I've noticed this claim quite a few times, but interstingly, I notice they're not pushing it very hard. If they're tapping an al qaeda phone, and you happen to be the one they call, then they aren't violating your fourth-amendment rights at all. That argument would be watertight, so I wondered why they didn't use it more. But I realized why, later. They aren't using it because that's not what's happening: what's happening is that once you receive a phone call, they're tapping your phone as well, without a warrant.
It's ironic, because under those circumstances probable cause is airtight, and getting a warrant should take about five minutes. IOW, the argument for a warrantless tap is in reality the strongest argument why they should certainly go for a warrant.
"I've noticed this claim quite a few times, but interestingly, I notice they're not pushing it very hard. If they're tapping an al qaeda phone, and you happen to be the one they call, then they aren't violating your fourth-amendment rights at all."
What am I getting wrong here? I thought it was EAVESDROPPING, not tapping that was being questioned.
Define "tapping".
Is that when someone "listens" to your conversations? When they monitor your outbound calls to another known al Qaeda number?
Not with a democrat judge playing politics with our safety.
It should take a few minutes, but it's often a few weeks. While it's true that the approval rate is very high, that's because the vetting process is extremely stringent. So the 'tap now warrant later' line doesn't work, because it the warrant request wouldn't be ready by the deadline, and may not be approved anyway.
On that note, you don't want judges to simply rubber stamp warrants anyway. They're doing their job correctly. A warrant can be used in building a criminal case, and so needs to be a legitimate tool of law enforcement. But for intelligence collection purposes, you don't care about pressing charges, only disrupting incoming attacks. Authorizing 'rubber stamped warrants' is a threat to our personal liberties far, far greater than any secret wiretapping program.
That said, FISA judges are not going to give a warrant to wiretap a phone based on no evidence other than calling contacts. It could be a wrong number, there could be a U.S. citizen on the other end of the line that may not realize they're talking to a terrorist, you just don't know. It's suspicious, sure, but there's no proof, in the legal sense, that the person on the other end of the phone is doing anything illegal.
You could probably do some quick research into a suspicious number and determine if there's a bad guy at the other end, but if you're waiting on a warrant, you aren't going to get anywhere based on a 'hunch'. If you had corroborating information like a source on the inside passing us information, that would be good grounds, but our HUMINT is still underdeveloped and weak.
In short, it seems that this program is closing a legal loophole that created a blind spot in our intelligence collection. The same blind spot that allowed Al Qaida to sneak past us prior to 9/11. With a transnational enemy you need a tool to combat the threat effectively. We simply didn't have one before this.