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Sacramento Bee
Monday, May 07, 2007
President Bush has yet to make a convincing argument for his 2002 decision to monitor international telephone calls and e-mail messages of people inside the United States without warrants.
Now, five years later, Bush administration officials are asking Congress to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to give the president even greater surveillance powers. In essence, as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., put it at last week's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, they are asking the American people simply to "trust us, we need this authority and we'll use it well."
Such trust isn't warranted.
Under questioning from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell said that in 2002 there was an "operational necessity" for the president to go around the 1978 FISA law because the law didn't address today's global technological systems. If that's true, the president could have _ and should have _ asked Congress to change the law. But he didn't.
Now, belatedly, the president is asking for changes, but he's still reserving the right to skirt the law. As Feinstein noted, "There is nothing in this bill that confines the president to work within FISA," even if Congress amends it exactly as Bush desires.
All of this is part of a familiar theme from the administration. After Bush's warrantless surveillance was revealed by the New York Times in January, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales assured Congress that the federal government would seek warrants from the FISA court for international calls and e-mails that involved Americans. But administration officials continue to assert that the president has "inherent power" to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States without court-approved warrants.
Congress hasn't verified that warrantless surveillance of people in the United States has ended, as the attorney general promised in January. And the proposed bill asks Congress and the American people to allow warrantless surveillance of international communications, while simply trusting that "minimization procedures" would be followed if the communication of Americans was involved.
That's not good enough. While Congress should look to update the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act to reflect the evolution of communications technology, the Bush administration bill is too sweeping and does little to check potential abuses.
(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
