Warrantless searches: foreign calls, domestic calls, and Internet activity

Warrantless Wiretapping

First the Bush administration kept the NSA's warrantless surveillance program secret. Then, it said the program only affected international calls. Now word is coming out that Bush authorized NSA spying on domestic calls, AND there is at least one lawsuit claiming the NSA is monitoring Internet activity as well. Additionally, on December 19 at a White House briefing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales also referenced “many operational aspects” of the eavesdropping program “that have still not been disclosed.”

Based on the Bush administration’s record, Americans should be outraged at the liberties Bush has taken with Executive Power, the brashness with which he has refused to ask Congress permission for such power (when they would have undoubtedly given it to him), and continues to hide additional secret programs with questionable legality from Congress and U.S. citizens.

Republicans correctly criticized Clinton for being a poor role model for the country by having extra-marital affairs. Even worse, we now have a President who takes without asking permission, ignores laws when they don’t suit him, and shows no remorse or apology.

Imagine if CEOs acted this way: embezzling profits, changing financial statements, and denying everything. Oh, that’s happening (a la Enron). Imagine if children behaved in such a manner: cheating on exams, ignoring classroom and school rules, and flatly denying any wrongdoing. Visit a public high school, and you will be horrified by the behavior.

Bush’s cavalier attitude towards running national security abroad (Iraq) has been in question. Now we have to worry about security on our own soil. While many Americans are willing to sacrifice some privacy for increased security, Bush can no longer expect us to trust that he knows where the proper balance is? When we trusted his ability to respond in a time of crisis, he finished reading a children’s book to an elementary school class before reacting to the attack of the twin towers. When we trusted his judgment on invading Iraq, it turns out there was no imminent attack on the US planned and there was no hard evidence that Saddam has WMD’s. When we trusted him to supervise the nation building of Iraq, he sent far to few troops. When we trusted his judgment to appoint competent leaders to high-ranking positions, he chose Brown to lead FEMA. When we trusted him to interrogate charged terrorists, he authorized torture at Guantanamo and the EU reprimands the US’s human rights record. We trust that he will make appropriate decisions to defend US citizens at home, and he authorized illegal eavesdropping and then lies to us about it. Not only that, his Attorney General tell us there are more activities that we still do not know about.

So he’s eavesdropping on suspicious foreign calls. That affects terrorists, Mideast natives, journalists and businessmen, but not me. Oh, he’s now collecting information on domestic phone calls. That affects me. Wait a minute, Newsweek is reporting that Mark Klein, a 22 year AT&T veteran “witnessed the construction of a ‘secret room’ for the NSA at AT&T’s San Francisco headquarter in early 2003.” Further, he then “discovered that cables from the secret room were tapping into massive volumes of Internet communication” and he “discovered similar operations in other cities on the West Coast, and… the NSA had created the capability of ‘vacuum-cleaner surveillance’ of all data crossing the Internet.” Whooow! That really affects me. Someone could be taping my AT&T, Bellsouth, and Verizon calls AND surveilling my Internet activity (email, what news I read, Internet phone calls, books I buy, website I visit…). This is way out of control!!!

What other possible NSA programs could Bush have authorized that we don’t know about?