Although it may be that some other countries, in the EU for example, already have these sort of programs and laws to allow authorities to snoop.

What you should also be considering is that once someone is fingered as a suspect in those countries they generally still have legal rights. It is those rights to be able to defend oneself that I personally feel are being eroded or are lacking in the US. I don't feel I need to give examples, you all know what I mean. In Europe we have the Court of Human Rights and many other protections against wrongful or misleading imprisonment or charges from governments, in the US these seem to be upto the Administration at this time.

Carib

If given the chance, unscrupulous politicians will spy on their opponents and other innocent citizens for any political advantage they might possibly acquire. They will blackmail or smear anyone if that might give them a political advantage.

That doesn't mean there can be no domestic spying. It means we can't risk letting an administration conduct domestic spying without thorough oversight by the legislative and judicial branches. How could oversight possibly hurt? How can we possibly trust anyone who would evade or resist such oversight?

Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer. a former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan. and international consultant with Bruce Fein & Associates and the Lichfield Group.  According to salon.com "Fein is very much a member of the right. He once published a column arguing that "President George W. Bush should pack the United States Supreme Court with philosophical clones of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and defeated nominee Robert H. Bork."

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/bfein.htm

"According to President George W. Bush, being president in wartime means never having to concede co-equal branches of government have a role when it comes to hidden encroachments on civil liberties. "

<SNIP>

  "President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law. He cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses. Congress should swiftly enact a code that would require Mr. Bush to obtain legislative consent for every counterterrorism measure that would materially impair individual freedoms. "

<SNIP>

"The NSA eavesdropping is further troublesome because it easily evades judicial review. Targeted citizens are never informed their international communications have been intercepted. Unless a criminal prosecution is forthcoming (which seems unlikely), the citizen has no forum to test the government's claim the interceptions were triggered by known links to a terrorist organization.

    Mr. Bush acclaimed the secret surveillance as "crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies." But if that were justified, why was Congress not asked for legislative authorization in light of the legal cloud created by FISA and the legislative branch's sympathies shown in the Patriot Act and joint resolution for war? FISA requires court approval for national security wiretaps, and makes it a crime for a person to intentionally engage "in electronic surveillance under color of law, except as authorized by statute."

    Mr. Bush cited the disruptions of "terrorist" cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia, California, Texas and Ohio as evidence of a pronounced domestic threat that compelled unilateral and secret action. But he failed to demonstrate those cells could not have been equally penetrated with customary legislative and judicial checks on executive overreaching. "

Ms. Rowley, I appreciate you addresssing this issue with more detail than you had previously and  It's very helpful to have your input; thank you.

As to this user comment on this thread by chickadee

Do Americans truly agree that their civil liberties should be abandoned because of the professed need to gather evidence in cases such as these?

I wouldn't speak for all Americans, but personally I really feel the need to say that the framing there upsets me.

For instance, I know that in France's top anti-terrorist judge, Jean-Louis Brugiere, had more power over civil rights that Americans would consider sacred before 9/11 even happened, and that the Germans do things like surprise mass raids of mosques in anti-terrorist efforts, something which would cause great outrage in the U.S.

The point: this is a problem the world is dealing with, and the U.S. is not the bogeyman leading the parade; the U.S. is not a "leader" in giving up civil liberties for more societal security, and this American resents people trying to plant that warped narrative in people's minds. It lacks the perspective that we were never targets of much terrorism before and we had the luxury of ignoring these issues which other countries had dealt with for a long time by giving up some things which Americans considered important civil liberties.

Whatever Bush is doing, and whether one considers it right or wrong, he's "behind the eightball" on doing it compared to other Western countries. They've already been there and done that. (And I'm not talking about just Islamic terrorism. See ETA in Spain or I.R.A. in the UK or any Olympics-sized spectacle held in Europe since 1972. As to the argument about how you are more likely to die in a car accident, well, could it be that the UK is addressing that by taking away civil liberties?)

One very cogent and powerful argument against the invasion of Iraq was that the effort and money spent should have been put in the direction of breaking up groups with terrorist plans like in many countries in the EU. I always thought of Ms. Rowley's initial whistleblowing as  partially addressing that, as did the entire 9/11 Commission. Some on the left seem to want to discard that point in preference for minimalizing the effects of terrorist strikes on civilization around the world. I still think that story line gets at the main reason Kerry lost the election. Hopefully, other Dems won't go along with that in 2006. Ms. Rowley herself has good prospects because of her background of actually caring about possible terrorist strikes instead of dismissing them as paranoid nonsense.

