February 6, 2006 6:24 AM

One man's focused surveillance program is another's warrantless fishing expedition

Surveillance Net Yields Few Suspects: NSA’s Hunt for Terrorists Scrutinizes Thousands of Americans, but Most Are Later Cleared

Specter Believes Spy Program Violates Law

The Bush administration refuses to say — in public or in closed session of Congress — how many Americans in the past four years have had their conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority. Two knowledgeable sources placed that number in the thousands; one of them, more specific, said about 5,000.

In a land where individual liberty and freedom have always been cherished values, few Americans seem aware, or even terribly concerned, that their government may be spying on them, all in the name of “preventing terrorism”. Our Glorious Leader and minions have hammered the talking point that “If someone in this country is talking to al Qaeda, we want to know” so much that it seems almost disingenuous to question the Administration’s warrantless surveillance program. The reality of the program is quite different from the bill of goods that we are being sold, however. You’d think that would raise an alarm- the government could be listening to your phone calls. Even with that knowledge, the American sheeple seem supremely unconcerned with the possibility that their private communications may not in fact be so private.

Slowly, though, official Washington seems to be waking up to the reality that Our Glorious Leader’s warrantless surveillance program is, in fact, illegal. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) finally seems to be growing a set of cojones. Specter, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been making noises about issuing subpeonas for documents relating to the Administration’s legal justification for the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. Of course, Specter will likely end up being cut off at the knees by the White House and/or the GOP leadership, but there is also the possibility that Specter’s questions may start other Republicans thinking. It’s not a very likely possibility, but it could happen. Then again, I could also be elected Queen of England….

Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.

Bush has recently described the warrantless operation as “terrorist surveillance” and summed it up by declaring that “if you’re talking to a member of al Qaeda, we want to know why.” But officials conversant with the program said a far more common question for eavesdroppers is whether, not why, a terrorist plotter is on either end of the call. The answer, they said, is usually no.

Clearly, if someone is talking to al Qaeda, our government should know about it. No reasonable person would dispute that. What angers me is that there is a legally-sanctioned process in place that allows for a President to engage in domestic surveillance. For reasons that no one, least of all Our Glorious Leader, has adequately explained, this President has chosen to circumvent that law. Instead of working to change the law, Our Glorious Leader has determined that he is able to simply ignore it, because he’s Presidentiary.

This program has been presented to the public as a focused surveillance of potential terrorists, when in fact it is nothing of the sort. It’s a fishing expedition. Our Glorious Leader has essentially given the NSA carte blanche to monitor all manner of conversations and electronic communications in the hope that something sticks. If Bill Clinton had been guilty of this sort of behavior, he would have been up before the Senate on impeachment charges. This President, primarily because Republicans control the reign of power, clearly doesn’t have to worry about being held accountable- and this demonstrates exactly what a corrupt and ethically moribund collection of reprobates the Republican party is today.

The scale of warrantless surveillance, and the high proportion of bystanders swept in, sheds new light on Bush’s circumvention of the courts. National security lawyers, in and out of government, said the washout rate raised fresh doubts about the program’s lawfulness under the Fourth Amendment, because a search cannot be judged “reasonable” if it is based on evidence that experience shows to be unreliable. Other officials said the disclosures might shift the terms of public debate, altering perceptions about the balance between privacy lost and security gained.

Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the nation’s second-ranking intelligence officer, acknowledged in a news briefing last month that eavesdroppers “have to go down some blind alleys to find the tips that pay off.” Other officials, nearly all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to discuss the program, said the prevalence of false leads is especially pronounced when U.S. citizens or residents are surveilled. No intelligence agency, they said, believes that “terrorist … operatives inside our country,” as Bush described the surveillance targets, number anywhere near the thousands who have been subject to eavesdropping.

Listening to George W. Bush, you’d think that our nation is infested with thousands of terrorists. What else are we to think given the thousands of Americans who have been surveilled in this NSA fishing expedition? Yet most of the American sheeple seem quite unconcerned with the possibility that the government may be listening in on their electronic communications.

NOW CAN WE IMPEACH HIM???

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on February 6, 2006 6:24 AM.

A summa cum laude graduate of the School of Demagoguery was the previous entry in this blog.

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