ARTS & FARCES internet

According to various reports the White House is neither confirming nor denying that President Bush in 2002 secretly ordered the National Security Agency to spy on email and telephone communications inside the US without warrants.

What’s especially disturbing about this revelation is that the Bush administration need only obtain a warrant—which takes merely a few hours—from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to initiate surveillance against a domestic suspect. Such warrants require only that probable cause be shown that the suspect may be an “agent of a foreign power.” Last year, more than 1,700 such warrants were approved.

Here’s the nut graf from James Risen’s and Eric Lichtblau’s account in the New York Times:

“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.”

The New York Times acknowledges that it held off on publishing the article for a year at the request of the White House and that “some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.” Paper of record, my ass.

Here’s Dan Eggen’s report in the Washington Post, clearly playing catch-up.

Updated: Monday 19 December 2005 12:15PM CST: Perry Metzger, moderator of the cryptome mailing list has cited a section of the United States Code that clearly indicates President Bush has committed a felony:

“There is no room for doubt or question about whether the President has the prerogative to order surveillance without asking the FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]—even if the FISC is a toothless organization that never turns down requests, it is a federal crime, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, to conduct electronic surveillance against US citizens without court authorization.”

The question becomes clear: when can we expect impeachment proceedings to begin.