oldreliable67
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Pacridge said:10 to 1? Got a source for that?
As for the second part, I agree. Seems like there's a law in place to deal with these situations, why not follow it?
oldreliable67 said:libertarian,
Thats all been reviewed and discussed and acknowledged previously. Did you have a point in posting it?
oldreliable67 said:No, it is not the function of the courts to determine threats. It is the function of the coursts to interpret and administer the law. Nothing more, nothing less.
Baloney. It is probably true that Bush, as have many, many presidents before him, especially in wartime, pushed the power of the executive branch to its limits.
To reiterate, it is my hope that the NSA surveillance program question does make it to the SC. This is new ground: stateless terrorism and advanced technology versus laws originating in the world of 1978. Ultimately, if Bush's actions do find their way to the SC, it may be determined that he did something that pushed beyond the limits of the executive branch. Or maybe not. Thats what courts are for. But take a position that he is above the law? Not hardly.
libertarian_knight said:were either known conservatives, or worked for a Republican administration in the past.
libertarian_knight said:One question in this one, can any defender-of-warrantless-wiretaps-involving-communications-of-a-US-Person please post or cite the relavant law by title and section or chapter, or relavant Federal Court ruling authorizing
warrantless-wiretaps-involving-communications-of-a-US-Person?
libertarian_knight said:The only scholars I have read that agreed with the AG's opinion were either known conservatives, or worked for a Republican administration in the past.
libertarian_knight said:With of course, the exception of 50 USC1811 (which has not been satsified)
"Section 1811. Authorization during time of war "
oldreliable67 said:Ah, so you're 10 to 1 was a SWAG?
Since you asked, lets take a look at some of the court rulings:
> The Second Circuit in United States v. Duggan, 743 F.2d 59 (1984), a terrorism case in which the court, among other rulings, upheld the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was adopted in 1981. The court wrote:
"Prior to the enactment of FISA, virtually every court that had addressed the issue had concluded that the President had the inherent power to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence information, and that such surveillances constituted an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment."
> In 2002, the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review decided Sealed Case No. 02-001. This case arose out of a provision of the Patriot Act that was intended to break down the “wall” between law enforcement and intelligence gathering. The Patriot Act modified Truong’s “primary purpose” test by providing that surveillance under FISA was proper if intelligence gathering was one “significant” purpose of the intercept. In the course of discussing the constitutional underpinnings (or lack thereof) of the Truong test, the court wrote:
"The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that constitutional authority in the case before it. We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power. The question before us is the reverse, does FISA amplify the President’s power by providing a mechanism that at least approaches a classic warrant and which therefore supports the government’s contention that FISA searches are constitutionally reasonable."
That is the current state of the law. The federal appellate courts have unanimously held that the President has the inherent constitutional authority to order warrantless searches for purposes of gathering foreign intelligence information, which includes information about terrorist threats. Furthermore, since this power is derived from Article II of the Constitution, the FISA Review Court has specifically recognized that it cannot be taken away or limited by Congressional action.
There is a good summary of these and other relevant court cases here.
That being the case, the NSA intercept program, which consists of warrantless electronic intercepts for purposes of foreign intelligence gathering, is legal.
cnredd said:50 USC1811?...This is wrong...
It should read "Texas 41 USC 38"...
libertarian_knight said:Twice you attributed this statement "The only scholars I have read that agreed with the AG's opinion were either known conservatives, or worked for a Republican administration in the past." to me, it was said by another chatter, not myself.
I don't feel my simple question was answered.
the court decides to skirt the issue and not answer the question...The preisdent can't search and seize unreasonably, anything to do with americans.
"So all searches and seizures of Americans or their property (including, as the courts have appropriately ruled, interceptions of telephonic and electronic communications) must be reasonable."
libertarian_knight said:I think under the law, and limitation of the constitution that the question is satisfactorily answered.
I really see no reason that FISA was inadequet for the administration and NSA's needs...It's my opinion that the administration chose to keep this secret because they new it was wrong. Not this BS about "tipping off the enemy." Do you seriously think that terrorist don't think they are being listened to?
oldreliable67 said:James Risen's new book has a alternative explanation for the secrecy and why FISA rules and regs may be insufficient. According to his new book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, the key to the program is a shift in telecommunications technology that in recent decades has made US networks the carriers of lots of international telephone and email traffic. A large volume of purely international telephone calls - calls that do not begin or end in the US - also now travel through switches based in the US. Calls from Asia to Europe, for example, may go through the US-based switches. This so-called transit traffic has dramatically increased in recent years as the telephone network has become increasingly globalized. Computerized systems determine the most efficient routes for digital "packets" of electronic communications depending on the speed and congestion on the networks, not necessarily on the shortest line between two points. Such random global route selection means that the switches carrying calls from Cleveland to Chicago, for example, may also be carrying calls from Islamabad to Jakarta. In fact, it is now difficult to tell where the domestic telephones system ends and the international network begins.
Risen goes on to say,
"In the years before 9/11, the NSA apparently recognized that the remarkable growth in transit traffic was becoming a major issue that had never been addressed by FISA or the other 1970s-era rules and regulations governing the U.S. intelligence community. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches that were physically on American soil, eavesdropping on those calls might be a violation of the regulations and laws restricting the NSA from spying inside the United States.
But transit traffic also presented a major opportunity. If the NSA could gain access to the American switches, it could easily monitor millions of foreign telephone calls, and do so much more consistently and effectively than it could overseas, where it had to rely on spy satellites and listening stations to try to vacuum up telecommunications signals as they bounced through the air."
So, according to Risen's book, it seems that most of the new surveillance program was not about domestic surveillance at all; most of it was about the surveillance of entirely international calls and e-mails that just happened to be routed through U.S. networks in the course of delivery. According to Risen, the program typically monitored about 7,000 individuals overseas at any given time, as compared to about about 500 people who were located in the United States. From an operational perspective, then, the big difference between prior NSA practices and the new program was that the NSA was using a back door into domestic privider switches in the U.S. to monitor communications that were mostly foreign to foreign.
Consequently, it's not that terrorists may suddenly realize that they may be monitored; that argument never made much sense, as every member of Al-Qaeda must know that they may be monitored. Rather, the security issue is twofold. In the short term, terrorist groups now know that they can stand a significantly better chance of hiding their communications from the NSA by chosing communications systems that don't happen to route through the U.S. And in the long term, some countries may react to the disclosures of the program by redesigning their telecommunications networks so less traffic goes through the United States. The more people abroad know that the NSA can easily watch their communications routed through the U.S., the less people will be willing to route their communications through the U.S. No doubt it was a long-term priority of the NSA to ensure that lots of international communications traffic was routed through the U.S., where the NSA could have much better access to it. Indeed, Risen's book more or less says this. The disclosure of the program presumably helps frustrate that objective.
SouthernDemocrat said:Then change the law, dont just ignore it. Moreover, what about wiretaps of the phone conversations of U.S. citizens? Without oversight, how does one insure that those wiretaps are not for political or other means?
SouthernDemocrat said:We already know that such groups as PETA and the Quakers have been investigated as a result of these warrantless wiretaps.
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