NYT Op/Ed: The Need To Know (Evisceration Of FISA)

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/opinion/11sat1.html?hp

The Need to Know

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The new measure eviscerates the protections of FISA, allowing the attorney general to decide when to eavesdrop — without a warrant — on any telephone call or e-mail message, so long as one of the people communicating is “reasonably believed” to be outside the country. The courts have no real power over such operations.

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The administration has refused to say how much warrantless spying it has been doing. Clearly, it is more than Mr. Bush has acknowledged, but Americans need to know exactly how far their liberties have been breached and whether the operation included purely domestic eavesdropping. And why did Mr. Bush feel compelled to construct an outlaw eavesdropping operation — apart, that is, from his broader effort to expand presidential power and evade checks and balances?

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Instead of answering these questions, the administration has done its best to ensure that everyone stays confused. It has refused repeated requests by Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for documents relating to the president’s order creating the spying program, and the Justice Department’s legal justifications for it.

When this issue resurfaces, Mr. Bush will undoubtedly claim executive privilege, as he has done whenever he has been asked to come clean with Americans about his decision-making. But those documents should be handed over without delay for review by all members of Congress. We also agree with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has petitioned the FISA court, which normally works in secret, to make public its opinion on the scope of the government’s wiretapping powers.

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