Addikeys wrote:
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It's that the taps will be conducted to spy on political enemies of the administration
Why was FISA enacted again?
FISA was enacted to both monitor and control authorization for wiretaps on individuals in the US suspected of being foreign agents. Specifically, it oversees wiretaps on calls originating from within the US regardless of destination. The FISA court has never had any oversight or power over wiretaps conducted by the NSA on foreign soil, even over calls placed from outside the US to someone inside the US (as long as its the other end being bugged).
The grey area here is whether FISA court approval is required to tap only calls from someone inside the US to a foreign number. Remember that in 1974 the technology did not exist to tap based on destination. You bugged a phone or line, and that was it. One can argue persuasively (and in fact this has been argued and upheld in at least two separate rulings) that FISA authorization is only requied for domestic to domestic calls. At the very least, claiming that the constitutional privacy rights of a conversation between someone in the US and someone outside the US is based on which side dialed is silly at best. If it is legal for the NSA to tap a conversation as long as one end is outside the US, it should not matter which end initiated the call.
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rather then real national security risks.
Who’s worried about that or are you just making an assumption? Isn’t the big deal about the NSA having unadulterated discretion to tap Americans speaking to someone internationally?
I was referring to something else. However, as I've already pointed out, the NSA already legally has the authority to tap your conversation with someone outside the US. They just got burned so bad back in the early 70s that they imposed their own rules that were harsher then the law (not necessarily a bad thing). Interestingly enough, the 9/11 commision found that the NSA's self imposed rules regarding intercepts between foreign and domestic ends was one of the intelligence "flaws" that needed to be fixed. They had a culture of tossing out any intercepts that contained connections to US numbers and because of that ignored intelligence that might have been relevant to 9/11
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Which is itself silly since every tap is reviewed by the Senate intelligence commitee,
Every single tap? Can you support that please?
Well. Since the tap lists themselves are classified, I can't. However, since the committee was briefed every 45 days on the program, I would assume it included data on who was being tapped and why. Every statement I've read from an "official source" (they're never named in the articles though) has stated the proper oversight was in place for the taps. I could dig up some quotes if you want, but honestly, if you've read even a couple articles on the subject, you've probably already seen them.
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Wrong. http://intelligence.senate.gov/members.htm
I stand corrected. That's what I get for repeating something I heard without verifying it myself. It's an 8 to 7 committee though, so I'm not sure what the big deal is. Despite common perceptions to the contrary, not every decision made in DC falls along party lines. Doubly so in a committee setting, and tripply so in one dealing with classified matters (no public pressure to follow a party line in that cse). You've got to be pretty blindly partisan to assume that all 7 Dems disagreed with the decisions on this program due to ethical and legal issues, but they were overrulled by one vote by all 8 Republcans following their "evil" party agenda.
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Furthermore there's absolutely no evidence that any of the taps procured via this process so far have been anything other then exactly what the Bush administration has said (ie: actual terrorist phone calls going in or out of the country).
If there were, would anyone know about it? Wouldn’t that be classified? Or do you know something we don’t?
Funny. The fact that we, the public, don't know the details hasn't stopped you from assuming the opposite though. I said there was no evidence of abuse of the program. It's being managed with oversight from the appropriate committee and was greenlighted by the White House Counsels office and the Attorney General. It was even audited and revamped by the Justice department in 2004. So yeah. In the absense of evidence to the contrary, I'm going to go with my original statement here.
On what grounds are you assuming abuses are occuring?
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Again, are you privy to some confidential information? Aside from Mr. Bush’s, Attorney General Gonzalez’s, Mr. Rove’s, Mr. Cheney’s, or Mr. McClellan’s so-called good-faith promise that this is the case, do you have any extrinsic evidence to support the claim?
Whatever the case, what’s the big deal with retroactively getting a warrant? Too much time? Too much paper? Usually, wiretapping and any other form of electronic surveillance that violates a reasonable expectation of privacy is a search under the Fourth Amendment (Katz v. US, 389 US 347 (1947).
Heh. Love that case btw. A reasonable expectation of privacy was extended in this case because Katz was using a phone booth, so while he was in the booth and paying for its use he was "leasing" the space and could expect privacy, just as though he was in his own home. It's a great debate over whether the issue is really about "privacy" or "properyy" rights, but I don't feel like getting into all that right now.
Here's a
decent article on this whole issue. Interestingly enough, the more I hear about this story the less I feel that any rights are actually being infringed upon. I think that in the end, the president's position on this will be vindicated. I also think that most of the outrage is knee-jerk reaction based on false assumptions about the program itself.
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Without following these procedures, it’s breaking the law regardless of how many or few Americans are affected. Also, if you are a strict constructionist of the Constitution, there is nothing in the Constitution that specifically grants the President this power.
Actually, a strict constitutionalist will argue that there is nothing in that document that actually protects your privacy as an individual concept. Property is protected. Papers, documents, mail, etc, are protected. Bits of data broadcast through the air, or traveling along wires you don't own are not. Most of our concepts of privacy don't derive from legistlation, but from judicial rulings (like Katz). That's not to say they don't have power (they do), but it's incorrect to state that because precidents have built up over the decades saying one thing, that this means that the document upon which those precidents ruled has changed to match.
Furthermore, the constitution most certainly grants the president executive power, and imparts upon him the responsiblity for protecting the citezens and the state. I can certainly argue that the bill of rights would not have a provision protecting citizens from unreasonable search and seisure if it was not assumed that the executive had power to conduct such things in exception to that protection. It implies that the executive does have the power to conduct "reasonable" search and seisure upon the property of citizens and any other power that does not infringe upon that right as long as it's part of the duties of the executive (and I think preventing another 9/11 attack falls squarely within that power).
So no. I don't really agree with you on this issue either. I'm as concerned about the government snooping on citizens as anyone else. The difference is that I'm not going to assume that this program is in violation of the law unless and until it's determined that it was. Contrasted to every Liberal talking head, who automatically put the words "illegal" in front of the words "spying" or "wiretapping" whenever the subject is brought up. Who's being partisan?