The Heretik: BLANK CHECKS, NO BALANCE

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BLANK CHECKS, NO BALANCE

BLANK CHECKS and no balance against unlimited executive power is what the White House thinks it got from Congress right after September Eleventh. Bush and Ashcroft got the Patriot Act waved through with no debate and the Democratic leaders don’t stop it in its tracks, that odious act will become permanent. But perhaps even worse, Bush signed an order allowing National Security Agency spying on American citizens without warrants.
At an April hearing on the Patriot Act renewal, Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., "Can the National Security Agency, the great electronic snooper, spy on the American people?"
"Generally," Mr. Mueller said, "I would say generally, they are not allowed to spy or to gather information on American citizens." President Bush did not ask Congress to include provisions for the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program as part of the Patriot Act and has not sought any other laws to authorize the operation. Bush administration lawyers argued that such new laws were unnecessary, because they believed that the Congressional resolution on the campaign against terrorism provided ample authorization, officials said.
Seeking Congressional approval was also viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds. The administration also feared that by publicly disclosing the existence of the operation, its usefulness in tracking terrorists would end, officials said.
WHY DIDN’T THE WHITE HOUSE TELL anyone? Why didn’t Bush ask for such power to be included in the Patriot Act? Because they didn’t think they had to. And why risk political opposition to something some might consider unconstitutional. . . . when all you would get is political opposition. This circle of logic will never be unbroken and we will always get the runaround.

THE WHITE HOUSE WON’T TAKE the time to get warrants, not even FISA warrants. You don’t need the Fourth Amendment’s “probable cause” a crime has been committed for a FISA warrant. All you need to show a FISA judge in a secret FISA court is a probable cause the person under surveillance may be an “agent of a foreign power.” May be.

SOME WILL SAY the government needs as many tools as possible to stop threats before they happen, but in our haste to give the government whatever it wants something is lost. Lost is not just liberty of the innocent, but also the focus of those who should be watching out for us. In the blurring of procedures we know longer see who the true enemy is.

IT IS WORTH NOTING by its own admission, the New York Times sat on this story for a year. How different would the discussion of the Patriot Act be if this news had come out a year ago? And how would the President appear before the election?

BEYOND THE BLUSTER
BACKGROUND THE FISA ACT

FISA WARRANTS AREN’T HARD TO GET The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Annual Report (pdf) reveals that there were 1758 applications for secret surveillance in 2004, an all-time high. None of the applications for secret suveillance warrants were denied. In 2004, as in 2003, more secret surveillance warrants were granted than federal wiretap warrants, which have more stringent standards. A report on federal wiretapm warrants in 2004 reveals that state and federal courts authorized 1,710 interceptions in 2004, an increase of 19 percent over 2003 and more than in any previous year. Federal officials made an all-time high 730 intercept applications in 2004, a 26 percent increase over 2003. For more information, see EPIC's Wiretap and EPIC's FISA statistics pages.

NOTED HERE if you missed it. NO FISA WARRANTS WERE DENIED. But that is still too much of a bother for the government. Something above a one hundred percent success rate is not enough. And perhaps that is the problem. Nothing is enough.

THE NSA MISSION STATEMENT "The ability to understand the secret communications of our foreign adversaries while protecting our own communications -- a capability in which the United States leads the world -- gives our nation a unique advantage."