NSA Wiretapping Whistleblower

Kagu writes "ABC News is running a short piece about an interview with former NSA Employee Russell Tice and his allegations that the NSA wiretaps are more pervasive than believed and used in ways he believes violated the law. "

Comments

Wiretaps without warrants, that is...

[192939495969798999]

It doesn't bother me that they want to wiretap suspected terrorists, but why the no-warrant stuff? Can't they just get a classified warrant? I wouldn't care at all except that they appear to be going around the law that I had thought applied to everyone. I guess it applies to everyone except for enemies of the state, or anyone that is unfortunate enough to be flagged as one. For instance, that professor corresponding with his friend in the Phillipines that had his mail opened, read and re-sealed. Isnt' that a federal offense?

Re:Wiretaps without warrants, that is...

[aredubya74]

This is exactly the point. FISA gives the feds clearance to intercept communications (mail, landline phone, wireless phone, Internet) where one party is international, and the other is domestic. They can apply for a warrant retroactively up to 72 hours after beginning interception. These warrants are basically never turned down, but that's only because the users (NSA, DOJ, DOD) are used to the evidentiary requirements of the FISA court. Anything that is person-to-person in the US has to be done by the FBI and through the regular courts, which really aren't any more onerous.

Since 9/11, the Bush administration has run into far more delays and outright refusal to grant warrants from the FISA court, though not because of "red tape" or political fallout (or because the FISA court hates America). It's because the evidence isn't there to justify them. This is why Bush directed the NSA to go around FISA and just wiretap whenever they felt they needed to, oversight (and evidence) be damned. This is black-letter violation of the law, and Bush (and the lawyers and staff that told him it was justifiable) needs to be held accountable.

Re:Information Retrieval

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Nothing about this is illegal until the information passed into it is acquired illegally.

What counts as "legal"?

We live in a world where Gitmo is not only tolerated, but even approved by huges numbers of people in government, academia and in the public at large. Wiretap someones phone illegally, and if the president gave you say so, I doubt many judges would throw it out at this point. Get information by half drowing someone or photographing their anus and not only will judges not object, they'll pass judgement based on it!

Speak up we can't all hear you clearly

[slushbat]

I think that the only way to get to the bottom of such serious allegations is to investigate the evidence. Perhaps if we could secretly intercept the communications between the administration and the NSA we might find out what is really going on.

Re:Information Retrieval

[eldavojohn]

Tice had his security clearance removed and was fired because of psychological concerns.

And you've just swallowed this information--hook, line and sinker.

ABC News seemed to treat him as pretty psychologically stable. How do you know the government isn't painting him to be this way so that his story isn't believable?

After the president admitted to wiretapping some Americans without the proper warrants, you bet I'll believe Tice's story.

Re:I think this says it all.

[TripMaster Monkey]

They may be illegally listening to average americans, but that's illegal as a technicality.

Bullshit. It's either legal or illegal. The phrase 'illegal as a technicality' makes about as much sense as 'pregnant as a technicality'.

If you're listened to by the NSA, who cares really?

I CARE. I have a fundamental right to privacy, like every other American citizen. The argument of 'if you're innocent, you have nothing to fear' is a recipe for oppression.

YOU'RE NOT THEIR TARGET

Not yet, anyway...

It's illegality on a technicality like sharing music with friends so they can go buy their own copy of a CD. Not immoral and not reprehensible.

Really? I think the RIAA might take issue with you on that. What a perfect refutation of your entire argument.

There Was Nothing stopping Bush doing this legally

[TheDoctorWho]

Nothing was stopping Bush from doing this in a legal manner. NOTHING.

Bush, during campaign 2004 repeatedly told the American people he would never do such a thing, even with the mis-named Patriot Act in place.

Bush Logic: Since the Terorrists hate our freedoms, perhaps we should take away the freedom of Americans. That will show that Bin Laden.

Bush, worst president in US History.

