Bush to NSA: Spy on Americans

Since 2002, on orders from President Bush, the National Security Agency has been spying on Americans’ phone calls and e-mail conversations.

Per The New York Times:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

[...]

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

[...]

Mr. Bush’s executive order allowing some warrantless eavesdropping on those inside the United States - including American citizens, permanent legal residents, tourists and other foreigners - is based on classified legal opinions that assert that the president has broad powers to order such searches, derived in part from the September 2001 Congressional resolution authorizing him to wage war on Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, according to the officials familiar with the N.S.A. operation.

[...]

Traditionally, the F.B.I., not the N.S.A., seeks such warrants and conducts most domestic eavesdropping. Until the new program began, the N.S.A. typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions in Washington, New York and other cities, and obtained court orders to do so.

Evidently my definition of “less government intrusion” must differ from the administration’s. Mine actually means “less government intrusion.”

More: It’s amusing to me to read chucklehead bloggers calling for the Times (and, I assume, the Washington Post, which also picked up the story) to be prosecuted for revealing this secret — and likely unconstitutional — spying. Not a word on the government spying on its own citizens without a warrant, no siree. That’s fine. But a newspaper daring to report it? Horrors!

Had they been around during Watergate, I assume these same folks would have crusaded against the Post.