I am grateful that something like the Millenium plot against LAX was derailed by a fluke, a suspicious agent at the Canadian border, and that that helped furnish witnesses and evidence that convicted those responsible for the killing of so many innocent Africans in two embassies, including Osama bin Laden. I wish that we didn't have to depend so much on flukes for something like that to happen. At the same time, I do not want the U.S. to have to go further in the direction of what is done in places like France and Germany. I want us to lead with the correct way of approaching this problem, to talk about it and to furnish a new approach when the reality of the world is that everyone's privacy is already abrogated by open source info., not to pretend that it is not there.

Once again, drawing a line on civil liberties vs. counter-terrorism is a world issue, and the U.S. is coming late to that game, not the other way around. To frame it as a U.S. problem is simply practicing selective blindness. Terrorist attacks are going to happen again and again as long as they offer power to those have been frustrated by realizing their goals within majority rule of law; figuring out how law enforcement is to handle that within the context of civil liberties should be the issue, not presuming that everyone has good intent and that law enforcement can be dispensed with.

How can I say it simply: To imply that airlines in this day and age don't require more intrusive security meaures is like saying we should go back to the traffic laws that were in force in 1910. They had a lot of freedom in those days about things which side of the road they could drive on; most people decided giving up those civil liberties was OK. There are still lots of people who don't like wearing seat belts in the U.S., including me, and don't like checkpoints put out to catch us, but we accepted the majority rule of law, and gave up that "freedom." Contrary to Bush's simplistic nostrums (not to mention Rummy's ridiculous excuse that "Iraqis are now free to loot and committ crimes,") civilization requires giving up some "freedom."

about whether Moussaoui was, actually, ever involved in primary, secondary or even tertiary conspiracies to obliterate American landmarks, it might be worthwhile to look at the little we know about this guy, about how his confessions were obtained, and to calmly ask oneself... "Look here, if I were tha Big Time Evil-Doer Incarnate, AKA Osama B. Laden, would I blithely entrust any aspect of the carrying out of my rabid global ambitions to babbling nutcases and clowns like this?"  (As a matter of fact, that's the underlying question I have about all these incarcerated guys.  If the public face of Al Qaeda consists of individuals like the ultimate "wrong time, wrong place" kids, John Lindh and Yassr Hamdi, of weirdo "my shoe is a lethal weapon" Richard Reid, of "gimme back my $10,000" Jose Padilla, and a host of other like incompetents including elderly Kabul cab drivers and Afghan village idiots, then I profoundly fail to see why the American administration persists in quaking before the awesome potential of the "enemy" in the "war on terror.")

Do Americans truly agree that their civil liberties should be abandoned because of the professed need to gather evidence in cases such as these?

A refresher on Moussaoui at http://www.slate.com/id/2117016/

"When You Can't Beat 'Em ...

Since everyone wants to kill Moussaoui, he'd be nuts not to agree.

By Dahlia Lithwick

"Pleading guilty, but to what?

After pleading guilty and then un-pleading; after representing himself (like a madman) and then not representing himself; after three years without a trial and years of appellate court wrangling that culminated in the Supreme Court's refusal last month to intervene in the case and grant him meaningful access to potentially exculpatory witnesses, Moussaoui has evidently written a letter to his trial judge, Leonie Brinkema, agreeing to plead guilty and accept the death penalty.

Brinkema says she will meet with him in person this week, to determine whether he is mentally competent to enter such a plea, and then set a date for a death-penalty trial--under a bifurcated system one doesn't simply plead guilty and then hop in the chair.

First, question whether Brinkema is in any better position to assess Moussaoui's mental health now than she was three years ago; then ask whether Moussaoui, who has already pleaded guilty and changed his mind, could have become saner over the years. When the proceedings against him began, he was already filing crazy paranoid letters and making rambling paranoid speeches. Three years of confinement, under highly restrictive special administrative measures, can't have helped his mental state.

What's truly distressing about this turn of events is that Moussaoui may just have decided to accept the bizarre government position in this case: that he should be executed for being a poster boy for al-Qaida. Whether he now hopes to become a martyr, or to fast-track his case to the Supreme Court, or whether he's finally been beaten down by everyone else's unremitting craziness, remains to be seen.

MUCH MORE AT THE LINK

A memory jog on Hamdi at

http://www.slate.com/id/2107114/

<SNIP>

"Hamdi's case, decided by the Supreme Court earlier this year, was supposed to represent a high-water mark for American freedoms during wartime. He had fought for and won his day in court, an opportunity to question his captors, and a chance at national vindication at the end of it all. Hamdi's name stood for the proposition that the Bush administration couldn't run roughshod over the courts and the law in its pursuit of the war on terror. It now stands for precisely the opposite: With a yawn and a shrug, the administration sidestepped the courts and the judicial process once again, abandoning this criminal prosecution altogether and erasing the episode from our national memory. Hamdi has been stripped of his citizenship and his freedom to travel, and sent packing to his family. The rights and processes guaranteed him by the Supreme Court have been yanked away one last time, by an executive branch that held him for years for no reason and smugly claims now that it was finished with him anyhow."