Re:Information Retrieval

[aussie_a]

I would investigate his motives before buying every bit of his story hook, line and sinker.

No. I would investigate whether or not it is true before buying his story hook, line and sinker. But if America just dismisses this guy because he may or may not have an ulterior motive, then that's sad. He might be insane and seething at his ex-employees. But he can still be right. This wouldn't an investigation against a citizen, but one against a government agency. Investigate, then if it's learned it isn't true, no harm done. Ignore it, and learn it was true, and a lot of harm is done.

Constitutional crisis brewing

[harris s newman]

Mark my words, this will turn into a constitutional crisis, especially if Bush and Chaney are not impeached for their wrongdoing. What we have is not, as Chaney put it, a strengthing of the executive branch. This is a takeover of the democratic process itself. The president is acting as a dictator by being above the law. I have already written all my representatives on this matter, and I recommend that if you feel strongly that your rights were violated (either directly through spying, or indirectly by the violation of constitutional laws), you should also write your representatives. Oh, and the argument by Bush that he is protecting the homeland is hogwash, especially if you believe him when he took the oath of the presidency to "protect the constitution". If he truely is protecting the homeland, he must uphold his oath of the presidency and protect the constitution. By protecting the constitution, I mean also that he must abide by the constitution and it's laws.

Re:Constitutional crisis brewing

[Zathrus]

For example, here's Clinton's deputy Attorney General (Jamie Gorelick) testifying before the House Permanent Select Commitee on Intelligence in 1994:

Which lead to Executive Order 12949 on Feb 9, 1995 because he was told that this was not legal, but it was allowable to fall under the jurisdiction of FISA.

In 1978 his Attorney General (Griffin B. Bell) testified before a federal judge about warrantless searches he and President Carter had authorized against two US men suspected of spying for the Vietnamese government

Which lead to the creation of FISA, because SCOTUS deemed it to be unconstitutional without both Congressional authority (the creation of FISA) and judicial review (the FISA court itself).

Neither of which is analogous to the case before us now -- we have a redux of what Carter did in 1978, except that this time it's been ongoing for over 4 years and is in direct contradiction to the SCOTUS ruling that lead to the creation of FISA in the first place.

e need to be able to immediately, and persistenly follow up on any call from the US that reaches out to those same numbers, and follow the trail of other people who are calling those people, especially from overseas. But you can't list that stuff in a warrant because you don't (and can't) know it in advance.

And you don't need to. FISA allows for warrantless wiretaps for a limited duration -- as long as they're submitted to the FISA court for approval within 72 hours. Precisely what prevented Bush and the NSA from doing that? They've already increased FISA requests by over 70% since 9/11, and out of 5645 requests only 3 have been completely denied (an additional 3 denied, but then granted upon appeal or modification). I think you'd be hard pressed to find any other court that approves 99.95% of all warrants requested over four years (and that percentage is much higher if you go over the court's entire history -- prior to 2001 there was only 1 warrant denied w/o later approval by FISA).

Re:This is so Funny

[shanen]

There actually were some sound legal principles underlying the creation of the NSA. They had some idea of just how badly those powers could be abused.

Anyway, this is a very old problem in a new disguise. It used to be the case that most of your personal information was locked up inside your head, and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was very powerful. The secondary protections against warrentless search were also good, though less critical. Because of modern recording technologies, a vast amount of our personal information is becoming externalized, and the amount is increasing all of the time. If we are to have any meaningful privacy, we need to do something.

I think the thing we need to do is actually pretty obvious, though I don't know if we'll get there. I think we need to clarify that your personal information belongs to YOU, and that should include your right to store your personal records on your own equipment. Given that situation, your privacy would be protected by the privacy rules you put on your own storage devices--and you could change your mind at any time, revealing more or less information for any reason. Possession in nine points of the law.

Re:Searching for keywords may or may not work

[aussie_a]

Wouldn't real terrorists (y'know, the ones who actually pose a threat) use code? And you'd also think they'd be smart enough to use public telephones as well.

