NYT: Legal Experts Differ About Surveillance and Privacy

[DeepModem Mom]

Experts Differ About Surveillance and Privacy
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 20, 2006

WASHINGTON, July 19 — Legal experts squared off before Congress on Wednesday about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program, offering radically different views on whether changes in the law are needed to allow eavesdropping on terror suspects without violating Americans’ privacy.

Judge Richard A. Posner, an author on intelligence, told the House Intelligence Committee that the requirement for court warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was “obsolete.”

To get a warrant from the secret court that oversees such eavesdropping, said Judge Posner, who sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, the government must already know who the terrorists are. “The challenge for intelligence is not to track down known terrorists,” he said. “It’s to find out who the terrorists are.”

Michael S. Greco, president of the American Bar Association, sharply disagreed, saying the FISA statute and its requirements for warrants remained a crucial protection for civil liberties. The courts and Congress must have a role in governing intelligence wiretaps, he said.

“The awesome power to penetrate Americans’ most private communications is too great a power to be held solely by the executive branch of government,” Mr. Greco said....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/washington/20intel.html