tap, tap! who’s there? it’s the NSA!

Naturalized American citizens from ‘rogue’ countries are usually aware that they are being watched and listened to by the government, especially if they still maintain close ties with their country or somewhat unsavory characters from its past. It’s acknowledged and shrugged off—even expected. The sporadic phone noises from a badly-installed wiretap give it away. Or the FBI agents snapping photos from the hill above the family’s reunion party. My best friend growing up was a part of such a ‘foreign’ community and we always joked about it—apologizing to whichever agent was listening on the phone for the boring quality of our calculus homework conversation, or jokingly searching for the surveillance team at community events in order to politely offer them something to eat from the buffet. It was all fun and games until the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the government started pounding down doors and hauling people off into the night without any explanation or warrants. Some of these people were asked questions and released. Some were shipped to other countries so that they could be ‘asked’ questions. And some disappeared completely and have been missing for years.

So I’m understandably disturbed by the government’s circumvention of established wiretapping protocols to hunt down terrorists within our own country. This whole business rubs me the wrong way, and despite the administration’s assurances that are hunting ‘terrorists’ using legal channels, I’m still extremely wary. But I’ll give them a chance to explain themselves, so let’s look at the facts:

In June of 2005 President Bush discussed the successful break-up of a terrorist cell in California with Neil Cavuto of Fox News. Bush stated:

"I was very impressed by the use of intelligence and the follow-up. And that's what the American need to know, that when we find any hint about any possible wrongdoing or a possible cell, that we'll follow up — by the way, honoring the civil liberties of those to whom we follow up. In other words, we're just not going to pick up the telephone and listen to somebody without a proper court order. That's protecting the civil liberties of Americans."

Right. Moving on.

Bush is now asserting that he informed the (minimum) number of people in Congress about the warrantless NSA wiretapping, and therefore had an ‘executive’ right to conduct it. This issue is already pretty damn shady, and I personally doubt that this NSA operation was on the up and up, but a bigger problem looms on the horizon. If this warrantless wiretapping and circumvention of court approval is deemed ‘legal’ by the review panel, the lines of legality will go into flux. There were already adequate processes in place for the government to perform wiretapping on foreign-US calls, but they were not used (as he claimed in June 2005). Why not? I suspect it had nothing to do with process and everything to do with whom the government wants to listen in on, free of documentation and review: no warrant = no paper trail (at least not one that can be followed through the usual channels). I don’t mean to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theory nut, but this should certainly set off alarm bells in anyone’s brain. Not that I’m naïve enough to believe that this sort of undocumented listening-in didn’t happen prior to this. It’s just that before we’ve always acknowledged and called it what it actually is—under the table, illegal-yet-conducted surveillance. Now the administration is gerrymandering the rules and labels mid-game, and that’s just unacceptable. If someone stopped the NCAA Championship game at half-time and changed the height of the hoops and length of the court, people would be extremely upset. And that’s with a mere five bucks on the game—not their civil liberties. In fact, if we could only find a way to link the NSA wiretapping scandal with the Final Four we might finally be able to rustle up an appropriate amount of popular outrage over this issue. It’s ridiculous, but the idea has merit. Maybe the Democrats should divert some of that 2008 campaign money to hiring an Evil Genius. Considering how the last couple elections have gone, it might be well worth the investment.

See this for an analysis on the implications of the secrecy surrounding illegal eavesdropping by government agencies.


And see this for more reasons why re-directing power from the courts might not be such a good idea.