True. But, We have an obligation to question the legitimacy of his actions.

:)

Now, just because someone receives a call from somewhere outside of the U.S., that does not directly imply it is from a terrorist. If I have a significant other living overseas, I may want to have quite an erotic conversation going on, but should I be subjected to “Big Brother” joining in with us??? What about legal immigrants who have family overseas? If they have American citizenship, don’t they have equal 4th ammendment rights?

Once we allow warrantless wiretaps, what happens when we discover most of the terrorists are not overseas? They are already here. Hamas has a big population here. So do we now wiretap everybody because they might receive a call from a terrorist? What ever happened to being presumed innocent until proven guilty?

What people need to understand is, once we take away our freedoms in the name of “fighting the war on terror,” terrorists have won! That is precisely what they want to do – get rid of freedom.

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for the war on terror and I think we are doing the right thing by trying to rid it from the world. I just think it should be done legally and without taking away our constitutional rights.

You make great arguments why (assuming Bush is telling the truth) probable cause probably exists in these terrorism cases. Fine.

But the system of government we have extablished under the Consitution, with its vital checks and balances, require those arguments be made to the judiciary… just to make sure. Our Constitution does not require us to “trust” the President or any law enforcement officer. With narrow exceptions, a judge must validate the existence of probably cause to prevent executive overreaching. In this case, FISA was virtually a rubber stamp (which could even be after the fact) which makes this situation both puzzling and maddening.

The truth is that this is an unnecessary Constitutional crisis caused by Cheney and his ideological ilk. These men did not go to FISA or try to fix FISA because they could not care care less about FISA. Instead, they are carrying a 30 year old grudge which causes them to stubbornly refuse to cede any of what they view as the unilateral power of the Executive Branch at the expense of Congress and the Judiciary.

http://brouhaha.blogs.com/brouhaha/2006/02/docs_ford_admin.html

Unless you understand that, you’ll never understand this debate. Many Republicans agree with Democrats that the pernicious justifications given by Bush and Gonzalez do not hold water and, if allowed to stand, will dangerously erode our democracy.

Bush has stated he is keeping tabs on ONLY international calls with ONLY suspected terrorists at one end of the line. Now, you can either be in the “Bush lied” camp or you can accept that Bush has no reason to lie in this matter.

In short:

Place to be searched: Phone numbers called by Abu Musab al-Zarquawi and Osama Bin Laden (and any and all related minions)
Probable Cause: Terrorists using Cell Phones as a Communication Network.
Persons or things to be seized: Information regarding these terrorists and their lackeys, hopefully leading to the seizure of the terrorists themselves.

I’m not calling Abu or Osama, and quite frankly, if Big Brother is listening in on my convo and I don’t know, I fail to see how my “privacy” has been breached. They can’t use the info to arrest me on civillian charges, and if things I or the person on the other end say aren’t relevant, the Feds don’t care. So some Fed guy knows I’m single and available, big deal. My biggest problem is getting people on cell phones to SHUT UP about their Private lives, not government surveillance of calls.

On Presidential Powers: The President’s Article II power sould only be limited to whatever it takes to ensure national security from terrorists, not to prosecute people for random infranctions overheard on cell phones. The only thing that would scare me is if some Liberal Democrat was in office. Those guys LAUDED when Newt Gingrich’s conversation got spied on by “grandparents out Christmas shopping who just HAPPENED to have a cell phone signal reciever and a tape recorder handy”, these days I don’t trust those super-left nutbars as far as I can throw them.

This is, I think a key point and deserves more attention. Getting too hung up on the legality or illegality of the NSA program prevents the nation from moving on to the next step, which is establishing clear rule of law for the struggle against terrorism. We can’t do this without clear rule of law; it is, in fact, rank hypocrisy to try. In this sense, the issue is much bigger than Bush. We have to be able to answer the question: how does a liberal democratic nation effectively prevent and fight terrorism without forsaking its core values?

The only thing that offends me about the Bush Administration in all this is their continual efforts to try and expand presidential authority without judicial or congressional oversight. It’s a cliche, but checks and balances between the three branches of government are the core value in our Constitution, and utterly essential to maintaining our rule of law. For the President to be continually working to undermine these, without clearly stating what checks and balances he considers to be acceptable in the struggle against terrorism, is very alarming.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.“

Not so. The 4th protects against “unreasonable” searches and seizures. There are numerous exceptions where a search lacking a warrant is “reasonable.” Communications facilitated through technology have different expectations of privacy, depending on the technology used and the type of communications. Using your cell phone (which broadcasts a radio signal that can be listened to by anyone with the equipment) is not the same thing as using a solid cable connection.

The constitutional jurisprudence of the 4th Amendment is the “reasonable expectation of privacy� standard. The argument against e-mail being protected by the 4th Amendment is that since an e-mail message necessarily hits a 3rd party to the conversation (the ISP) then there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. I think it is a weak argument, but there is some logic to it.

Then this “logic” would be true for nearly all communications that are facilitated through technology. You’re right, it’s a weak argument that is merely made to subvert our privacy. Unfortunately, this administration has made it a practice to find a weak argument around a certain right and then say, “well, some say…” Ugh.

Justice Harlan joined the opinion of the Court in Katz, but also wrote a concurring opinion in which he amplified upon the test set forth by the Court for determining whether a ‘’search” has occurred. He concluded that ”there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.”

I am profoundly uncomfortable with leaving these grey areas completely up to the president to interpret

I am with you on that and we probably do agree more than disagree. Consider that the survailence requires sifting through huge amounts of Data on the fly, where you cannot risk missing a single second of a call made to a terrorist; and also that this is a national security issue so no information about anything thats going on can ever get out to the public. Even if a mistake is made, and the courts decide the victim could sue, then the whole project could be compramised if the government’s methods of survaillence were revealled in court.

If the records of the survailence are being destroyed by the executive branch so that no one will ever know what happened at any time in the future, that would be a travesty. Maybe I misunderstood the attourney general, but I vaguely recall he adressed that point in a press conference.

A cop can search the trunk of a car you pulled over if it is deemed “reasonable” by the officer (i know its rare); Just consider the fact of pulling you over as a form survaillence. You can charge the cop with unreasonable search and seizure if he pulls you over for no reason (call Al Sharpton).

This is a grey area, and it all comes down to a matter of trust in the social contract, and the necessity to defeat the enemy. Will the president abuse his power and spy on you because you download porn?

That’s the reason why republicans tend to back the bresident on this issue in the polls. They voted for him so they trust him more. Also, a lot of democrats seem to believe terrorism is like gambling or prostitution (call John Kerry), or is not a threat at all (call Michael Moore).