Cold War Warrantless Wiretapping

Posted by kdawson on Sunday April 4, 2010 @12:18AM from the all-your-call-are-well-you-know-the-rest dept.

somanyrobots writes "President Gerald Ford secretly authorized the use of warrantless domestic wiretaps for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes soon after coming into office, according to a declassified document. The Dec. 19, 1974, White House memorandum, marked Top Secret / Exclusively Eyes Only and signed by Ford, gave then-Attorney General William B. Saxbe and his successors in office authorization 'to approve, without prior judicial warrants, specific electronic surveillance within the United States which may be requested by the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.'" And reader jlaprise1 adds, "My research [from 2009] makes the news! President Ford authorized warrantless wiretaps in December 1976 and laid the foundation (PDF) for US telecommunications security policy."

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History Repeats Itself by WrongSizeGlass · 2010-04-04 00:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

This can't really surprise anyone. I'm sure there are plenty of things our government has kept from us either "for our own good" (their rationale for hiding their actions) and for national security reasons (we can't disclose everything). But how much do we really want to know? No matter how much they tell us we always suspect more ... and the conspiracy theorists will only use the truth to build even more elaborate plots of imaginative intrigue and nefarious actions.