Abnormal Interests

Duane,

I will bite on this one - having a legal background. First, if the president is seeking to use the NSA as did his predecessor Clinton (which he is) then a judge is not needed. The reason being that most of the suspects that he is seeking to interdict are not U.S. Citizens. Remember that illegal aliens do not have protections under the Constitution that we do. Second, the President is using the same type of intelligence gathering programs (Eschelon and Carnivore) that President Clinton used. I see nothing wrong with taping phones of non-US Citizens at all.

Joe,

I'm not sure anyone knows enough details to be sure, but from what I've read, Clinton did not use the NSA to spy on people (citizens or not) within the US. The truth is I didn't think much of some of Clinton's policies in a few of these areas either. Even, if it turns out that you are correct about Clinton's use of the NSA, that doesn't make it lawful and at a minimum Bush lied on April 20, 2004. However, I assume that you would see it as a tactical lie, so it would be OK.

Here is a little more information that shows I was a little wrong and Joe was a lot wrong in the above comments.
CIA director George Tenet testified to this before Congress on 4/12/00:

I’m here today to discuss specific issues about and allegations regarding Signals Intelligence activities and the so-called Echelon Program of the National Security Agency… There is a rigorous regime of checks and balances which we, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the FBI scrupulously adhere to whenever conversations of U.S. persons are involved, whether directly or indirectly. We do not collect against U.S. persons unless they are agents of a foreign power as that term is defined in the law. We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department.

Duane,

Notice the legal speak of Tenet's quote. He states, "We do not collect against U.S. persons unless they are agents of a foreign power as that term is defined in the law. We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department."

What this means in plain English is this - No US Citizen is wiretaped period. However, if they are "agents of a foreign power (read here illegal aliens from an Islamic country)then we can tap anything we want to period. In this case we can tape them blowing their nose if we want to and we do not need a court order to do so. However, if they are a US Citizen we have to get a warrant. See the tricky thing is what nationality the target actually is and how their country will react to the tap.

Joe,

Want is your specific understanding of the words, "We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department?" That sure sounds to me like they got FISA court warrants to "collect against US persons.

In my mind, the issue is court oversight, i.e. the warrant or lack of same.

Duane,

Tenant was speaking of two differnt types of individuals. First, the US citizen - if the gov. has reason to believe that a US citizen is conducting terrorism or planning terrorism with a member of another state then the gov. must get a wire tap for that US citizen. Second, if the US citizen is on the line and the gov. is not after that person but the other person (e.g. the terrorist calling from Iraq) then the wiretap is not needed. Another words UCC does not specify that the gov. must get a wiretap for every individaual that the target is talking to - make sense? It could be that in the course of an investigation that the gov. is targeting a terrorist cell in Germany. However, they have contacts in Detroit who are US citizens. In the course of the investigation these US citizens are on tape but there was not warrant issued - fowl or fair? The case would be decided as fair because the gov. was not after the US citizens.

If the gov. got FISA warrants against US citizens then the game is fair. This is simply following the 4th Amdendment. Once a judge signs off on the warrant then they can tap anything that they want to as long as it is being used to engage in a criminal enterprise.