Editors of The Nation: Phone Spies

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Issue of June 5, 2006
Posted online Thursday May 18

Editorial: Phone Spies

The revelation that the National Security Agency has, since 2001, collected records of billions of phone calls made and received by Americans confirms the worst fears about the lawlessness of the Bush Administration. This President and his aides have displayed disdain for the rule of law and for the truth. Bush initially denied that the spying was taking place. Then when it was exposed, the Administration claimed that the spying was limited in scope. In light of what we now know, how can anyone trust the word of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden--who as director of the NSA implemented Bush's spying program and who is now the President's nominee to direct the Central Intelligence Agency--when he claimed as recently as January that the domestic surveillance program was "highly targeted" and aimed only at "international communications"?

The Administration would seem to be violating the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable government searches and seizures. There is also the matter of its disregard of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to obtain a warrant for electronic surveillance. By any measure Congress has sufficient grounds not just to investigate but to aggressively challenge the Administration's actions. After ABC News reported that the FBI has acknowledged reviewing phone records of reporters for that network and other outlets as part of an effort to identify whistleblowers, Congress also has a responsibility to demand information about just how much spying is taking place.

So far, however, Congress is speaking loudly but carrying a small stick. Republican Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter complains that "there has been no meaningful Congressional oversight on this program," but where are the subpoenas from his committee to the officials engaged in these activities? Specter says he wants to ask phone company executives about what records they turned over to the NSA and why. But the senator has to know that the fundamental questions can only be answered by an investigation of an Administration that cannot be allowed to plead executive privilege. Democrats also have to get over their timidity. Isn't it time, for instance, for its leaders to acknowledge that Democratic Senator Russ Feingold was right when he proposed in March that Bush be censured for ordering the NSA to eavesdrop on Americans' phone conversations without obtaining proper warrants?

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[ladjf]

1. Feingold's position on the NSA spying is getting stronger by the

day. As it now stands, our only defense from the egregious invasion of privacy that within a year or so, the database will be so large that queries won't be feasible. In other words, the database will become useless as a result of it's massiveness. Add those data records to all of the financial data that they are collecting from banks, insurance and other money institutions on the American people.
There is no way in hell our bumbling govt. can keep up with so much information. Why are the collecting it in the first place? It certainly has little or nothing to do with terrorism.