I have rearranged the content linked blog post in order to make a point:

Why didn’t we just amend FISA and do it under statute?  It would’ve been easy at that time.

The answer I got from intelligence professionals was that we could not amend FISA without a public debate on why we needed to do it, and the public debate would’ve tipped off some of our targets.

The true answer was that the Bush-Cheney administration hated FISA.  They thought it impinged on Executive authority, and they were intent on exercising untrammeled Presidential power under Article II of the Constitution – as if Congress didn’t also have power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce under Article I.

We keep getting told that bulk meta-data collection needed to be kept secret because if terrorists knew that this was going on, they would change tactics in order to avoid it. I don't think there is any truth to this assertion. Everyone knows that the government has the ability to monitor telecommunications. Any terrorist operative has to assume that his phone might be monitored. Everyone knows that the telecoms store meta data. That meta-data can be requested by the government.

What tactical advantage is conveyed to terrorists by informing them that data which they know to be stored in a phone company database is copied into another database that the government operates? The simple truth is that there is no tactical advantage conveyed by this information.

The reason these programs weren't publicly disclosed is because they are illegal, because the American people don't approve of them, and because the bulk-meta data program in particular may violate Constitutional guarantees of Freedom of Association.

If you're the sort of person who believes in the virtue of maximalization of state power, and you don't have a lot of respect for constraints upon that power, whether legal or Constitutional, than proceeding without regard for public policy is the kind of thing you're apt to do. We should stop trying to rationalize this behavior as having some practical motivation.

This was the problem from the beginning with the Bush/Cheney approach to the GWOT. What is unfortunate, is that Obama ran as an alternative to that approach, and yet we find that he does not represent an alternative. In this respect Obama is far more sinister a character than Bush & Cheney. At least the conservatives are open about their embrace of totalitarianism.

Lawfare › N.S.A.: “Not (So) Secret Anymore”