CIA defends unaccountable snooping

General Michael Hayden, President Bush's nominee for CIA director, has defended his secret programme of snooping on citizens' telephone calls without warrants.

Meanwhile, a judge has given privacy champs the Electronic Frontier Foundation permission to use key evidence at the June hearing where it will challenge telco AT&T with allegations that it helped the National Security Agency, the US code-breaking headquarters, snoop on phone calls and other communications. During his tenure as director of the National Security Agency Hayden had secretly crafted the system by which citizen communications would be tapped without the oversight of a warrant. He said the activity is excusable because agents operated in a system of self regulation. They could be trusted not to abuse their power because they were trustworthy people, the circular argument went.