Guest Blogger: NSA Spying

Today's guest post is written by my husband Tom, who felt so strongly about this topic I offered him the humble platform of my blog.

President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on people in the USA without a warrant.

Why should we care?

There are a lot of complicated aspects to this situation and people’s reactions to it. Naturally, people who love Bush may be less inclined to be upset at this development than people who hate Bush. But I think we all should be concerned about it.

Why?

Our government is set up with a system of checks and balances, limiting the accumulation of power to particular people or sets of people. President Bush is very powerful in some ways, but he cannot create law on his own.

I am sure this arrangement can be frustrating for people who believe they would do the right thing with unchecked power. However, there are plenty of instances in history of people who believed they were doing the right thing and were given absolute power. Some of these stories turned out well; others were disastrous, among the worst chapters of human history. The founders of this country, having experienced tyranny first hand, were loathe to allow it to be spawned here.

Does the domestic spying situation count as tyranny? I don’t know; I don’t have to know. We have a system for eliminating tyranny, and that is the system of checks and balances. The system is starting now and I hope it is allowed to run to its conclusion. What concerns me at the moment is the administration’s apparent hope that this will just go away as an issue.

In trying to argue the controversy away, Bush and his officials are arguing that the steps they took were necessary and legal and the revelation of these activities was irresponsible and damaging. These are specious and self-contradictory arguments. It is spurious to claim that the revelation of this situation was irresponsible. The New York Times sat on the story for a year.

We can argue about whether waiting was a good or bad idea, but surely they gave the administration plenty of time to work on the program and establish its legality through whatever means necessary. If the point is to be able to act quickly, why continue the program so long without fully establishing it is legal? Judicial review or a bill from congress followed by judicial review would establish that. There was always going to be a delay of some kind with this program—either in starting it carefully and with due process, or when everyone found out about it. The press is around to report. It is disingenuous to expect them to sit on stories forever, especially stories about the executive branch potentially acting illegally. (Whether or not the people who leaked the information broke the law and should be punished is another issue. However, we can be pretty sure that the Bush administration will follow up on that part.)

If the steps are legal, why hide them from almost everyone? Why the secrecy? Presumably for the advantage of surprise. Why would Mr. Domestic Terrorist be surprised to find that his line is being tapped? Only because, like most other citizens with an informed opinion, he thought such tapping was illegal. Actually, even that is specious: The wiretapping is not illegal if a court agrees to it. It is not whether wiretapping could occur at all that is at issue—it is whether it happens as soon as the NSA wants it, or later on. Surely any domestic terrorist with half a brain would assume he or she is probably being wiretapped. So where is the proof that this was necessary or even helpful, except in isolated, short-term instances?

Dick Cheney says it was a good policy. Dick Cheney also claimed to have never met John Edwards before the vice presidential debates, and pictures exist of them standing right next to each other long before the debates.

Bush says so. Bush also told a crowd in April 2004 that wiretaps still required a court order:

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

So, why exactly should any of us trust them? Depending on your point of view, they have either lied before (and may be lying again) or have made occasional, natural mistakes and perhaps omitted the truth in their valiant crusade against terrorism. If your point of view is the latter, you may be inclined to trust that they have our best interests at heart. But wouldn’t it be useful to get some second, nonpartisan opinions on that? For example: from a judge or set of judges. From a court.

So let’s look at those complaints again: Bush and his officials are arguing that the steps they took were necessary and legal and the revelation of these activities was irresponsible and damaging.

Necessary: Even things that seem necessary can be quite illegal. People who act illegally, regardless of necessity, are assessed by the legal system in this country. Who, in this country, gets a court to dismiss a case with the plea: guilty through necessary action?

Legal: Legality is for the courts to decide. Let them.

Irresponsible: Maybe. But is it not irresponsible to maintain a program that you know will set off a firestorm when revealed and not prepare for that storm?

Damaging: Maybe. But at least one judge believes the program itself was damaging to our system. It seems a little ominous that the first time a court gets to review the policy, someone resigns in protest.

So, I care. I think we should all care. I don’t know if what was happening was wrong, but I do know how that kind of thing is supposed to be decided in this country. If Bush is defending this country, he should be defending this process as well.