Re:Information Retrieval

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I would agree. We are talking about someone who got fired, and THEN decided to "whistle blow" If he reported this first and THEN got fired, then I would be more inclined to believe him. But the fact that he was fired first and afterward decided that he "needed" to report this to a newspaper (as opposed to filing a wrongful dismissal dispute via the legal system) does not speak well to his motives

Tice had been making noises before he got fired. He was one of those pushing for greater congressional protection for whistleblowers. Hint, hint.

Shortly thereafter, his bosses had him pulled in for a medical exam, where despite having no symptoms, the MO labeled him as suffering from paranoia. This is standard practice in such circles to ensure compliance, and to provide ammo for any subsequent smear campaigns.

It's like this. Anyone who believes that the NSA was not spying on their own country, is the real mentally unstable individual.

More information isn't better.

[Hoplite3]

What makes all of this so much more painful to me is that the old intelligence system was turning up the information required. Terrorists were nabbed at the borders, and so on. The New York bombings were on the radar. It wasn't a lack of information that was the problem, it was a lack of analysis. How does taping a hundred, a thousand, a million more telephone conversations help? All of this information has to be mined, but each extraction that is not related to the criminal case comes at the expense of someone's rights.

We HAD a system that was balancing individual rights with the need for surveillance*, it was working in the sense that good information was being found without tapping one phone in 300.

Now, the barn is on fire and everyone seems to want to spray water on the house.

*Need for surveillance -- I'm not convinced that the level of big brother spying conducted before the attacks was warranted. Frankly, the FISA courts scare the hell out of me. I don't like secret warrants more than gag orders or secret laws. I was willing to accept them -- part of the great compromise of democracy -- but they look like they were the slippery slope to today.

Re:I think this says it all.

[deltwalrus]

"I have a fundamental right to privacy, like every other American citizen."

Careful. The word "privacy" appears exactly zero times in the Constitution of the United States of America. Though the courts have established this right through legal precedent, these court decisions can be changed (see Dred Scott, et al). The right to privacy in the U.S.A. is hardly "fundamental."

Re:I think this says it all.

[BananaPeel]

"THEY ARE NOT AFTER *YOU* is the main thing to remember" While this may be true at the moment it may not be true in the future. You are assuming that government will always be benign and that you will not take a political stance against any non benign government. Governments especially in times of crisis can change for the worse. How would you oppose a non benign government which has advanced tools which peer into every aspect of your life. Dissenters can be rapidly targeted and removed with ease, freedom of speech won't save you in that situation. You only have to look at history to see how many times bad political changes have happened in the past and that was before governments had such powerful tools to potentially supress people.

That's the point, you radical neocon nutjob

[Reality Master 201]

If there's probable cause, then there's enough material to get a court order.

The FISA court denied a total of 4 requests betwen 1979 and 2004, out of thousands. The could have gotten the wiretap order if the wiretap was done for legitimate reasons, or on a person they could reasonably suspect. If it was emergency, they could apply up to 72 hours after the beginning of the surveillance.

There's no valid reason to have done things like this. Orders were clearly legally required, and if they weren't obtainable for some reason, the Bush administration should have sought changes to the law, not ignored the law. That's not how the US works. And since you want to make this a Democat/Republican issue, when did the GOP become the party of violating the law whenever it wants to, without any expectation of punishment? Do you think because Bush is a Republican, he gets the power to just decide he doesn't need to follow a given law if it suits him? I know you'd be howling if Clinton had done the same thing (and don't say he did, because the single thing you can legitimately point to in that regard [the Ames case], was a physical intrusion that wasn't covered by FISA till 1995).

"Speak truth to power" was the code once

[ianscot]

Intelligence agencies instilling moral values in their agents. What will they think of next?

Kidding aside, the overriding principle of intelligence in the U.S. used to be "Speak truth to power," once upon a time. The bending of those agencies' souls in the run-up to Iraq is terrifying to anyone who remembers the elder Bush's term at the CIA. George H.W. Bush didn't preside over an agency whose sole purpose was to buttress decisions already made by "instinct."

