yea, you posted opinions, like I did. So? And quit bring up partisian issues like i'm on some kind of anti-right crusade. I never harped on you for the sources you posted. I never once brought in any sort of political lean bashing. But you kept beating on what I posted as 'anti-bush' and 'biased'
First of all, I didn't accuse
you of being partisan, I accused your sources of being partisan and it's for good reason.
I think the dishonest part is your continued attempt to deny the glaring difference between the
opinion of the
courts and justice departments that impliment and oversee these warrentless searches and the
opinion of partisan players who have no legal authority or official experience in determining the constitutionality of these warrentless searches! However they
do have an obvious partisan axe to gring when shaping their opinion! I think that distinction is obvious to anyone reading this debate and your constant attempt to equivocate our positions is either very ignorant on your part or dishonest...
Now, on to your smoke screen...
\"The Department of Justice believes -- and the case law supports -- that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes and that the president may, as he has done, delegate this authority to the attorney general.\" foreign meaning not domestic.\"
Here's the rest of the quote you left out:
\"In considering legislation of this type, however, it is important to understand that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the President in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities.
These rules would defeat the purposes and objectives of foreign intelligence searches, which are very different from searches to gather evidence of a crime. Physical searches to gather foreign intelligence depend on secrecy. If the existence of these searches were known to the foreign power targets, they would alter their activities to render the information useless. Accordingly, a notice requirement, such as exists in the criminal law, would be fatal.\"
The idea Gorlick is arguing is that physical searches don't have to have a warrant served to the person being searched, if they are a foriegn agent. The issue with Bush is not physical searches, it is wiretapping.
I hope you don't mean to imply that the type of \"
physical search\" they are refering to in that quote means literally searching someones physical body...as in up against the car lets see what you have in your pockets! After all that wouldn't be too secret would it?!? And if that was not your meaning then there really is no relavence to our debate by raising this point.
Under a warrentless \"physical search\" the government can, without ever telling the suspect, break into someones house, search their possessions, papers, bank records, credit card records, get copies of all voice mail, email, answering machine messages, any information they have posted in internet chat rooms or forums etc. etc. etc....all that comes under \"
physical searches\".
Obviously that is quite a bit of privacy invasion!
The only reason a wiretap requires a different set of criteria is because of the nature of the methods and technology involved, not because it is somehow more invasive than a physical search.
In a wiretap they have a thing called
minimizing, where during the time the agent is recording the conversations if the context drifts toward personal topics unrelated to the crime/threat the agent is supposed to turn off the recorder then turn it back on once they start talking about the crime/threat...
So there is just one apsect of a wiretap warrent that obviously doesn't apply to
physical searches, hence the need for a seperate set of rules and a seperate warrant. There are many facets of the regulations on wiretaps that distinguish it from a physical search.
Another example, when the suspect is talking to an innocent non-suspect - how to deal with things the non-suspect might say, or does the phone company have to provide decryption if the end user/suspect has implimented any encryption provided by the phone comany...or if he used his own encryption do they have to help the agent....
Go read up on it, there are thousands of reasons why a wiretap requires it's own warrent but
none of them make a physical search any less invasive by comparison!
So you are really trying to come up with a distinction without a difference when you imply the passage that mentions
physical searches is somehow different for the sake of this debate. Physical or Wiretap, either way, it's a serious invasion of one's privacy.
Here's a few relevant law changes in the Patriot Act that apply to this:
Section 209: At one time, at least some courts felt that authorities needed a wiretap
order rather than a search warrant to seize voice mail. Section 209 treats voice mail like
e-mail, subject to seizure under a search warrant rather than a more demanding wiretap
order law.
Section 220: Before the Act, federal authorities could gain access to a
communications service provider’s customer records and the content of their electronic
communications either through the use of a search warrant or in some instances a court
order. Certainly in the case of the search warrant and arguable in the case of the court
order, the warrant or order could only be issued in the judicial district in which it was to
be executed. This proved inconvenient and sometimes frustrating where the criminal
investigation was conducted in one district and the communications provider was located
in another. Section 220 addresses the difficulty by authorizing the court in the district
where the crime occurred to issue search warrants to be served anywhere in the country
for access to electronic communications content and customer record information (which
by virtue of section 209, discussed above, now includes content and records of voice, e-
mail, and other electronic communications).
The important part to rememeber is the type of electronic survellance they are trying to accomplish is impossible if you make them work under the FISA laws because anytime their wiretaps ensnare a U.S. citizen or legal alien they would have to show probable cause to the FISA court to continue the listening or even if they impliment the delay clause before the information could be used!
When you consider they started with a captured cell phone in Afghanastan from the #3 al Queda man and started listening in and/or electronically filtering all the phone numbers stored on that phones memory chip for key words they have no way of knowing who was going to be on the other end of the calls!
How can they ever show probable cause when they never knew who the calls were going to or coming from? This is exactly the kind of thing that falls under Gorelics assertion :
\"the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the President in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities.\"
And that is exactly why the authors of the FISA law in 1978 and every administration and every court that ever ruled on this matter since then has literally and specifically asserted that these laws were
not intended to usurp the presidents inherent authority to order a warrentless search (and yes that means wiretaps too!).
The politicial motives and zealous pursuit of partisan gamesmanship of the left has overrun their common sense and the security of our citizens is being put well below the need to politically defeat Bush!! And by far the biggest culprit in this debacle is the press who refuse to objectively report the truth behind this and instead enable the lefty's to demagogue this issue at our collective peril!
