Legal or Illegal?

Can the government intercept communications without a court order? Well, according to the Patriot Act of 2001 it is perfectly legal. The program set in place by the Patriot Act allows for warrantless searches of anyone; this is an action that has no backing in any previously created privacy laws. After U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that the National Security Agency (NSA) program is unconstitutional in 2006, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke for the Bush Administration and appealed the ruling. According to Gonzales, the program is reviewed periodically by lawyers. Furthermore, according to Press Secretary Tony Snow for the White House, "The program ... targets only international phone calls ... where one of the parties on the call is a suspected al Qaeda or affiliated terrorist." That brings up a whole new issue of what exactly makes the government suspect someone of being a terrorist. However, being that that particular issue is one that could have many, many answers, I won't get into it. Sufficed to say you can be suspect based on anything from something as simple as looks (and let's face it, while that is profiling and is considered "wrong," everyone forms an opinion on someone else based on the first impression of looks) to something as complex as particular actions that can be observed without invasive monitoring.

Now then, I bet this looks like I'm drawing the conclusion that the government can intercept communications without a court order. Well, that does seem to be the law now, however the Patriot Act is under criticism for a good reason. Any bill passed into law must go through America's checks and balances system to prevent too much power from one part of the government. The Patriot Act was not passed properly and the issues of both the Democrats and Republicans who saw the bill were never properly addressed and even ignored by the Bush administration; the media never got their objections because the NSA program was highly classified. The media spurs on all kinds of false points about the debate, sheilding the real issues and burying problems behind mountains of facts and ficitions. Pointing fingers back to prior administrations as doing the same types of searches is a common tactic that actually works against the current administration, but only if people know the whole truth of the matter. Both Clinton and Carter approved surveillance without a court order, however both of them included the stipulation that this was foreign policy and could not be enacted upon U.S. persons a.k.a. anyone inside of the United States, citzen or otherwise. Another thing sited for defense of the Patriot Act is the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which again has stipulations about being solely between foreign powers and protects the privacy of Americans. Also, that particular Act has a time alotment of information gathering of 15 days maximum, and it is only after Congress has declared war. A different often used tactic is that of either being "for" national security and safety or "against" security so that you can keep privacy. There is no such simple split in the matter. It is more than a question of for or against, the Patriot Act is a question of authority and balance. Unfortunately, the majority of individuals are not well informed. After all, whatever the media tells us must be true.

For now, due to the Patriot Act of 2001, the government can intercept communications without a court order. It's up for debate whether that will continue to be legal. I, for one, agree with Judge Taylor that the NSA surveillance program "violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III" and therefore should be revoked (CNN). As much as I morally disagree with the way the Act was implimented and pretty much all of the details surrounding it, taking a stance on pure legality still brings me to the same conclusion. This isn't about feeling violated about loss of privacy or anything else. This is about circumventing the system put in place to keep the United States as democratic as the Founding Fathers had envisioned. It's about those great, nebulous qualities of truth and justice. The surveillance of members of the United States without a court order should not be legalized. As Thomas Jefferson said, a man who places security over freedom deserves neither.


Information from:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/17/domesticspying.lawsuit/index.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
http://mediamatters.org/items/200512240002