noteworthy wrote:
Why We Listen By Philip Bobbitt

A president does have an obligation to assess the constitutionality of statutes, but when he secretly decides a measure is unconstitutional and neglects to say so (much less why), he undermines the very system of public consent for which we are fighting. Having said that, we also must not be so absorbed by questions of statutory construction that we ignore the revolutionary political and technological events that are transforming the world in which our laws must function.

I decided to respond to this one as it's been a frequent topic of discussion here and an interest of mine. I appreciate some of the comments here, but not others. There is a tacit assumption that those two random intercepts from Afghanistan could have been turned into actionable intelligence and in the "post 9/11 world" we've got to look at stuff like that. How many total random intercepts were made? How much work would have been required to turn the words "tommorow is the zero hour" into a list of specific people who were planning a specific act, and their specific locations? Does the author suggest that if it wasn't for that damn FISA court the NSA would have been able to do it?

As you've often noted, more signals intelligence is what we get not because its what is needed, but because its what we know how to do.

Its extremely difficult to talk about what is really needed here, both because the administration is more interested in simply taking what they want then they are in maintaining a system of checks and balances, and because they aren't interested in disclosing what they've taken and what challenges they face.

However, I have a proposal. Fine, listen to whatever you want. No warrants. You classify everything, and you put a court between the NSA and the rest of the administration. Any information shared to the administration by the NSA must relate to a direct threat to american lives. No drugs. No taxes. No stock market manipulation. No theft. Only terrorism. And REAL terrorism. Not "well these guys have some political ideas we don't iike." You define the lines of the information hole with a Constitutional Amendment.

If you need extrodinary power to fight a foreign terrorist threat, then you ought to have it, but you ought to have it only for the purpose of fighting that terrorist threat, and not as a general purpose tool for doing whatever the hell you want, such as spying on your domestic political opponents.

I don't honestly think this is a practical proprosal, both because I don't think the Administration has the discipline to use extraordinary powers only for extraordinary purposes, they've certainly shown just the opposite behavior, and because I don't think the American people have the strength to fight mission creep. There are a lot of people in this country who have utopian ideas about perfect law enforcement and they are going to grab onto stuff like this and march us right off a cliff.

RE: 21 Solutions to Save the World