Who do I have to piss off to get my phone tapped?

Here's the way I thought things were: the government (local, state, federal) isn't allowed to spy on me (i.e. wiretapping, etc.) unless they have a warrant from a judge based on their being enough evidence to suspect me of being involved in or planning illegal activity.

Is that what you thought, too? I mean, isn't that what the vast majority of us who have no formal legal training but have access to Court TV and watch Law and Order think? I've talked to several of my friends who actually are attorneys, and that's what they thought, too.

Apparently, that's what the media thought, too, because when they found out that it wasn't the case, they thought it was worth reporting.

And, it seems that the President thought that we thought that, too, because he got really mad at the press for telling us that things weren't the way we thought they were. In fact, he called letting us know that the government thinks it's allowed to spy on us in ways that we all thought were illegal was a "shameful" act, that caused "great harm" to the country.

Let's examine just what the President considers to be greatly harmful. First of all, the information "leaked" was not that the government is allowed to spy on people. We already knew that; we've all seen the TV shows with the Feds in an unmarked van, shirtsleeves rolled up and headphones pressed to their ears as they listen to a mobster order pizza or a hit on someone. What was leaked was the fact that the President had signed an executive order giving the NSA authority to go ahead and spy on people without bothering to get a warrant from a judge.

We'll talk about whether or not that was a reasonable thing for the President to authorize in a bit, but first I want to let you know what bothers me the most about this situation. The President thought that the safety of our country depended on us, the citizens of this country, going about our daily life believing that the government's authority to spy on us was limited in a way that he contends it was not. Whether or not his actions were in fact legal is beyond the point. What is important is that he knew that we thought the government wasn't allowed to spy on us without a warrant, and he thought that it was necessary for US citizens to believe that they had a certain freedom that he contends they did not in fact have in order for those same citizens to be safe. Let me say that another way: The President said that for the government to be able to do its job, we citizens had to believe that we were safer from our own government than we actually were. He brazenly proclaimed that it is shameful to inform the citizens of a constitutional democracy of the true extent of the government's authority to invade their lives.

That just boggles my mind. The government can't work unless the citizens are deceived about what authority the government actually has? What the heck?

Okay, that was the main thing that I wanted to say, and you can stop reading now if you want. I will continue, however, to briefly explore the reasonableness of the order in the first place, whether we were allowed to know about it or not. It may seem reasonable, when we consider that in the time it takes to find a judge, present evidence to them, have the warrant written up and delivered and the surveillance actually started, the critical information may have already been passed. Clearly, the current style of terrorism we are trying to defend against needs the flexibility to begin surveillance immediately without waiting for a warrant.

Guess what? That was already covered under the law. The governing statute (called FISA) gave federal agents a 48 hour window between the time they started surveillance and the time they obtained a retroactive warrant. So the immediacy was not the issue at hand.

So what possible motive could the President have for signing this order, and continuing to renew it whenever it expired over the last 4 years? I can think of two possible reasons. The first is laziness. There are so many people to spy on, so much moving around, judges are hard to find... let's just cut through the red tape and free up some more agents to man the unmarked vans instead of interrupting the judge's tennis game or cocktail party to get a warrant signed.

The second reason I can think of is a little more disturbing: The whole reason a warrant is required is that law enforcement has to convince someone who is an expert in the law (i.e. a judge) that there's compelling evidence that the person in question may be involved in something illegal. It's possible that the NSA wanted to spy on people for reasons that are not legally compelling. What reasons could they have? Race, religion, country of origin? Political affiliation or published dissent against the government or government officials? For those of us who think that history is worth remembering, the name J. Edgar Hoover comes to mind when we hear about a federal agency spying on US Citizens for reasons less than legally compelling, and the name JosephMcCarthy is recalled when we see people being prosecuted on the basis of suspected associations.

I've got another name to throw out at you: Saddam Hussein. Saddam had over the course of years created a web of protection around himself so tight that he was practically invulnerable to any domestic attack. He had unlimited authority to spy on his own citizens, and he was able to indefinitely detain anyone he suspected might be part of some plot against him, even without presenting compelling evidence to a legal expert (like a judge). I'm not saying that Bush is Saddam, not by a long shot. What I'm saying is that Saddam's Iraq is what lies at the end of the road that we as a nation have taken the first several steps down as a response to the fear that has been driving us since September 11th. It's a long road, and for the moment, we are still safeguarded against the tyrrany and despotism that plagued Iraq under Saddam. But those safeguards are being tested and chipped away at, and all in the name of protecting us from our enemies. A free press that is regularly cut off from information and labeled as shameful enemies of our security who cause harm to our nation by telling us what is true is the first step toward a press controlled by the state as a propaganda tool.

Freedom comes at a price, but it's a price worth paying. The fiction that we can surround ourselves with a wall of security that cannot be breached leads us down a road that ends in tyrrany and despotism, of a fear of our leaders and neighbors that is far more horrible than the fear of terrorism that is sending us hurtling down the treacherous road without our headlights on. The danger you flee from is not more dangerous than the danger you run into because you're always looking over your shoulder.

- "We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."