"Intelligence" groups do have their principles. They aren't what you'd call morality, exactly, but when they're distorted it ain't any good at all.

Re:Uh, yeah. "Spying on Americans"

[applemasker]

Although you may be correct, it might be probable cause, this is hardly a non-issue.

Whether it is or not is a determination to be made by a court, not an instrument of the executive branch or the Chief Executive himself. If the Adminstration cannot be bothered to even go through the motions of using the FSIA Court where warrants are virtually never turned down, and can be sometimes asked for AFTER an intercept in emergent cirucmstances, then the Adminstration must view itself as beyond the scope of the Fourth Amendment's proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures. This is dangerous, unprecedented and should not be tolerated.

Under our system of justice, the ends (i.e., you're talking to Al Quaeda, so the government should listen) do not justify the means (i.e., let's not get a warrant, let's just listen). This fundammental concept is twice enshrined in our Constitution's Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

On a very basic level this clause reflects a judgment that when the government wishes to act in certain ways, it must follow certain procedures; that is, provide an accused with what has been called "Due Process of Law." Sometimes the question of the extent of what process is due can be hotly debated. There is no debate, however, that the Fourth Amendment proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures requrires that the police obtain a warrant from a judicial officer before such a search can take place. The Adminsitration no doubt is aware of this, but has chosen to ignore it.

It also ignores (not just here, but in other instances) that the Constitution regards the "process," of justice is so important, that in cases where the government fails to give an accused Due Process and obtains evidence in defiance of the accused's Constitutional rights, such evidence will not be allowed to be used in the prosecution (the "Exclusionary Rule"). Again, the administration ignores this judgment by our Constitutional Founders (which makes W's insitance on "Strict Constructionists" for the SCOTUS somewhat hilariously ironic) that individual guilty men may, in fact, go free, to protect the integrity of the system and insure that the executive respects the law it is charged to enforce. The is supposed to serve as a deterrent to instruments of the executive (police, FBI, etc.) to follow the system of checks and balances by, for example, asking a judicial officer for a warrant before (of, in the case of the FSIA, sometimes even after) executing a Fourth Amendment search.

That's the trouble with telling falsehoods

[tkrotchko]

"Disbelieve whatever the President says and believe whatever his enemies say"

That's the trouble when you lie sometimes. Not only do people disbelieve you all the time, they start believing your enemies. Which is why its a bad idea to lie in the long run.

Re:This is so Funny

[NialScorva]

I would argue that the second that you interact with another person, organization, or any other entity with legal rights, that the information is no longer solely yours to control. If you buy something from me, then who owns the information about that transfer?

When you load slashdot, you handing bytes to your ISP requesting that they hand it to several of their peers, then have those peers hand it back to you. Who "owns" those exchanges?

Easy answer.

[khasim]

If you buy something from me, then who owns the information about that transfer?

You own the information that you sold item X.

You do NOT own the information on who bought item X.

You, being the vendor, have more limited privacy rights than I as the private customer do.

When you load slashdot, you handing bytes to your ISP requesting that they hand it to several of their peers, then have those peers hand it back to you. Who "owns" those exchanges?

Again, look at the vendors and the private customers. /. is a public site, so they don't own the info on my connection.

Comcast is a public vendor so they don't own the info on my connection.

Comcast does own the info that they were requested to connect to /.
& /. does own the info that Comcast requested a connection.
but
neither of them own my name.

Re:Easy answer.

[theStorminMormon]

That's a nice, pat theory. I'd like to hear a lawyer inform us as to how much of it has any reflection whatsoever in case law.

Personally, however, I think information laws are bit more complex in reality. For example if you buy some fertilizer at Store A and they have your credit card # (your personal ID) and then you go blow something up with a bomb made from that fertilizer and the FBI comes calling - do they have the right or responsibility to transmit the data they have on you?

