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August 06, 2007

Taking Down America, One Step at a Time

James Risen writes in the New York Times today about the law President Bush signed yesterday to expand the government's powers to listen in on Americans' telephone calls and read their emails without a warrant. The way Risen writes this, it sounds as if the President did this all on his own.

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.

But doesn't Congress pass laws before the President signs them? And don't we have a Democratic majority in Congress? Can someone explain to me why the Democrats were so willing to complain about the Patriot Act, but now they are toeing the line when it comes to surveillance without a warrant? Particularly when so many Americans are so unhappy with the N.S.A. wiretapping program? Why did this law have to be rushed through at the last minute?

Something particularly chilling: telecommunications companies were concerned about being sued for cooperating with the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program and pressured the government to place the program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act so it would be subject to the scrutiny of the FISA court. Apparently, the court was suddenly "swamped" with "an enormous volume" of warrant requests to the point where everyone decided the law signed Sunday was a necessity.

How in the world can a law like this pass legal muster? The right to privacy is subject to strict judicial scrutiny - the highest level of judicial scrutiny, meaning a compelling governmental interest must be present and the action must be the least restrictive, least intrusive, least violative of privacy possible to achieve that compelling interest. How can the government be allowed to eavesdrop based on a "reasonable belief," which is a "rational basis" standard – the lowest level of judicial scrutiny? This is so clearly unconstitutional and un-American that it's frightening.

Posted by Becky at August 6, 2007 11:44 AM