Exploring the distinction between "legal" and "illegal" - Greenwald

[Canuckistanian]

Greenwald does a Frum smackdown - wonderful piece. Even manages to slam Frum's response in updates.

It was reported over the weekend that the CIA was secretly eavesdropping on the telephone conversations of Princess Diana on the night she died in Paris in 1997. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum, over at his National Review blog, thinks that this revelation makes some sort of point about the objections to President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens inside of the U.S.:


So the Clinton administration was tapping Princess Diana's phones. Repeat after me: the Clinton administration. And of course there was no warrant. . . .

~snip

The "warrants" to which Frum refers are required under the law we call "FISA" only when (roughly speaking) the conversations to be eavesdropped on involve (a) a "U.S. person" who is (b) inside the U.S. Princess Diana, sitting in Paris, was neither (a) nor (b), and therefore, the CIA did not need a warrant under "FISA" to eavesdrop on those conversations. Thus, that eavesdropping was "legal."

By rather stark contrast, President Bush is eavesdropping on conversations without warrants for which FISA explicitly requires warrants, and what he is doing is therefore "illegal." In general, there is a difference between a legal act and an illegal act. In particular, the latter tends to provoke more protests than the former.

More at link:
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/12/exploring-distinction-between-legal.html