So let's not be hopelessly idealistic. If you buy something from a store w/ a check or a credit card - they DO have your info. It's silly to say they "don't own it". They have it - the question is what can they do with it? And the answer, from the above, is obviously not "nothing ever under any circumstances".

-stormin

Re:Easy answer.

[theStorminMormon]

I think you're on a quixotic quest. Consider that the surveillance camera is not a camera - it's someone who recognized you. Do you have the right to keep them from testifying unless you want to should you ever be on trial? No - information about your whereabouts in a public place is in the public domain. The problem is in the past you had to rely on random chance to find someone who would recognize you. Now, however, the information "out there" can be stored, replicated, and collated.

There are a lot of troubling concerns here. In a cash economy your purchases can't be tracked without intrusion. In a credit card economy your purchases are tracked by definition. You seem to want to have the benefits of technology and yet the benefits of no technology at the same time. My real point is that some of this loss of private information is utterly inseperable from the advances that we have in technology.

If you live alone in the woods, no one can know where are you are at a given time. If you live in a big city lots of people know, but they don't talk so it remains disconnected data, not actionable information. If you live in a small town less people know, but they tend to talk, and so everyone actually has information on your whereabouts - not just data. There's no law or technology acting in any of these cases, but your level of privacy fluctuates based on the nature of the society in which you live. Technology is changing our society - thus it will change our level of privacy.

There are pros and cons to this. You list bad examples - reasons you want your information private. And they are valid. But consider medical emergencies. I'm allergic to morphine, but I have no PCP right now. If I were injured and taken to a hospital and they were able to scan my fingerprints and access my medical records they would know not to give me morphine. As it is - they're going to have to find out the hard way I'm allergic. If it was a fatal allergy (it's not) that would suck for me.

So in response to your "private information is mine" ideology I reply: no it's not and it never was. It has nothing to do with government or technology - it started the moment there were three or more thinking human beings on the planet. You have to dump the utterly unrealistic notion that you can somehow stop people from talking about you - and that's essentially what everything from surveillance cameras to credit card tracking is.

If you do that, then you can start to grapple with the actual implementations. I'm not saying we can't do anything about the fact that our private information is becoming rapidly more available. We can influence what is legal and what is not, what is allowed and what is not, and we should. But in order to be a part of the discussion you have to realize that *some* change is utterly inevitable. If you don't like big city anonymity - don't live in a big city. If you don't like small town gossip - don't live in a small town. Very few people are going to sympathize with someone who says "I love the small town feel, but I just hate that everyone knows what I'm doing". At least, not to the point where they would be willing to help you try to change it. The gossip is part and parcel with the small town feel - the two are inseperable. To somem extent, a digital trail is inseperable from a digital life in the same way.

You can't always have your cake and eat it too.

-stormin

Re:Easy answer.

[AndersOSU]

Well said.

I'd like to add that there is precious little information that only belongs to one person, even if it is personally identifiable. In fact information that is solely yours is limited to unpublished works that you created on your own time - and that is largely without value.

Your birth certificate belongs not just to you, but also the hospital, probably the state, and maybe even the doctor who signed it. Your driver's license and Social Security card are probably more the state's property than they are yours.

The unalterable fact is that we live in a society, are social animals, and as such share information. I'm with the parent saying that it is right that we should try to influence what information is distributed to whom, but to claim that any information regarding you belongs solely to you is (IMO) a bit silly.

Re:Easy answer.

[Shakrai]

In a cash economy your purchases can't be tracked without intrusion. In a credit card economy your purchases are tracked by definition.

I solved this one. I don't use my credit card for anything that couldn't be tracked anyway (phone bill, cable bill, etc). I'll be damned if my credit union and VISA are going to know what I'm eating this week, or what brand of toilet paper I use, how often I buy gas or where I drink and party.