A recent update (Nov /05) on Jose Padilla's case at the Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1125/dailyUpdate.html

"Several reasons have been given for the US government's decision this week not to include charges of ties to Al Qaeda or the plans to build a 'dirty bomb' in its indictment against US citizen Jose Padilla. The New York Times Thursday quoted unnamed current and former government sources say one of those reasons may be that it was unwilling to allow the testimony of the two Al Qaeda members who linked Mr. Padilla to the above plot because the two men may have been 'subjected to harsh questioning.'

The Qaeda members were Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Abu Zubaydah, a top recruiter, who gave their accounts to American questioners in 2002 and 2003. The two continue to be held in secret prisons by the CIA, whose internal reviews have raised questions about their treatment and credibility, the officials said.

One review, completed in the spring of 2004 by the CIA inspector general, found that Mohammed had been subjected to excessive use of a technique involving near-drowning [known as waterboarding] in the first months after his capture, according to US intelligence officials.

The anonymous sources quoted by the Times say that the Bush administration decided not to include the more serious charges because the two top Al Qaeda men could "never be used as witnesses," and their testimony was the only thing linking Padilla to the bombing plots."

Remember Richard Reid?  There is one thing we absolutely can assume to be true about him.  He's not a smoker.  Nor are any of his alleged co-conspirators presumably still ready to pounce.  Otherwise, they'd have realized nobody gets away with lighting a match aboard an aircraft.

(IMPT NOTE:  Look out for non-smokers.  They may be dangerous.)

"BBC The World Today anchor Owen Bennett-Jones interviewed correspondent Fergal Parkinson live from Boston on the 2300 GMT (1800 US-Eastern) broadcast, and asked him twice about Reid not being sentenced to death.

Bennett-Jones (incredulously): So, how did he avoid the death sentence?

Parkinson: Well, basically, uh, uh, essentially, nobody died, and the prosecution say (sic) that the death sentence in federal cases is only asked for if there are any deaths, and in this case, ah, death was avoided. He didn't manage to light that explosive concealed in his shoe, so nobody died, so the death sentence was, uh, not called for.

Bennett-Jones: And did his plea of guilty help him?

Parkinson: It didn't, at all. He, ah, received life--

Nevertheless, passengers worldwide, remain subject to this day, to long lineups at airport check-ins occasioned by the need to remove their shoes for inspection, carried out by otherwise unemployable officials who have not yet demanded gas masks for their literally oderous task.  Perhaps forever embarrassing travellers and screwing up airline schedules may, after all, have been the ultimate aim of the plot in the first place!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/politics/28legal.html

<SNIP>

"Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, declined to comment in Crawford, Tex., when asked about a report in The New York Times that the security agency had tapped into some of the country's main telephone arteries to conduct broader data-mining operations in the search for terrorists.

But Mr. Duffy said: "This is a limited program. This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches."

(Oh, I see.  That's alright then.  Never mind.

But wait.  If they know the whereabouts of all these dangerous long distance callers, shouldn't somebody suit up and go and arrest them?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?hp&ex=1135486800&en=7e76956223502390&a
mp;ei=5094&partner=homepage

NYT Dec 23

"The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said."

"What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation."

(Boy, there's evidently a lot of people who hate freedom, trains, weddings and churches around these days.)

There is no doubt 9/11 was the trigging event.  In that respect M makes the same viewpoint I hold.  There is more and more information coming out that information that was readily available was disgarded for egotistical and pure territorial reasons.  

Exactly how is Congress going to deal with the dog posturing?  Especially since dog posturing made us ignorant and still does on many fronts.  

...the looney toons in al-Qaeda ranks, it's well worth remembering that they had at least 19 guys that were competent enough. Not great operators, to be sure, and lucky more than they had any right to be given their tradecraft, but on the day they were good enough.

I've got a pretty good idea what can be carried off by a good dedicated team with a bit of luck, and I'm not ethnocentric enough to believe that the "C team" of Reid and Massaoui is characteristic of the organization as a whole. You might want to think about that while you're casting about for handy mud to sling at the USG. As with any sizeable organization of the type there's a goodly selection of wingnuts, but there's also a core of good tough fighters - presume them to be imbeciles and they'll bite you on the ass.

On a topic more apropos to the thread, best wishes to you Ms. Rowley.

