Is That Whining I Hear?

Pretty soon it will be August, which is, of course, the month of my birth. It also is when the rules for allowing warrantless wire taps by the government expire, which is, I guess, more important in the long run than my birthday. Congress still hasn't come up with the new bill (you know, the one which not only extends the warrantless wire tap program but also grants the telecoms retroactive immunity for cooperating in this unconstitutional activity), and the White House and its minions are ratcheting up the pressure, hopeful that the Democrats will once again cave so they don't have to go into the election season looking weak on security.

An article in the NY Times describes some of the whining currently going on.

With Congress at an impasse over the government’s spy powers, congressional and intelligence officials are bracing for the possibility that the government may have to revert to the old rules of terrorist surveillance, a scenario that some officials predict could leave worrisome gaps in intelligence. ...

...government and congressional officials said in interviews that they saw it as a dangerous step backward. A return to the old rules, they said, would mean that numerous government lawyers, analysts, and linguists would once again have to prepare individual warrants, potentially thousands of them, for surveillance of terrorist targets overseas.

Telecommunications companies would also have to spend considerable time shutting down existing wiretaps, and then to start them up again if ordered under new warrants, officials said. In some instances, the broad orders given to the companies starting last August cover tens of thousands of overseas phone numbers and e-mail addresses at one time, people with knowledge of the orders said.

A senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration was concerned that reverting to the older standards and requiring individual warrants for each wiretap would create a severe gap in overseas intelligence by raising the bar for foreign surveillance collection.

In some cases, the government might simply be unable to establish in court why it suspected that a foreign target was connected to terrorism. Part of the problem, officials said, is that communications going from one foreign country to another sometimes travel through a telephone switch on American soil and, under some interpretations of the older rules, could not be tapped without an individual warrant. (Wiretaps aimed at Americans already require individual warrants issued by a secret court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, or FISA court.) [Emphasis added]

Aw, what a shame. The government would actually have to adhere to the rule of law as set forth in the Constitution. That's hard work! And they might not be able to do it, some nasty judge might actually rule that the government hadn't demonstrated probable cause for the warrant and refuse to grant it. Then we'll be bombed, or airplaned, or something.

Nobody wants another terrorist attack, but requiring the government to actually follow constitutional guidelines is absolutely essential in this democracy. There is no asterisk appended to any of the Bill of Rights to cover terrorism, nor should there be. We are either free, or we are not.

Morons.