You list bad examples - reasons you want your information private. And they are valid. But consider medical emergencies. I'm allergic to morphine, but I have no PCP right now. If I were injured and taken to a hospital and they were able to scan my fingerprints and access my medical records they would know not to give me morphine. As it is - they're going to have to find out the hard way I'm allergic. If it was a fatal allergy (it's not) that would suck for me.

There are other solutions to that problem that don't involve a big brother biometric database. Ever hear of a med alert bracelet? That said, on the surface a database of medical information like that seems like a good thing. But in reality it would be completely abused by the Government. Go look at your Health Insurance contract. I'll wager that it has a clause saying they can turn over information about you to the authorities. Since when did my medical information become something that could be used against me?

Take credit reports. Originally started so that banks would know something about who they were loaning money to. Now they've become a big database for Government officials to use to profile people and skip-tracers to use to track down people who don't want to be found. And before you say "That's what they are meant for" -- no, it's not. For every sap trying to hide from his creditors I'd wager that there's an abused woman trying to hide from her abusive ex who is going to track her down thanks to the wonders of the credit report. Well, perhaps it's not a 1:1 ratio, but it's still a concern.

Beyond that, go read the text of the fair credit reporting act sometime. Read the clauses that are in there for "National Security". As if national security depends on the Government knowing how many times I was late on my Capital One bill. Pfffft, I hate the information age and it's my livelihood!

Re:Easy answer.

[theStorminMormon]

Paying cash is totally fine - but it supports what I've been saying. If you want the benefits of credit card there's no practical way to restrict your private info. It's not just technology, the credit cards needs that info for billing - which is essentially a social issue (since we don't just trust each other to bill the right amount - we want records). And if you don't like people having that info you can pay in cash. Just like if you find small town atmosphere oppressive - you can move to the woods or a big city.

Rather than responding to everything else point by point it comes down to this: information is power. Data is useless, but data organized is information. Modern tech allows data to be organized and analyzed and mined as never before. So we have new sources of power as never before. Power is neither inherently good nor bad. A biometric database could save countless lives by alerting physicians and pharmacists to dangerous drug interactions. Also - imagine how much we could learn about health care if we knew what drugs everyone was taking, when they went to the hospital, what their family records were, etc. The potential for good is awesome. So is the potential for evil.

In my opinion the problem is not so much related to the information - the power - but in ensuring that that power is not used for evil.

And this is where you and I part ways. I don't buy into your "gov't is evil" nonsense. The gov't is people like you and me. It's not a monolithic institution, a single entity. So we should not treat it as some grand empire of shadow - it's just as inept as any other institution.

But more importantly you think that gov't should be kep from having this power because it can use the power to restrict our rights. I, on the other hand, think that to the extent the gov't restricts our rights it's our fault. We live in a representative republic - and yet fewer than 50% of us vote every year. And those that do are woefully uninformed. Gov't has only as much power as we let it have.

So I'm in favor of increasing the power and information of the gov't and keeping it in check by increasing openness of public discourse about the gov't.

In America we have no excuse for saying "the gov't abuses us". We ARE the gov't. And if we've let it grow out of control it is not due to technology, information, or any other excuse. It is due to public inatention and apathy. I find those things far more dangerous than information or even gov't itself.

-stormin

Re:Easy answer.

[Jherek Carnelian]

Gov't has only as much power as we let it have.

And you call the other guy "quixotic." That is ridiculously idealistic. Like all institutions, government's #1 goal is to increase its own range of influence and power. The people who work there are professionals, they work every day to increase their power. Voters have their own lives to worry about, in no way can they compete with people in government who are dedicated to increasing their power.

It is like buying a car - most people get fleeced because the salesman sells cars everyday, he knows all the tricks of the trade, all the ways that customers are easily fooled into paying too much. Meanwhile the average buyer makes a purchase once every couple of years, he's get less than 1/100th the time and resources that the salesman does. Sometimes a smart buyer will get the upperhand. But the salesman doesn't care, he knows that on average he'll come out on top.