One of the most salient points that Ms Rowley brings up, is that the FBI had everything that was necessary to determine the 911 plot prior to its being carried out.  

It was the failure to transcribe the  warrant according to the findings of the field agents that led to the warrant being rejected.  Interestingly enough, it was said that the agent who rejected the grounds for the warrant as inadequate, got a 35% bonus for excellent performance in 2001.

This is a significant part of the issue.  Law enforcement will always want more information. Of course -- its the trail they follow.  But it is also an addiction.  The more information that they have, the less that can be done with it.  Left to its own devices, law enforcement will overdose.  It happened with 911 and Moussaoui, but it is not politic to point that out.

If the rumors about Eschelon and voice recognition are true, then the NSA monitors millions of conversations.  How hard is that to deal with?  Just relating data from different streams is incredibly difficult.  I suspect that the easiest way to describe that would be to say that it is hypergeometric with respect to n.  

The rapid growth of complexity is such that if every electron in the universe were a supercomputer, the number of interactions possible couldn't be computed for 100 conversations in the age of the universe.  Yeah, there are optimization methods.  But as n >> 2  million, the number of overseas calls a day, the  number of possible relationships can only be comprehended (comprehended, not stated) by a small select group of Combinometricians.

But the dumb stroke of "luck", that is actually what makes a good investigator, a good cop, or a good border agent, is what thwarted bombings at LAX and Seattle.  And would have stopped 911.  Except that a key link was tired of processing so much meaningless information.  And Moussaoui's PC went unsearched.

Humint -- human intelligence -- is worth more than all the data mining around.

I agree with "artappraiser" that French, German and other European intelligence/law enforcement agencies have historically been far more aggressive and effective in combating terrorism than U.S. agencies.  It was the French intelligence agency, for example, which, in August 2001, quickly provided the FBI with detailed information about Moussaoui's connections to Chechen fighters (who in turn were connected to Osama Bin Laden) and about Moussaoui's other potential terrorism connections.   Since 9-11, European law enforcement/intelligence have detected and prevented numerous acts of terrorism, more than I think we have in the U.S.  Partly that's also because the threat of terrorism has always been greater in Europe, - they've actually experienced far more acts of terrorism by a variety of different groups but also due now to their large North African (and other Middle Eastern) immigrant population, individual members of which might be predisposed to align with Al Qaeda.  For these reasons, point #4 of my February warning to Director Mueller questioning launching a pre-emptive strike upon Iraq in connection with the "war on terrorism" illustrated the irony and hypocrisy of U.S. criticism of France and Germany in the lead up to the war.  Here Bush and his cronies were disparaging France and others for being soft on terrorism just because they would not go along with attacking Iraq when in actuality, the French and others were extremely aggressive and effective in detecting and dismantling the true terrorist threats. Furthermore, this disparagement and go-it-alone attitude placed critical liaison relationships at risk.  

It's hard to generalize, but from what I know, European laws do give greater powers to law enforcement and intelligence gathering.  Even Canadian eavesdropping laws, because their "minimization" requirements are less than in the U.S., are this way.  (U.S. minimization rules for both criminal and intelligence monitoring are odd creatures that have ended up as quite complicated, hard to train and apply in a practical way, and ultimately defying common sense.  The "FISA wall" which created the separation between criminal and intelligence matters was also one of the results.)  My opinion is that U.S. law enforcement is/was uniquely saddled with some of these procedural technicalities, especially in the area of electronic/wire communications monitoring, actually due to past abuses of the type that occurred during the 1960's and early `70's that led to the Church Committee findings and to the FISA law.  

But don't get me wrong here:  I'm certainly not saying that this area, the most sensitive and potentially intrusive of law enforcement and intelligence techniques should be unregulated and free from restrictions and oversight.  It's just a lot more complex than what I have time for right now, but you can get a better idea of my views from my paper my paper entitled "Balancing Civil Liberties with the Need for Effective Investigation" which was published October 2004 as Chapter 30 in the Milton Eisenhower Foundation's book entitled: "Patriotism, Democracy and Common Sense: Restoring America's Promise at Home and Abroad."    

To summarize, we ought not to be using 9-11 and the need to detect and disrupt terrorism as an excuse for unjustified military interventions.  Use of the military is a very rough tool and structurally ill equipped to deal with isolated cells of terrorists scattered throughout the world.  The threat of terrorism is real and is actually far worse since Bush and his cabal launched their invasion/occupation of Iraq.  Intelligence and law enforcement tools are preferable to the use of the military in that they are much more surgical/precise and allow authorities to target true terrorists without killing and disturbing innocent civilians, inflaming populations - all of which engender more terrorism.  

