| When there is evidence a person may be a terrorist, both the criminal code and intelligence laws already authorize eavesdropping. This illegal program, however, allows electronic monitoring without any showing to a court that the person being spied upon in this country is a suspected terrorist. |
The thing that triggers the electronic monitoring is
contact with or by a person outside the US considered to be a terrorist or legitimate terrorist suspect. The program does not "spy upon" people randomly. That contact creates the suspicion. I'll grant you that the content of such conversations could be preserved, unheard, pending a FISA warrant. I don't know enough about the logistics to say whether that could constitute an exploitable weakness and create enough of a delay for a terrorist plan to be activated, despite claims that FISA warrants are granted instantaneously & without question (which raises the corollary question, "What's the point of a FISA court?).
| REALITY: The program violates the Fourth Amendment and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and will chill free speech. |
It would certainly chill "free speech" with terrorists, which in my view is the same kind of "free speech" as yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. It's legality in the context of the war on terror is yet to be determined.
MYTH: The president has the power to say what the law is.
REALITY: The courts have this power under our system of government, and no person is above the law, not even the president, or the rule of law means nothing. |
I don't believe anyone has ever claimed that "myth" to be true, except the President's opponents in the course of mischaracterizing the program and his intentions.
MYTH: These warrantless wiretaps could never happen to you.
REALITY: Without court oversight, there is no way to ensure innocent people's everyday communications are not monitored or catalogued by the NSA or other agencies. |
Aside from the physical impossibility of doing so. And for the further fact that any such taps would be useless to the feds since they would be inadmissible as evidence for any domestic purpose. Unless it's usable, it's pointless and, dumb as the feds are, they're not
completely stupid. Your reality here is itself a
counter-myth.
MYTH: This illegal program could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
REALITY: This is utter manipulation. Before 9/11, the federal government had gathered intelligence, without illegal NSA spying, about the looming attacks and at least two of the terrorists who perpetrated them, but failed to act. |
This oversimplifies the character and extent of our foreknowledge and conveniently ignores the blinders we had intentionally put in place to be sure the left hand did not know what the right hand knew (remember Jamie Gorelick). There is no
certainty that
any program would have prevented 9/11, but having such a program in place would have made detection and preemption of the 9/11 attacks much more likely. That very unwillingness to even inadvertently expose our citizens to monitoring was one of things so spectacularly exploited by Bin Laden on 9/11.
| REALITY: Because the program is secret the administration can assert anything it wants and then claim the need for secrecy excuses its failure to document these claims, let alone reveal all the times the program distracted intelligence agents with dead ends that wasted resources and trampled individual rights. |
Can you give us the name of a single individual, just one, who's individual rights have been "trampled." Any
completely innocent Americans who have been harmed?
MYTH: FISA takes too long.
REALITY: FISA allows wiretaps to begin immediately in emergencies, with three days afterward to go to court. Even without an emergency, FISA orders can be approved very quickly and FISA judges are available at all hours. |
This criticism is legitimate, but only if it is assumed that the President's power during time of war remains subject to FISA. I would have expected a firestorm of MSM coverage of that Supreme Court ruling you referred to in another Myth point, so I don't know whether this question has been answered.
| REALITY: The serious concerns that have been raised transcend party labels and reflect genuine and widespread worries about the lack of checks on the president's claim of unlimited power to illegally spy on Americans without any independent oversight. |
The President has never claimed the unlimited power to
illegally spy on Americans - he's claimed that the power to conduct electronic monitoring of contacts with real or potential terrorists in limited circumstances as part of the war on terror is
legal. He swore to uphold the Constitution and I don't believe he'd knowingly and willfuly defy it.
Thanks for sharing the DNC talking points.
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