Government's warrantless spying found to violate free speech, privacy rights
What is so hard about showing cause and getting a warrent?
GOOD decision
I agree, what harm could come from waiting a few days while FISA reviews the warrant.
It is hard for software to do it 1000 per second.
Chicken and Egg - it is the monitoring that "triggers" the cause.
For one thing, getting a warrant would mean revealing too much information to Carter appointees like this one. Those who are making phone calls to jihadis and suspected jihadis world-wide (you know, the people who want to destroy our nation and its freedoms?), should be subjected to having their phone calls to the enemy monitored.
They are not entitled to the protections of the 4th Amendment, assuming it even applies to overseas phone calls. As a Supreme Court Justice once noted, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact" (Jimmy Carter, the ACLU, and CAIR notwithstanding).
How do you get a warrant for a disposable cell phone?
Waiting a few days for a warrant review is absurd. By the time the warrant is issued the rest of the network may realize the phone has been captured and bug out. There is a procedure to start monitoring in anticipation of getting a warrant which brings us to the next problem: The amount of information required to get such a warrant. The FISA applications have been described by people familiar with them as being more than an inch thick of paper. You capture a terrorist's cell phone and what? Start an army of lawyers killing trees? What's the FISA court going to do with tens of thousands of applications? Rubber-stamp them? Then we've negated the whole purpose of having the court "review" them.
It's simple: In wartime you monitor the enemy's communications. You don't stop because some of the enemy have made it ashore.
a warrant against who? you don't know who you want to tap in advance.
Well, President Rodham may find getting a warrant just too much bother.
Some people trust government more than others.
What is so hard about showing cause and getting a warrent?
The first part is that it is part of the President's war-making powers. It only becomes questionable if the surveilliance is either not of enemy powers, or is used in criminal cases. ...And it's not exactly a "new legal theory". This kind of surveilliance is much older than warrants for criminal investigation, and every president since Roosevelt has authorized it.
Even if the above were not true, the further difficulty is that the party being listened to is in a foreign country. There is no U.S. entity - outside of the executive branch's inteeligence services - that can authorize such. Do you really think that we have courts to authorize wiretapping an apartment in Germany?
Respectfully, your argument - in context - is absurd.
Are you aware that we used this system to help the Brits break up the plot in London???
The claim that NSA cannot collect intel from foreigners reminds me of FDR's Sec of State Cordell Hull on the eve of Pearl Harbor who declared that gentlemen do not open the mail of other gentlemen.
Signal intelligence is essential. To not listen to overseas communications in time of war is criminal.