Reply #35: The End of Illegal Domestic Spying? Don't Count on It

[L. Coyote]

UNDER SURVEILLANCE
The End of Illegal Domestic Spying? Don't Count on It
By Joe W. Pitts | March 15, 2007
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20070315surveillance_1.cfm


Americans of all persuasions were shocked by the revelations, first reported in the New York Times in December of 2005, that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop secretly for years on the calls and e-mails of American citizens, bypassing the warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment. The administration's decision, in January, to subject the NSA program to review by the special FISA court, supposedly ending the controversial warrantless surveillance, was reported as a stunning and welcome reversal.

Yet the surveillance program isn't the only thing now "warranted"; so is skepticism about the administration's change of heart. The superficial change-back to FISA control merely masks more deeply hidden examples of secrecy and deception in the concerted attack on American constitutional values. Whether manifest in the Scooter Libby verdict, the recent scandalous disclosures that National Security Letters (NSLs) have been deceptively and illegally used by the FBI to spy on unsuspecting Americans, or in these NSA programs, this attack on our constitutional core demands a vigorous response. ......