Domestic wiretapping begs troubling questions

Eric Hydrick / Web Editor

Recent reports about the National Security Agency (NSA), eavesdropping on American phone calls without a warrant have quickly disintegrated into politicians and pundits getting onto soapboxes calling it illegal and other politicians and pundits getting onto soapboxes and claiming that it’s saved lives and that we shouldn’t be questioning the practice, or the legality thereof. However, there are a lot of troubling questions raised by this eavesdropping, and most of them remain unanswered.

The first question is whether or not this program is legal. While wiretapping falls entirely under the purview of the NSA, and President Bush has the authority to order surveillance of foreign nationals without getting a warrant, things are a touch more complicated when you want to do this kind of stuff to an American citizen. In fact, according to the US Constitution (also referred to as “supreme law of the land”), says that you have to get a warrant for these sort of shenanigans. Since the probable cause for some of these taps would consist of classified information, the US has created a secret court for the purpose of issuing warrants based on classified information. This raises a good question, why weren’t they consulted? The NSA does have the authority to start listening to your dirty little phone calls without a warrant, but they need to get one within 72 hours (3 calendar days) to make it legal. If a judge turns them down, then they have to pack up immediately. This prompts another question, are we talking about wiretaps started without getting a warrant first, but where one was acquired within the 72 hour time limit? If so, then these wiretaps are entirely legal, and everyone should probably just stop whining.

If these wiretaps aren’t legal, then who all was involved in breaking the law like this? Bush claims that he was told by his advisors that this was within the realm of the law. If that’s true and these wiretaps are illegal, then how could his advisors screw up that bad? If that’s true and these wiretaps are perfectly legal, then when are we repealing the law involved? If not soon, then when can we vote the current crop of high priced guttersnipes out of Washington so we can replace with a more useful group?

President Bush has claimed that there was Congressional oversight of these wiretaps. If that’s the case, and these taps were illegal, then that means that members of Congress are complicit in the commission of serious crimes against the American public. If that’s true, then how come President Bush didn’t know that these taps were illegal, and why didn’t Congress know either? If Congress knew, then why did they allow Bush to break the law? More importantly, isn’t that aiding and abetting the commission of a crime?

At the heart of this entire matter is the NSA. Did they have any idea about the legality of what they were being ordered to do? If so, why did they willing perform an action they knew to be illegal? If not, then how can these people work in an intelligence-related job without knowing the legal boundaries are?

President Bush has claimed that these wiretaps have disrupted terrorist attacks and saved lives, but so far the only such incident that I’ve heard of was an attempt to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. I don’t see why there is any reason for no one to come out with details of this operation’s success stories. We already know about the wiretaps, and we wouldn’t be giving anything away by revealing details about the plots disrupted or the lives saved, since the fact that these attacks were disrupted would indicate to the terrorists that their American sources aren’t very good anymore. If these wiretaps have saved enough lives to justify the concerns over the invasion of privacy, then one would think that we’d hear more about them.

These domestic wiretaps raise so many questions, that it becomes clear that there is far more to this issue than has been revealed so far. As this situation continues to unfold, the one definite fact that we know for sure is that we are just scratching the surface of a very serious issue, and that we haven’t heard the last of the bad news just yet.

Contact Eric Hydrick at pendulum@elon.edu or 278-7247.