The New York Times has another article on Bush’s snooping on U.S. citizens without a warrant.
The Bush administration essentially says it had the authority to do this under the 1978 FISA law, but that it couldn’t seek the authority it needs without “tipping off our enemies concerning our intelligence limitations and capabilities.” In other words, they had the authority under a public law, but they couldn’t get the authority because it was a secret.
The article points out that there has not yet been an adequate explanation as to why the Bush administration did not simply go through the FISA court. The secret court had essentially rubber stamped all but a handful of warrants that had been applied for.
The best I can figure, these guys just hate saying anything under oath. Which leads me to the crux of my objection — aside from the fact that it simply appears unconstitutional from a plain reading of the Fourth Amendment. I just don’t trust George W. Bush or his administration. If there wasn’t an actual terror threat, and Bush thought he could gain political advantage by claiming there was a terror threat, I feel like he would do it. Our government was set up on the premise that we shouldn’t have to trust our elected officials. You always have at least one group of potentially dishonest elected officials looking over the shoulder of another group of potentially dishonest elected officials, with the structures of government balanced against each other so that neither of those potentially dishonest groups have much incentive to conspire with one another for too long. The genius of our Madisonian democracy is that it doesn’t require saints to occupy the positions of power. In fact, it presumes that flawed humans will occupy those posts.
So, Bush’s warrantless searches of U.S. citizens raises the question, “Who watches the watchman?”
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