[jwalsh07]

That is why I am so flabbergasted by supposed freedom-loving, law-abiding citizens who are so willing to give one (of the ostensibly co-equal) branches of the government way too much leeway on something so powerful and so susceptable to abuse.

Yet you are willing to give an unelected judiciary powers the people never imagined when the Constitution was ratified. The power to wage war is a power that belongs to the Executive. The duty to protect the American people from those who wage war against us also belongs to the Executive and not the Judiciary.

Can you imagine this?

A Judge to General Washington: 'General Washington, communications between Arnold and the British have an expectation of privacy and thus you can not intercept them.'

Me either.

[Steel Wolf]

A Judge to General Washington: 'General Washington, communications between Arnold and the British have an expectation of privacy and thus you can not intercept them

This has actually happened before. It's well known in SIGINT circles that US Secretary of State Henry Stimson shut down the State Department’s cryptanalytic office, the post WWI era equivalent of the NSA. He's famously quoted as saying,“Gentlemen don’t read each other people’s mail.”

Not that there was any interesting diplomatic communications we should have been trying to intercept in the 1930s or anything...