Politics as normal! This is bogus, and all the democrats here at work I have spoken to, and beleive me, they hate the president as much as Arlos, all think the president was doing the right thing. They like the idea a president is being aggressive in defending his country.
But alas, some of us are spewing legal opinions as fact, AGAINST the court case precedents that are actually in place:
arlos wrote:One of the biggest reasons that people are so up in arms about this is that there is very clear law regarding when the NSA is and is not allowed to do domestic wiretapping. There is a specific Court that the NSA can go to if it feels there is pressing need to conduct a domestic wiretap, and if the court agrees, they can issue a warrant. The NSA is even empowered, in case of emergency, to do the wiretapping sans-warrant for 72 hours, as long as the request is filed at some point within that 3-day period.
What Bush did is usurp the position of the Court in this case, and allowed the NSA free reign to wiretap without any court oversight whatsoever. Now, maybe I'm alone in this, but when the Executive Branch siezes power that rightfuly belongs to a completely different branch, that's a HUGE cause for concern.
Oh, and Lyion, it is FAR from only the Dems who are protesting, there are a large number of Republicans who are equally up in arms about the whole thing. Bush's speech was nothing but an attempted whitewash. As for the article from national review, how about I trot out an article from MoveOn or Soros, just so we even out the biases, since NR is so far right they make Fox news look almost centrist.
-Arlos
Actually, NSA has some guidelines established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, aka... FISA. They have established a court to oversee the approval of wiretapping on U.S. soil concerning foreign intelligence. And the FISA courts and their preceeding precedents have NEVER withheld the presidential power to performed warrantless searches. Period!
Here are some facts:
The allegation of Presidential law-breaking rests solely on the fact that Mr. Bush authorized wiretaps without first getting the approval of the court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. But no Administration then or since [1978] has ever conceded that that Act trumped a President's power to make exceptions to FISA if national security required it. FISA established a process by which certain wiretaps in the context of the Cold War could be approved, not a limit on what wiretaps could ever be allowed.
The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that, "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."
Who has used similar practices?
Echelon, the Clinton-era NSA surveillance program, was investigated by 60 Minutes in 2000.
FYI:
ECHELON is a term associated with a global network of computers that automatically search through millions of intercepted messages for pre-programmed keywords or fax, telex and e-mail addresses. Every word of every message in the frequencies and channels selected at a station is automatically searched. The processors in the network are known as the ECHELON Dictionaries. ECHELON connects all these computers and allows the individual stations to function as distributed elements an integrated system. An ECHELON station's Dictionary contains not only its parent agency's chosen keywords, but also lists for each of the other four agencies in the UKUSA system [NSA, GCHQ, DSD, GCSB and CSE]
Most lawyers find that the President has the power, as evidenced in many, many cases to perform warrantless searches at a time of war to gather foreign intelligences.
Even, the Democrat lawyer who served in the Clinton administration supports President Bush's legal position on the post-9/11 electronic surveillance program.
By John Schmidt
Published December 21, 2005
President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.
The president authorized the NSA program in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. An identifiable group, Al Qaeda, was responsible and believed to be planning future attacks in the United States. Electronic surveillance of communications to or from those who might plausibly be members of or in contact with Al Qaeda was probably the only means of obtaining information about what its members were planning next. No one except the president and the few officials with access to the NSA program can know how valuable such surveillance has been in protecting the nation.
In the Supreme Court's 1972 Keith decision holding that the president does not have inherent authority to order wiretapping without warrants to combat domestic threats, the court said explicitly that it was not questioning the president's authority to take such action in response to threats from abroad.
Four federal courts of appeal subsequently faced the issue squarely and held that the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant.
In the most recent judicial statement on the issue, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, composed of three federal appellate court judges, said in 2002 that "All the ... courts to have decided the issue held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence ... We take for granted that the president does have that authority."
The passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978 did not alter the constitutional situation. That law created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that can authorize surveillance directed at an "agent of a foreign power," which includes a foreign terrorist group. Thus, Congress put its weight behind the constitutionality of such surveillance in compliance with the law's procedures.
But as the 2002 Court of Review noted, if the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches, "FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional power."
Every president since FISA's passage has asserted that he retained inherent power to go beyond the act's terms. Under President Clinton, deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie Gorelick testified that "the Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."
FISA contains a provision making it illegal to "engage in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute." The term "electronic surveillance" is defined to exclude interception outside the U.S., as done by the NSA, unless there is interception of a communication "sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person" (a U.S. citizen or permanent resident) and the communication is intercepted by "intentionally targeting that United States person." The cryptic descriptions of the NSA program leave unclear whether it involves targeting of identified U.S. citizens. If the surveillance is based upon other kinds of evidence, it would fall outside what a FISA court could authorize and also outside the act's prohibition on electronic surveillance.
The administration has offered the further defense that FISA's reference to surveillance "authorized by statute" is satisfied by congressional passage of the post-Sept. 11 resolution giving the president authority to "use all necessary and appropriate force" to prevent those responsible for Sept. 11 from carrying out further attacks. The administration argues that obtaining intelligence is a necessary and expected component of any military or other use of force to prevent enemy action.
Go read the whole thing:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0512210142dec21,0,3553632.story?coll=chi-newsopinioncommentary-hed
I think I have showed enough that the president is within his powers. He adviced the congress over 12 times. The congressman that are all up in arms, are making a political ploy to beat a dead horse because they don't want the patriot act approved, which is ok in my book. But leaking secret information about classified programs to take pot shots at a president. That is the real scandal in all this. Especially if now, we can no longer gather intelligence and if we show in a future U.S. attack resulted from our inability to gather important contact data.
-Duck