When it comes to the distinction between use of intelligence and law enforcement, we need to consider going back to the law enforcement model which is based on criminal prosecution (and the criminal procedure that emanates from the Constitution, mostly from the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments).   Time-tested law enforcement methods, constrained by long-standing criminal law, and perhaps supplemented with intelligence methods, should form the backbone of our efforts to combat terrorism.  Any remaining odd technicalities that may have grown up but unnecessarily hamper investigation and serve no real purpose should be openly discussed and done away with.  (Since the "FISA wall" has come down, I personally know of no others at the present time, but...)

The emergency or exigent circumstances exception has always existed under the 4th Amendment to allow warrantless searches.  For 13 years, I taught law enforcement officers about the various exceptions to the 4th Amendment.  And the emergency exception is one of the diciest because judges often tend to second-guess a police officer's judgment on what constitutes an emergency.  Everyone remembers Los Angeles police detective Fuhrman jumping over the fence to search O.J. Simpson's property under that rationale and how he was later criticized for it.  But I believe that the emergency exception is like a valve that allows some pressure to be released and allows the general rule to stand that warrants should be obtained before a search into a private area is conducted.  

That's why FISA law already contains a good emergency exception for warrantless surveillance for up to 72 hours.  Such an exception, however, must remain exactly that, an exception.  It must be sporadically employed and limited to true emergencies.  If the exception begins to swallow the rule, it no longer is an exception and the underlying situation or law needs to be examined.  

So why did Bush believe it necessary to abrogate the need to seek FISA approval for monitoring American citizens?  Why couldn't he have used the extremely permissive 72-hour emergency exception under existing FISA law?  I have only a couple of good guesses:  the numbers, perhaps in the hundreds or thousands, made it too inconvenient to be chasing after the Attorney General to get his signature on each and every "emergency."  Remember that former Attorney General Ashcroft was treated as a mini-God.  Very few underlings would have the audacity and political incorrectness of approaching him to ask for his approval for a specific "emergency" let alone if the numbers of these on a daily basis were too great to even be feasible to get his personal approval for. There is also the issue of fearing that the numbers of such A.G. authorized "emergencies" might at a given point, become known.  The fear would be of a public outcry when the number became known, and people were able to perceive that the exception had swallowed the rule.  I've long argued that the mere numbers of each and every technique authorized under the Patriot Act, i.e. national security letters, FISA searches, and emergency searches should be periodically reported at least to Congressional oversight committees (and perhaps made public) for this very reason, that it would serve, without divulging any data whatsoever that needs to be kept secret, as a way to gain some judiciousness and accountability into the system.  The long-sighted view would welcome more public reporting as deterring the public outcry of the type we've seen with over-use of national security letters, FISA surveillances/searches, and now warrantless NSA monitoring.  

Did someone say "everyone has good intentions and and that law enforcement can be dispensed with" or is that just another strawman constructed in the effort to apologize for an administration that dodged our FISA provisions? I hope someone said it, because when we reduce valid arguments to the level of absurdity, the terrorists win.

How can I say it without an oversimplification: We don't need to break our own laws to ensure the continuation of civilization.

while your points are interesting, I believe you have missed my point entirely.

I was responding to Ms Rowley's comment "This last week, we learned President Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency to conduct a domestic spy program that entails no judicial oversight.  In defense of this controversial program, a number of Republicans rely upon the case of Zacarias Moussaoui as justification for Bush's attack on our privacy and civil liberties."

My comments were meant to point out that in a world population of some 6,487,755,697 individuals, roughly half of whom live on less than $2.00 US per day, the truly awesomely amazing thing is that only a relative handful of clearly certifiable lunatics have been identified who are/were, according to the best efforts of western spook agencies, bent on causing mayhem.  Yet vast sums of money and person hours are spent trying to catch another one or, alternatively, waterboard some cabbie into remembering that he knows the name of another one.  And for this, American citizens are expected to forego not only civil rights but ignore human rights as well?  This has nothing to do with being late to the game, or playing catchup.

http://www.unfpa.org/swp/swpmain.htm

If the US truly wanted to protect its citizens and its worldwide interests, in my opinion it would sign back onto global initiatives tackling poverty, child soldiers, land mines, arms control, ecological and health issues.  Leading by outstanding example in these core areas would do far more to combat terrorism at home and abroad than all Mr Rumsfeld's military adventures and clandestine prisons, and all Mr Bush's secret snooping.  

Yet, for some bizarre reason, many people seem to think it is more cost and outcome effective to militarily and/or politically intervene in the temporary affairs of underprivileged nations than to get to work and figure out long term solutions to a growing international set of problems, of which aggressive acts of terrorism are one very small part.

