“I have no greater responsibility than to protect our
people, our freedom and our way of life.”
After President Bush spoke these words during a radio address to
the nation in December, it finally became clear to me why he can
choose to break the law to spy and infringe upon the civil
liberties of anyone he wants: to protect our freedom.
Some really silly people have been questioning the legitimacy of
a domestic spying program that collects information about U.S.
citizens without a warrant ““ as if the Founding Fathers had
actually wanted the Fourth Amendment to be taken seriously.
Bush’s program also ignores the 1978 Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act. The act concerns certain unimportant, negligible
clauses about needing “probable cause” to spy on U.S.
citizens, as well as a judicial check on presidential powers.
As Bush stated, he has the “Constitutional authority to
protect our country.” This statement comes from the same
individual who claimed, in 2004, the right to detain Americans
without due process. The Supreme Court persuaded him otherwise in
an 8-1 decision.
This case, however, is clearly different. Phone calls and
e-mails are made quickly and unexpectedly. Obtaining a warrant to
record them would be terribly inconvenient.
In response to this point, Sen. Dianne Feinstein pointed out
that “the attorney general can authorize a tap for 72 hours
and then they must take it to a FISA court.” She added that
the judges of the court “work 24/7″ and “there is
no evidence that the FISA court can’t respond.”
Oh, if she only knew the problems that can arise in the 25th
hour.
Unnamed officials have reported that the spying program has made
a few mistakes and spied on citizens who were not actually planning
terrorist acts ““ but everyone makes mistakes. A few people
had their privacy wrongly invaded ““ but really, what more
could go wrong?
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in
Virginia, worried about the lack of limitations on executive power.
“Where is the stopping point?” he asked.
But these little glitches and petty concerns do not mean Bush
needs to acquire a warrant or answer for his actions in any way,
shape or form. All he wants to do is preserve freedom. Why
can’t everyone learn to just trust the president? Has he
misled us before?
When the information about the spying program was leaked to the
press, the White House demanded to know who divulged the
information. Before this, none of the terrorists knew we were
watching them. Way to blow our cover, New York Times.
After a congressional investigation began and a number of
Bush’s lawyers and advisers whispered that he may need more
legal ground than “But I’m the President!” Bush
went so far as to say the congressional inquiries would be
“good for democracy.”
We all know that President Bush, the great diplomat that he is,
simply wants to appease the irrationally irate Democrats.
He was careful to be sure Congress was cool with the whole
warrant-free spying in the first place by informing Congress about
what he was doing. Sure, he only told a couple members of Congress,
and no, they weren’t allowed to talk about it with anyone
else, but that counts, right?
Sen. Russ Feingold vehemently disagreed. “Informing a
handful of congressional leaders who are prohibited from discussing
what they have been told is not oversight, and congressional
inaction under these extraordinary circumstances is not
approval,” he said in a letter printed in the Wall Street
Journal.
This position seems a little extreme, especially when you take
into account that Bush has stated that the “activities (he)
authorized are reviewed every 45 days.” The activities must
pass the scrutiny of the counsel to the president and the attorney
general.
See, people, there’s no reason to panic. The Bush
administration is approving every single one of its own
decisions.
So what we have here is a clear case of misunderstanding.
President Bush is doing all he can to ensure that you and I can
live in a free nation, where anyone at any time could be listening
to you talk to that cute guy you met overseas or read your e-mails
to your sister who’s traveling in Paris.
These investigations are similar to the investigations allowed
by the Patriot Act, which allows the government to conduct
“sneak and peek” searches of houses, then wait months
or years to inform the inhabitants. Only 12 percent of such search
warrants have been related to terrorism, the Justice Department
reported.
There’s no reason to worry ourselves by investigating the
president or letting these little incidents affect our voting. The
administration even tried to keep the NSA programs secret so
Americans could spend more time being free and less time fretting
about the actions of their government. After all, that’s what
a democracy is all about.
For the reading pleasure of the NSA, e-mail Strickland
at
kstrickland@media.ucla.edu.