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Bush Gets Democrats to Yield on Warrantless Domestic Spying
On Sunday, an incompetent, foolish and stubborn president enjoyed a victory over a spineless pack of collaborators posing as an opposition party. As he signed new legislation, Mr. Bush took the power to eavesdrop on people away from the already pro-executive FISA court and gave it to National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The former was added because even the collaborators in Congress know Mr. Gonzales cannot be trusted with anything more dangerous than a stapler. Be that as it may, as of Sunday, the American government doesn’t need a warrant to listen to Americans’ private telephone conversations if one party to the call is outside the US.
For the next six months, the Congress has given the executive this power to address the fact that the courts have held that what was going on before with warrantless wiretapping was illegal. Now, it’s perfectly legal. Nevertheless, there is significant doubt that it is constitutional. The Fourth Amendment is pretty clear on the matter:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It says nothing about foreigners, communications from abroad, or “except in time of presidential paranoia.”
The administration says that the law protects Americans’ rights because the new powers are directed only at targets who are outside the US and because of the supervision of the NID and AG. Neither of these is comforting because they are part of the same problem. It is very easy to claim that the American end of the communication is not the target, and since the people who are deciding who the target is happen to be the intelligence community and the Department of Justice, is that really not a case of the fox guarding the henhouse?
For the next six months, the American government will do legally what it has done illegally since 2001. When the law’s provisions expire (unless it is held to be unconstitutional, and such things take months) any consideration of renewal needs to focus on two things, whether it did any good, and whether the supervision shouldn’t be taken away from the people who want to do the spying in the first place. Mr. Bush is fond of saying “They hate us for our freedom,” but getting rid of that freedom isn’t the best way to address the problem.
© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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