IMO.      

Juan Cole/Informed Comment

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Breaks in the London Bomb Case

....Legislators in democratic societies who are thinking about how to respond to this problem should give serious thought to RICO-like laws that could be used to curb religious cults, which typically isolate members, indoctrinate them, manipulate them, and sometimes coerce them. Cults avoid scrutiny by harassing critics and whistleblowers, often in ways that police find it difficult to respond to. The enormous problems modern societies have had with groups like Christian Identity, the Koreishites, Aum Shinrikyo, and now al-Qaeda, suggests that current legal frameworks are inadequate to address this problem. Ex-members, victims and critics of cults need a legal basis for protection from the cults. The American Family Foundation is doing excellent work in this regard.

Well Dave, many probably scoffed at FBI attention to the Ku Klux Klan in the past, and the way their rights to free association in secret were infrined upon. <sarcasm> After all, they were just a bunch of dumb rednecks trying to maintain their culture; what problems could they really cause except a few cross burnings? Nothing to fear there, nope.

And really, isn't law enforcement pestering groups planning abortion clinic bombings

putting the cart behind the horse? Why not wait til they do it? If one of them does it, like Eric Rudolph, surely associates and sympathizers will give law enforcement all the info. they need after the fact to catch them ASAP.

Would have really been a shame to civil liberties if law enforcement went around gathering intel on the same gun show circuit that Tim McVeigh and his friends did, wouldn't it? Just a bunch of dumb disgruntled off-the-griders, pay them no mind. Thank god they didn't; that all worked out for the better, didn't it?</sarcasm&gt

Freedom from rule of law is no freedom at all, it's the jungle. No one knows this more than Iraqis right now. Civilization is one big trade-off with the "freedom" to be such things as what others might consider a stupid idiot, or a ruthless criminal. Many in the Mafia are neither, and one could easily make the claim that those who associate on the fringes of that cult are a persecuted minority. Many in the public, meanwhile, still thinks they are cool...

Getting rid of law enforcement intel gathering because it is prone to human mistakes and hubris and abuse of power is not a realistic solution to the problems we are facing; there are bad people in the world. Innocent until proven guilty does not mean that law enforcement should remain as ignorant as possible.

P.S. No coincidence that Juan Cole does not think Al Qaeda is a joke made up by the Bush administration but thinks it is something to study and understand. Nor that he has not taken down the link to his War on Terror Archives, nor changed its name. Nor that he keeps a link to Muslim Denunciations of al-Qaeda and Terrorism near the top of his home page. Oh, and I think this piece by Tariq Ramadan on the pious Muslim assimilation thing and how daily life in the West is much more complicated than simplistic nostrums is quite related; reminds me of the same problems as with the ambivalence of many good-hearted Southern whites towards tattling on the Klan or Italian immigrant reluctance to tattle on the mob, or rural white reluctance to tattle on Eric Rudolph.

Freedom from rule of law is no freedom at all, it's the jungle.

- is in fact the point behind asking "Did the administration disregard the law?"

...someone insinuate that al-Qa'eda operators are so crazed or incompetent that Americans shouldn't give up their civil liberties to pursue charges against them. Then I heard ArtA quite rightly point out that where America sits on civil liberties, even now is far more liberal than most governments, including my own. Seems to me that if this issue is more than just merely something to beat political opponents with, that oughta be something to think about.

Seen from the outside, there's every bit as much "American exceptionalism" from the progressives as from the conservatives. You may not need to break your own laws to protect civilization, but as a legal intercept target both by NSA and my own country's analogous organization, I'll be blunt - you flipping well better be thinking about changing your laws, because from where I sit there's damned little sacred about American civil liberties compared to everyone else's.

"Seen from the outside, there's every bit as much "American exceptionalism" from the progressives as from the conservatives."

You have got to be kidding me.

parsing why I am uncomfortable with this statement:

"I'll be blunt - you flipping well better be thinking about changing your laws, because from where I sit there's damned little sacred about American civil liberties compared to everyone else's."

On one hand it elicits an equality, a 'we're all in the same boat' kind of tone that carries the tune of inalienable rights for all; a decidedly American cadence. On the other it demands a closer look at our interpretation as if we somehow selfishly afforded ourselves a bigger helping than is deserved or prudent.

While I believe the issue is more about government responsibility than it is civil liberties per se, I will say this:

If there is a problem with our government spying on you without oversight or redress, that is an issue to take up with your own government.  America is exceptional because we have held our civil liberties sacred.  

We shouldn't even contemplate backpedaling on the liberties we currently enjoy. They come a lot harder than they go. We don't need to diminish our Republic to 'win' the war on terror, we need competent leadership.  

