking broadly of the administration's terror-related monitoring.

An aide of Senator Hatch also said that the Senators comments should not be considered confirmation of any efforts to collect phone records. President Bush has stated that the government doesn't listen to domestic phone conversation of ordinary Americans, and two phone companies that were alleged to have given records to the NSA have denied doing so.

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