WaPo -- White House Dismissed '02 Surveillance Proposal

[AtomicKitten]

In 2002 Bush Admin OPPOSED legislation for easier FISA wiretapping shooting a gaping hole in their excuses de jour.

White House Dismissed '02 Surveillance Proposal
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006

The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard.

The proposed legislation by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) would have allowed the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants for non-U.S. citizens if they had a "reasonable suspicion" they were connected to terrorism -- a lower standard than the "probable cause" requirement in the statute that governs the warrants.

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Democrats and national security law experts who oppose the NSA program say the Justice Department's opposition to the DeWine legislation seriously undermines arguments by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others, who have said the NSA spying is constitutional and that surveillance warrants are often too cumbersome to obtain.

"It's entirely inconsistent with their current position," said Philip B. Heymann, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration who teaches law at Harvard University. "The only reason to do what they've been doing is because they wanted a lower standard than 'probable cause.' A member of Congress offered that to them, but they turned it down."


more at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502270.html?sub=AR

also here: http://americablog.blogspot.com/

[Burried News]

1. As usual WaPo is late. Georgia 10 on daily Kos hit this two days

ago.

[Moderator]

2. Duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2065926