Implying the fight is merely a political cudgel is to acknowledge only the spin, from either side. It also reduces the ideals imbued throughout our Constitution as subservient to the will of other nations by equating ideological bickering with settled civil law. It's as if to say these ideals are so unattainable, so unrealistic, that to pursue them is somehow an unjust, deadly burden for others to suffer while we satisfy ourselves to parry over partisan spoils.

If we had an executive branch that executed homeland sanity as a priority we wouldn't have so many fearful, desperate bargain hunters willing to pay for Faustian protection with chunks of their citizenship.

AQ has it's share of nit-wits like any other organization. One can choose to ignore them as this administration did, with similar results I'm sure.  Me, I'd take them seriously enough to put down my accounts receivables and memoir long enough to try and fix what was wrong that allowed them any success from the start.  It's failure that has us vulnerable, not just our civil liberties. Fix the failures, keep the liberties.

Perhaps that's what was bugging me. And also this: ...where America sits on civil liberties, even now is far more liberal than most governments.

Are they any more safe than America because of this point?

You're missing the point that we've already compromised our civil liberties for the sake of security with the FISA provisions. I'm afraid you're falling for a bait and switch here. The point is that many U.S. citizens feel that we should follow our own laws, especially when they already provide the security we feel we need. No insinuation or twisting of logic required.

...taking into account what I have said elsewhere in this forum. As I've mentioned, I think there's a reasonable chance that at least some of the collection that has been undertaken under executive authority would not meet the standards required for a FISA warrant. At least some of that collection bears thinking about making legal, and all of it that I have heard about would be legal if undertaken by CSE (my equivalent of the NSA) on me, and I suspect by GCHQ on a UK citizen (and probably the rest of the USA/UK partners on their citizens, judging from what I have been able to dig up).

If a future terrorist attack occurs on my soil that could have been prevented but was not because the monitoring of a US person was not permitted in situations where analogous monitoring of myself by CSE would have been permitted, expect me and my countrymen to be deeply pissed and expect us not to be very receptive to an argument positing that your civil rights are paramount, given what we've sacrificed of ours in the name of the greater good, a good that notably includes yourselves, the world's numero uno terror target.

...once you start with unauthorized, illegal intercepts, that sets you on a slippery slope that can result in other affronts to liberty such as Propaganda for Hire Punditry, Extraordinary Rendition Tourism, Jailhouse Detainee Pile Choreography and a little game I like to call Don't Count All the Votes. Oh, and Secret Prison Peek-a-boo, don't forget that! Supposedly, that's how Giuliani cleaned up the big apple: Prosecute every crime, no matter how small.

If the administration had submitted the requests for FISA warrants in the first place, we wouldn't have to wonder at what they might have said, would we?

Thankfully, I don't need to sort out the governance of your country and whatever liberties her citizens have surrendered; that's for you to do. But when our laws are broken, we tend to want to investigate and, hopefully, put an end to it one way or another.

but if we spend our lives guarding against every "what if" someone can dream up then we might as well hand over all of our liberties now and be done with it.

I think some of the program does deserve consideration too. It's in this post. What I am others are upset about, aside from the fact that some other aspects of the program we don't like, is the fact that Bush might very well have broken the law. No one is above the law and that is the beef. This resembles Clinton on so many ways, had Bill jsut siad, "she blew me. WHat are you going to do about it?" We would not have had a constitutional crisis. And if Bush would show some flexibility here (and in other aspects) some Democrats might go along. Instead, every single issue is black and white a test of stregth with this administration and at some point the Demos just have to say "fuck it" we're not trusting you on diddly. Does this make sense?

I am all for compromise and security but compromise goes BOTH ways and it's only been going one way for the last few years and many people are fed up and willing ot fight about everything now. Everything is a test of strength whether we want it to be or not.

...jealously guarding an arbitrarily defined level of personal civil liberties without acknowledging that it's always a balance between civil liberties and law enforcement and that the law enforcement situation might have changed and that might in turn necessitate changes to what is permissible from a civil liberties standpoint, we may well be trading our civil liberties for someone else's life.

I'll freely admit that I don't know what the correct balance is here, but at least I'm thinking about that balance. Many seem to be reflexively thinking that their civil liberties should be sacrosanct, and that just don't seem to me to be the case. When the situation changes, one need consider alternative approaches.

that the more advanced in technologies people get, the more we become more like rats in labs that are monitored.  

LOL!  I guess it's a mark in our favor still that we are allowed a tad bit more movement.  

sorry if I sounded snippish. As you response points out there has to be a balance. I guess I thought  a balance was in place. Just one more disappointment. lol I don't know what the correct balance is, but oversight and accountability need to be part of it. There is no balance when one branch of govt runs over the others.

