Friday, April 07, 2006

As If Things Could Not Get Worse

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez would neither confirm, nor deny the existence of an NSA program that spies purely on domestic-to-domestic communications without a warrant. Further, he defended the possibility that the administration found this practice to be possibly legal. To me, this pretty much confirms that they are doing it now.

You can pretty much forget about the constitution while Bush is in office. To him, it is just a scrap of paper with no meaning. But, then again, can you expect anything different from a man who thinks he was ordained by God to be the president?

Warrantless Wiretaps Possible in U.S.
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 7, 2006; Page A03

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales left open the possibility yesterday that President Bush could order warrantless wiretaps on telephone calls occurring solely within the United States -- a move that would dramatically expand the reach of a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales suggested that the administration could decide it was legal to listen in on a domestic call without supervision if it were related to al-Qaeda.

"I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said.

In the past, Gonzales and other officials refused to say whether they had the legal authority to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on domestic calls, and have stressed that the NSA eavesdropping program is focused only on international communications.
...
"The Attorney General's comments today should not be interpreted to suggest the existence or non-existence of a domestic program or whether any such program would be lawful under the existing legal analysis," Scolinos said in a statement.

(Full Story)

2 comments:

SC&A said...

One would have to assume there were warrantless wiretaps here.

Abdul, Al Qaeda guy, calls from Paksitan. He tells Rahman in Akron, 'Uncle Irving has taken up knitting.'

Rahman only knows to call Yousef, in Wyoming, to pass the message on. Yousef knows only to call Khalid, and so on. Eventually, the message gets to Mr Atta.

We had better be able to track those calls.

Dingo said...

So, you are saying that the 4th amendment is of no more use to us?