Because of increased political partisanship, advances in communications technology and more numerous and competitive media, American government has become a sieve. No secrets concerning matters that would interest the public can be kept for long.

... so we no longer need structural checks and balances on government surveillance.... No, I'm serious, thats what this editorial offers, written by a 7th circuit justice!

Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis

A second former official said the program contributed to the apprehension of Lyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who pleaded guilty in 2003 to charges of collaborating with al-Qaida on a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge.

The DOJ has named a U.S. Citizen who was surveilled by the extra-FISA NSA program. This provides a platform for questions about Article II to actually be litigated in the court system, where they ought to be answered, rather then through impeachment of the President. This is a good thing from a technical perspective about the law.

However, the other question, which I haven't addressed, is whether or not this ought to be legally authorized. Domestic terrorism raises challenging questions. How do you deal with a situation where U.S. Citizens are involved in foreign terror plots in such a way that ensures that you succeed but prevents the system from running off of the rails and focusing on all manner of domestic political groups. One idea that I have is that instead of putting the court system between the wiretap and the wiretapper, put them between the wiretapper and the rest of the law enforcement system, ensuring that only information which is relevant to terrorism is actually passed across,

Congress demands answers about surveillance

'I made it up," the professor recalled him saying. ''I'm sorry. . . . I'm so relieved that it's over."

Mao DHS visit a hoax

My ultimate conclusion is that such radiation surveillance from outside the buildings should be constitutional, because what's an "unreasonable search" when looking for drugs (or even for evidence of murder) becomes reasonable when looking for radiation weapons.

This is an interesting discussion in relation to previous memestreams threads about particle privacy. I strongly reject the notion that you have no expectation of privacy in particles you emit that are not natually detectable by other humans. However, I recall hearing a rumor that the feds were monitoring all inbound roads toward DC for radiation, and I don't recall being concerned about this from a 4th amendment standpoint. Is this a slippery slope? If its effective and has a low false positive rate then I don't really think so.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Radiation Surveillance:

Osama bin Laden's niece, in an interview with GQ magazine in which she appears scantily clad, says she has nothing in common with the al-Qaida leader and simply wants acceptance by Americans.

Osama's Niece Poses in Racy Photo Shoot

Richard M. Smith of ComputerBytesMan has come up with a "quick and easy method to see if one's email messages are being read by someone else."

Boing Boing: Experiment to see if your mail is being tapped by the gov't

Administration critics, political and media, charge that by ordering surveillance on communications of suspected al Qaeda agents in the United States, the president clearly violated the law... It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.

George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr finds "pretty decent arguments" on both sides, but his own conclusion is that Bush's actions were "probably constitutional."

!?@$#$!!??? Orin Kerr's exact words were "it seems that the program was probably constitutional but probably violated the federal law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." What mix of partisanship, animus, and ignorance does it take to deliberately misrepresent that in an oped peice? Of course Krauthammer goes on to discuss FISA, but his position is that the law doesn't have force and Presidents obey it at their whim. He seems to think this conclusions is obvious and you'd have to be crazy to disagree, in spite of the extremely tenuous ground Kerr put that arguement on in the legal analysis Krauthammer references!

Impeachment Nonsense

Luttig, who is on the short list of Republican SCOTUS hopefulls, writes an opinion denying the Administration's request to vacate his court's decision that the Administration can seize US Citizens on US soil and hold them indefinately without trial. He wants the SCOTUS to review this decision and resolve the matter of enemy combatants because he feels that the government's decision to drop the matter hurts their credibility if they attempt to do this again in the future. I'd take the opposite tact. I think SCOTUS won't uphold this 4th circuit opinion, and that the government will forever loose the ability to make the argument they are making if this case is actually heard by SCOTUS. I think they wanted this vacated so they could leave open the possibility of doing this in the future. I don't understand how you could possibly see this differently...

Because we believe that the transfer of Padilla and the withdrawal of our opinion at the government’s request while the Supreme Court is reviewing this court’s decision of September 9 would compound what is, in the absence of explanation, at least an appearance that the government may be attempting to avoid consideration of our decision by the Supreme Court...

...For, as the government surely must understand, although the various facts it has asserted are not necessarily inconsistent or without basis, its actions have left not only the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years, even if justifiably, by mistake...

These impressions have been left, we fear, at what may ultimately prove to be substantial cost to the government’s credibility before the courts, to whom it will one day need to argue again in support of a principle of assertedly like importance and necessity to the one that it seems to abandon today.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Luttig to DOJ -- Not So Fast on Padilla:

One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president's suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court.

Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program

Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.

"If it stops just one terrorist attack, it was worth it."

Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey