Posted on 05/11/2006 11:32:37 AM PDT by TeleStraightShooter
THE PRESIDENT: After September the 11th, I vowed to the American people that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack. As part of this effort, I authorized the National Security Agency to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. In other words, if al Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they're saying.
Today there are new claims about other ways we are tracking down al Qaeda to prevent attacks on America. I want to make some important points about what the government is doing and what the government is not doing.
First, our international activities strictly target al Qaeda and their known affiliates. Al Qaeda is our enemy, and we want to know their plans. Second, the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. Third, the intelligence activities I authorized are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat. Fourth, the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities.
We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates. So far we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil.
As a general matter, every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy. Our most important job is to protect the American people from another attack, and we will do so within the laws of our country.
Thank you.
Phase II Targeted Surveillance :
When suspect(s) are identified, obtain a warrant if required.
"Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well. That step still requires a warrant from a federal judge, for which the government must supply evidence of probable cause."
In other words work, domestic to domestic calls that are listened to are listened to with a warrant.
Sounds like it was a good plan. If we don't know what domestic to domestic calls to get a warrant on, how do we get a warrant?
Technically, phone lines are not our property anyway.
fyi
I have zero doubt that if these programs had been in place in 2000 and early 2001 that 9/11 would not have happened. The patterns of phone calls coming from Germany and Yemen would have been discovered and warrants gotten for calls to and from Mohamed Atta. The two hijackers who the CIA knew about but lost after they entered the US would probably have been found.
I'm not. Having said that, this type of activity, in this context, seems reasonable.
Oh, and Welcome to FreeRepublic.
International communications is the key term. IMHO anyone making an international call with any expectation of privacy is an idiot. When I make an international call, I expect that someone might be listening in, and I don't see how it matters if it's US or someone else.
Using their property and equipment to conduct your activity means it is NOT your "private activity". You are acting in public since you are doing it on THEIR property. Trying to claim you have a right to privacy while using THEIR property is foolish.
Nice Try Democrat Underground. So are you a new troll or one of the usual DU fools who comes around regulary to make wholly ignorant, nonsensical comments thinking they are "clever"?
So what's the problem? Of course the Congressional idiots wil be all over the talk shows this weekend, attacking the President and General Hayden, basing all their accusations on an article in the McPaper USA Today.
BTW, the article says nothing about corporate monitoring and reporting back to the feds.
Well that was quick. It seems to be a pile of smoking ash smelling strongly of ozone now.
Bookmarked
They're not even clever, nor funny. No entertainment value to them.
Great pict. Mind if I steal it?
I should clarify. Some stores DO have security cameras in the dressing rooms but they are used in conjunction with signs that state that they exist thereby eliminating the "expectation" of privacy.
You might want to file the serial numbers off it before you use it, I didn't when I stole it.
Call it the Wellstone Memorial Syndrome.
You can sure tell that Tony Snow is on the job.
To be followed by phony "approval ratings" showing the President at minus zero.
How on earth did the Republic survive without pollsters for its first 170 years or so? (Polling started to become a big media thing in the late 1940's.) How on earth did former presidents get by without media-invented "approval ratings" to tell them what to do?
I think we are going to start seeing the MSM with unexplained bruises and black eyes from now on, and if they smile, perhaps a missing tooth.
Black's dissent in that case was on-point, but futile. The majority of that court were ready to amend the constitution by judicial fiat, and sound reasoning and clear language were not going to stop them.
Do I think that in today's day and age, it's nice to have a constitutional protection on my phone calls? Maybe. But if that's what we want, we could have amended the constitution to make that clear.
Black's dissent notes that the idea of "eavesdropping" is well-known, and if the founders wanted to prohibit eavesdropping without a warrant, it could have added that word. He further notes: "The Amendment itself shows that the search is to be of material things - the person, the house, his papers or his effects. The description of the warrant necessary to make the proceeding lawful, is [389 U.S. 347, 368] that it must specify the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized. . . .
A warrant has to specify a "place", and "what" is to be searched -- obviously the warrant is targetted at places and things, NOT people.
He makes an eloquent argument for the distinction between "liberal interpretion", and re-writing the constitution: Since I see no way in which the words of the Fourth Amendment can be construed to apply to eavesdropping, that closes the matter for me. In interpreting the Bill of Rights, I willingly go as far as a liberal construction of the language takes me, but I simply cannot in good conscience give a meaning to words which they have never before been thought to have and which they certainly do not have in common ordinary usage. I will not distort the words of the Amendment in order to "keep the Constitution up to date" or "to bring it into harmony with the times." It was never meant that this Court have such power, which in effect would make us a continuously functioning constitutional convention.
