Now that I'm back from a two week vacation, there's a lot of events to catch up on. ScAlito hearings are coming up soon, Iraq is still a mess despite holding elections, Jack Abramoff has pleaded guilty, and the list goes on.
But one particular ongoing has really got me inflamed. King George has ordered the NSA to secretly spy on the telephone conversations of ordinary Americans without court approval. Now, the fact that the government is eavesdropping on phone calls arouses suspicion, but there may be a valid defense of the need to do so to prevent terrorism. I do not necessarily support this notion, but the eavesdropping itself does not anger me so much.
The real issue here is that there is already a law that governs telephone monitoring. The law requires that government agencies file a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a court designed explicitly to handle these cases that in general simply rubber stamps the requests. Simple procedure - can surely be done to fight terrorism.
However, Bush has ordered eavesdropping be done without seeking approval of the FISA court. Why bypass the system? WaPo has the answer:
Bush administration officials believe it is not possible, in a large-scale eavesdropping effort, to provide the kind of evidence the court requires to approve a warrant. Sources knowledgeable about the program said there is no way to secure a FISA warrant when the goal is to listen in on a vast array of communications in the hopes of finding something that sounds suspicious. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the White House had tried but failed to find a way.One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.
"For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap," said the official. "They couldn't dream one up."
So, the reason they couldn't go through the court was that the court requires a written reason for eavesdropping? Surely, "connected to suspected terrorist plot" counts as a reason. There are only two reasons to bypass the court.
First, the program could be monitoring anyone and everyone's phone calls to scope out any information. Not only would this be a gross invasion of privacy, it would be completely ineffective. The NSA would have to wade through millions of phone calls to find one between terrorists, who probably don't discuss plans over a non-encrypted phone line anyways.
Second, the program could encompass far more than anti-terrorism efforts. Republicans have shown a great propensity to label their opponents as traitors and terrorist sympathizers. Why not take action against these traitors? We already know (from Fahrenheit 9-11 for example) that anti-war groups have been labelled a terrorist threat and monitored by government agents. We also know that the White House keeps dossiers on more than 10,000 people it considers political opponents. What is in these files? Since it was a secret program with no oversight, the spying program could easily have been used to dig up political dirt for the Bush 2004 campaign, as well as hundreds of other Republican campaigns. Given Republican political operatives' Machiavellian tactics to win at all costs by spreading lies, it does not seem a stretch to use government tools at their disposal to maintain and expand their power.
Bush apologists will continue to proclaim that national security trumps all and that anyone who disagrees with them is a traitor. But to those conservative blowhards, I ask them how they will feel in four years when President Hillary Clinton uses the NSA to dig up evidence of Rush Limbaugh's drug abuse, O'Reilly's sexual harassment, or pry into the sexual practices of Republican candidates, many of whom have mistresses the public is not aware of. This is a police state can of worms that neither side should want to open up.