Replies

And, what infringement is there, really? There's no censorship issues here. How is the speech being infringed upon?

Warrantless electronic surveillance on US citizens violates the 4th Amendment. Further, such surveillance is specifically forbidden by FISA (50 USC 1801 et seq). Then you toss in the chilling effect it has on lawyers talking to their clients - they can't talk on the phone because the government might be (illegally) listening in. Ding, 1st Amendment.

The US is a government of laws, not men. They should either get Congress (who writes the laws) to get its ass in gear and DO SOMETHING, or they should comply with FISA, or they should stop breaking the damn law. Right now, any prosecution that tried to use any phone taps to get warrants or in a criminal case is looking at real problems because the source of the data is illegally obtained information.

--R.

Right now, any prosecution that tried to use any phone taps to get warrants or in a criminal case is looking at real problems because the source of the data is illegally obtained information.

________________________

Now isn't that precisely the issue?
The NSA is not gathering information for court filings. It is looking for plots to blow up your sweet a**. Once again the courts want to apply their ivory towered principles to all aspects of American life.
Sorry, I do not live my life according to the dictates of SCOTUS and neither, thank God, does the NSA. Nor should it.
Let the President be the Supreme Commander and let the judges stick to their courtrooms. No judge is granted Constitutional authority to declare or carry out warfare.

Imagine I'm a soldier in Iraq, listening to broadcast radio communications out of Iraq. I record a suspected al Qaeda terrorist/organization making a cell phone call and find that it is to a number in the United States . . .

Do I tell myself -- "Hell, no! I can't listen to this conversation! That would be wrong!"

Or, would that make me an idiot -- kinda like the idiots who are seditiously defaming the war, our troops, our commander-in-chief and lying about each and every instance that I can muckrake and revile to gain votes for my "gang," and who have been for almost 4 years, daily, minute-by-minute?

Would I be a slimey, foresworn trooper capitulating to the enemy . ..

. .. or would I be a "hero," a patriot to liberalism over nation . . .?

Then you toss in the chilling effect it has on lawyers talking to their clients - they can't talk on the phone because the government might be (illegally) listening in. Ding, 1st Amendment.

I'm guessing that the "Article II plus the Congressional Authorization to Use Military Force against al-Qa'ida" arguement doesn't hold much sway with you. As a historical point, U.S. Presidents have always assumed broad Article II wartime powers (many far more severe than anything Bush has done) and we are at war with al-Qa'ida.

Since we can use deadly force against them, intelligence collection is commonly understood to be an integral part of warmaking process. The target of the intelligence collection is the suspected al-Qa'ida link. Since they don't wear uniforms or identify themselves, it's often hard to prove that link to a legal standard one way or another without ... surveillance!

The position of the United States government is that they'd rather disrupt a terrorist attack than prosecute terrorists. That's no different than wanted to stop Japanese Kamikazi pilots, rather than capture them. Sure, the terrorists may get away, but it's better to foil their plans than to convict them posthumously. Waiting until there's enough evidence for a court of law to grant a FISA warrant is completely reasonable in a peacetime criminal, but suicidal against an armed enemy that we are at war with.

Al-Qa'ida is a military threat, and is largely being dealt with through military channels. Law enforcement certainly has a role to play, but it is secondary.

This is all totally wrong. The president has inherent constitutional authority to gather foreign intelligence without a warrant. Every court until this one, including many appellate courts, has recognized this principle.

Moreover, the Patriot Act amended FISA in 1982 to allow the government to use this information in subsequent criminal investigations as long as intelligence-gathering was a "significant purpose" in gathering it. Under prior law, you needed a traditional warrant unless intelligence-gathering was a "primary purpose."

This prior law had led to Jamie Garolick's infamous wall between the law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This wall, in turn, was a major contributing factor to the government not detecting the 9/11 plot in time. This is why Congress, through the Patriot Act, changed this law.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact. The Constituion prohibits only unreasonable warrantless taps, not all of them. Not every warrantless search and seizure is unreasonable. And the NSA program is further authroized under the President's Article II powers as Commander in Chief.

For more information, read this. It is the FISA court's 1992 opinion. In it, it reaffirms the President's power to gather foreign intelligence without a warrant:

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/fisc051702.html.

Warrantless electronic surveillance doesn't violate the 4th Amendment where there it is reasonable to do so. The 4th prohibits unreasonable searches. If someone's chatting it up with terrorists or supporters/financiers thereof, then listening in is a perfectly reasonable thing to do given the duty of the government to defend the nation against such threats.

"They should either get Congress (who writes the laws) to get its ass in gear and DO SOMETHING, or they should comply with FISA, or they should stop breaking the damn law."

I may be wrong about this, but the judge said that besides violating FISA, it was unconstitional. Therefore, there is nothing Congress can do to make it legal. The court is saying it is unconstitional to do this type of surveillance without a warrant and nothing Congress could do would make it legal.

...such surveillance is specifically forbidden by FISA (50 USC 1801 et seq).

The FISA Court of Appeals ruled specifically that it didn't violate the law. The ACLU asked the Supreme Court to review the decision. They declined.

Your rant is the DNC talking points and ignores the court rulings.