He expresses his wishes that the court: has completed, I hope, its rewriting of the Fourth Amendment, which started only recently when the Court began referring incessantly to the Fourth Amendment not so much as a law against unreasonable searches and seizures as one to protect an individual's privacy. By clever word juggling the Court finds it plausible to argue that language aimed specifically at searches and seizures of things that can be searched and seized may, to protect privacy, be applied to eavesdropped evidence of conversations that can neither be searched nor seized. Few things happen to an individual that do not affect his privacy in one way or another. Thus, by arbitrarily substituting the Court's language, designed to protect privacy, for the Constitution's language, designed to protect against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Court has made the Fourth Amendment its vehicle for holding all laws violative of the Constitution which offend the Court's broadest concept of privacy.
And he finishes with a flourish: The Fourth Amendment protects privacy only to the extent that it prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures of "persons, houses, papers, and effects." No general right is created by the Amendment so as to give this Court the unlimited power to hold unconstitutional everything which affects privacy. Certainly the Framers, well acquainted as they were with the excesses of governmental power, did not intend to grant this Court such omnipotent lawmaking authority as that. The history of governments proves that it is dangerous to freedom to repose such powers in courts.
Of course, since that time, it HAS been found to be quite protected. You would still be foolish to assume that nobody is listening in to your conversations, whether legally or illegally.
I think the courts did us a disservice when they destroyed the 4th amendment. Our founders were NOT worried about the people being caught too easily, or being able to feel free to commit crimes with impunity. They were ONLY concerned that the government not be able to harass people without cause. Tapping a phone line in no way harrasses someone. Searching them and their house DOES. I have every right to assume that, absent clear evidence, my possessions won't be rifled, I won't be strip-searched, my door won't be broken down, police won't roust me in the wee hours of the morning, nor will my property be seized. I have no right from the founders to commit criminal acts with impunity without fear of being caught so long as I leave no clear evidence to instigate a warrant. "Expectation of privacy" is an absurd constitutional principle. I could use that case to argue that, if I leave pot in my neighbor's house, since I know my neighbor isn't a pot dealer, the police won't ever be able to find the pot. If my neighbor then invites the police in, and they find it, and find my fingerprints, this court would throw out the case because certainly my NEIGHBOR can't revoke my 4th amendment rights. Sounds crazy, but the courts have already ruled that police can't search a house if the wife says OK, but the husband hasn't said OK.
"Using their property and equipment to conduct your activity means it is NOT your "private activity". You are acting in public since you are doing it on THEIR property. Trying to claim you have a right to privacy while using THEIR property is foolish."
Actually, it is your private activity, and you do have a right to privacy. If that were not so, the government could wiretap your phone, because the whole basis for your Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless searches comes down to "Do you have a justifiable expectation of privacy?" If the phone company could listen in to your conversations any time it wanted to, you would not have a "justifiable expectation of privacy", which would mean that the Government could listen it, too.
You also have a justifiable expectation in your home, even if you rent it and are NOT the owner.
You also have a justifiable expectation of privacy in your mail, or for that matter, Fed Ex, even though you use the Gov't or Fed Ex's equipment and personnel to move it.
Therefore this is a complete non issue since the business turning over the call records is under NO obligation to protect the "privacy right" of the indidual. The business ownes the records not the caller.
Katz has to do with listening in on the conversation.
One of the first cases we studied in Criminal Procedure -
Smith v Maryland, [pen register], 442 US 735 (1979), citizen voluntarily conveys telephone numbers he dials to telephone company so no reasonable expectation of privacy preventing police from installing pen register at telephone office to record outgoing call numbers.
My thanks for posting the transcript and the added info. Pity some of the knee-jerk class didn't bother to look any of this up before launching attacks on the President, his nominee, and the program.
More trolls than usual today. Most of them pretending to be "conservatives."
Man, you were on that troll like stink on...
I didn't think Justice Black was disengenous when he said it.
It is clear that the founding fathers were not trying to hinder law enforcement or protect criminals, they were trying to ensure the government couldn't use police powers to harrass people, especially political enemies, without good cause shown beforehand.
I have not been the least bit inconvenienced or harrassed or "oppressed" by whatever listening the government has been doing the past 5 years.
Its an easy concept. Which one is more inconvenient to you (assuming you are not a criminal): Police knock down your door at 5am, run your family into the street, tear apart your house in a "search", then strip-search you and your family....
Or,
NSA had a database that listed every phone connection made to your phone, and a computer was listening to your international phone conversations for specific words and phrases that would trigger storage for a human to analyse.
i know which one I choose. I know what the founding fathers were trying to stop. If they didn't want government to eavesdrop, they would have written the word into the 4th amendment, and the "warrants" would have included having to specify the person you would follow around listening to.
I'm sure he's sick of it. Who wouldn't be? They leak classified information and then demand that he answers for what has been undertaken legally to protect this country?
No matter. The purpose of the news media is to smear Bush.
No comint
That's not true. See 18 USC 2702(a)(3):
a provider of ... electronic communication service to the public shall not knowingly divulge a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber to or customer of such service ... to any governmental entity.The exceptions to this law, none of which are pertinent, are then listed in subsection (c).
Your welcome.
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