The same thing with institutional government - the ocassional smart citizen, even smart special interest group, will be able to block an egregious power grab. But most citizens just simply do not have the time or resources to keep the power-grabbers in check 20% of the time, much less 100%.

Re:Wiretaps DID Stop Terrorist Attacks

[Zathrus]

One of these wiretaps was able to stop a guy by the name of Iman Ferris who was plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge.

And he reported that there was no way they could do it -- there was too much security. And, btw, where's the evidence that this guy was caught via the wiretaps in question? He was arrested by NYC police, not by federal agents. And there appears to be no information about him beyond this one CNN transcript.

There's been absolutely no explanation for why Bush couldn't use the FISA court, just as it was intended to be used. Except that, for some reason, he doesn't think the 4th amendment applies. Despite repeated US Supreme Court rulings stating exactly the opposite thing.

BTW, there's absolutely no evidence that the FISA court is obstructing the Administration's requests. Just go look at the reports yourself.

2004 -- 1758 applied for, 3 withdrawn, 1 withdrawn and re-applied for, 1754 approved, 0 denied, 94 modified (don't ask me about the discrepency; it's in the report)
2003 -- 1727 applied for, 1724 approved, 4 denied, 1 re-approved after denial, 79 modified
2002 -- 1228 applied for, 1226 approved, 2 denied, 2 appealed and approved, none listed as modified
2001 -- 932 applied for, 934 approved (2 from December 2000), 2 modified

I didn't bother looking back further than that, since it's not relevant to Bush's post-9/11 activities. Which just makes his abridgement of the 4th amendment and SCOTUS rulings that much more questionable.

Re:Information Retrieval

[brontus3927]

Terrorism is the single most overrated threat there is. How many people in the entire world have ever died from a terrorist attack ever? (rough estimate based on wikipedia info ~10,000) How many people died in a car accident in the U.S. last year (in 2002, it was ~48,000)?

it IS an erosion of civil liberties, because the Bill of Rights specifically grants me freedom from government intrusion of my life unless they have probable cause to believe I committed a crime. The doctrine is innocent UNTIL proven guilty. The NSA wiretapping is guilty by association until proven innocent.

I'll leave you with a few juicy quotes from one of the founding fathers, by personal hero, Benjamin Franklin.
No tyrannical society can long exist when it cannot control the flow of information.
There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace.
Whate'ers begun in anger ends in shame.
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety (commonly attributed to him, but he edited the book in which this line appeared, he did not write it, but based on the fact that he edited and published the book, it surely carried his sentiment.

You coward!

[fmaxwell]

You are such a coward that you disgust me. You will destroy everything that made this country great, the very Constitution that men fought and died for, because you're so scared of Osama Bin Laden. Read the words of a true American and a patriot in an editorial he wrote for the Miami Herald. Then maybe you can understand what it is to be an American:

AFTER 9/11
Fear destroys what bin Laden could not
ROBERT STEINBACK

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.

If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.

Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat - - and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.

If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.

If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy.

That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.

What is there to say now?

All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying "Happy Holidays' could be a disguised attack on Christianity.

I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.

Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to "protect us."

President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.

Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, "What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?"

Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the "war on terror" -- a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we st

I AM their target!

[scoobrs]

Like this story says, the NSA has released documents to federal court admitting to spying on domestic peace groups. Since I've walked in peace rallies, I know I am their target, not simply jihad-bent "terrorists." The argument, "I am not their target, so it doesn't matter" is reprehensible and silly anyway. This sort of rationalization allowed the persecution of the Jews and many others in Nazi Germany. If the slippery slope gets any worse, dove Republicans will be called terrorists, too. They've already labeled peace groups as such.

Never forget that the first action that allowed Hitler to take dictatorial powers "above the law" was the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933 that was blamed on Communist terrorists, but perpetrated by the Nazi party. History has a way of repeating itself.

The Reichstag Fire Decree read: "Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Empire are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [ habeas corpus ], freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed." Sound familiar?