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Originally Posted by Drakonix
The President has Constitutional authority to order surveillance without warrant given certain conditions of national security. This authority is above the 1978 FISA.
The leak places U.S. citizens in increased danger as terrorists could use counter-measures against surveillance and therefore escape detection.
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couple of things. we're talking about spying on u.s. citizens
here, not on foreign nationals outside the u.s., and the president can’t usurp congress's rights on u.s. soil. also fisa requires notification in 3 days which isn't happening and that's how the president is violating the act. finally, fisa is well known, it's been law for ages, over 25 years, so any one with an interest in escaping detection
already knew we wiretap w/out warrants. bush's strange rants to the contrary, nothing in the nytimes piece in any way surprised our enemies, who surely had plans in place to remain anonymous that took fisa into account. the only surprise is on us, the u.s. public, that bush's a.g. didn't get the ok to spy on american citizens after 3 days of tapping, and that's against the law, even of the admittedly loose fisa variety.
of course if bush thinks even knowledge
already public is too dangerous for the public to (re-)know, he could've have lied about it, denying the very existence of a well-known program, and by extension, his violation of it, or he could have simply refused to comment, which he usually does when confronted with something controversial.
if knowledge of the program has damaged u.s. security, bush shares most of the blame, for violating the law to begin with and for acknowledging it with such aggression. “yeah i did it 30 times and i’m gonna keep doin it, no matter what.” woah there pardner.
we know you can't believe everything in the paper, no matter what the name says on the masthead. a few no-comments might not’ve quieted critics but it wouldn't have screamed to the most ignorant terrorists "we are listening to you!" either. i mean bush hands them a gold-plated official affirmation then turns around and snaps "that aids them!"? he obviously has a lot more problems than i give him credit for.
meanwhile it sounds like the bad old j edgar hoover days of internal us surveillance are on us all over again, with the nytimes reporting the
F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show…
One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/politics/20fbi.html
more than most, this administration really needs the oversight, and that's saying a lot. asking citizens to trust them is asking too much of any american.
- js.