When the situation changes, one need consider alternative approaches.

I truly don't believe there is anyone capable in this admin to do this. Stay the course hasn't shown to be very flexible.

...coming from - and I was actually thinking of that post when I said what I said. One of the things that is really setting me off here is that this is being treated almost exclusively as a domestic policy issue, and when ArtA quite properly and correctly adds valuable contextual information that places this as part of a much bigger whole (and it manifestly is), it gets roped back in and re-cast as a purely political domestic issue.

My overriding meta-point to most of what I've said on the issue in this forum, these threads and a number of others is that it just flat out ain't purely domestic (heck, one of the things the admin has hung on this is, IIRC, busting the ammonium nitrate ring in the UK) - you want to stake out a progressive position that has the redeeming virtue of being operationally true, take that larger context into account.

...that you should break the law to conduct such collection? I said you need to think about changing the law - huge difference.

You'll also note that I think you need to change your law because I believe FISA won't cut it, not for this type of collection. As near as I can tell, there are two types of collection going on, one analogous to pen register intercepts, which is happening on a large scale and used for link analysis, and one which is intercepts of actual content, which seems to be much more focussed and intelligence driven, but involves collection on targets that are not knowingly involved - both of these seem to me not to be covered by FISA.

(As an aside, one of the things that I don't get is that under the criminal statutes, as I understand it, pen registers don't need a warrant, while under FISA the FISC needs to sign off on it. Why that's the case, I dunno, but it'd be worth thinking about why and what operational impact that has.)

I will leave you with what seems to me to be a pertinent thought from someone with actual operational experience in all this, quite topical to the thread, in fact:

Coleen Rowley, June 6, 2002, testimony to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Oversight Hearing on Counterterrorism.

You recall that I've ceaselessly pointed out the need for the USG to occupy the moral highground, yes? Based on what you've said above, your reluctance and that of many others is due primarily to yet another administration shortfall in this department.

Europe is a diverse place, but I don't remember that anywhere in Europe there had been recently such a mess like the Waco case in the USA.

Germany has the history of nazism (thus the citizens are more protected against government than in other countries) and the history of terrorism (Rote Prikade etc., thus the citizens are less protected against the government ...). What comes to mass raids, what I have heard, people have complained on them in Spain and Germany. The targets have been rave parties etc.

What comes to terrorism, Europe has a long history with it. Accepting a small amount of it seems to be better than trying to get rid of it completely. And traditionally, European governments have not really tried. Getting rid of terrorism would have meant changes to a more democratic governments, and European governments have often rejected that option. Occasionally rejecting change has finally led to revolutions and rolling heads of royals.

Usually the reasons for terrorism are not very complicated and not solved by increased 'security'. Look at Mexico and Turkey, which practically got rid of their terrorism when they stopped trying to solve it by using military.

The problem isn't so much that people in other countries have greater freedoms/more rights than people in the US. In some ways other countries have more freedoms and in others ways they don't.

The problem is that the US is increasingly not being ruled by law. You have (it seems) a government that purposely circumvents, avoids, twists, sabotages or even breaks laws, both local, national and international.

In a democracy, law is derived from the democratic process. Abandoning rule of law is to take away very fundamental rights.

On Waco:

For outraged libertarians, mainly was about the right of Koresh's group to bear certain "arms."

This "right" is not considered a big deal in most EU countries, no?

On the rest...

with a BIG CAVAET on what I say in this segment: do not infer that I am making any judgment here whether the examples I point out are good or bad for the culture involved; just trying to point out the difference and where I disagree with you in what I see:

Methinks you might be whitewashing a bit by looking at a big time span. Not about your own country, of course, but I've been reading lots the last couple of years about stuff like:

hate speech laws here and there and everywhere. Trying to ban various Islamic pay channels that spew "hate." Canada, too, I believe, instituted some hate speech laws. We don't do that; if you can get it, and you can afford it, you can watch it or listen to it.

Here, one of the main things organizations like the ACLU does are fight for the "right" to hate speech. First Amendment taken very very seriously by all political persuasions, to the point that our libel laws are much more lenient than many in the E.U.

And then there's that thing about raiding mosques in Germany...or telling certain imams they are no longer welcome in the UK though there is no proof of wrongdoing....how about training state-approved Islamic imams in France and not letting nuns wear their veils Muslim girls wear their veils in school....

Why no terror attacks in France and why did the top anti-terror judge nearly predict 9/11? Judge Bruguiere has enormous power and he wields an iron fist.  He can subpoena basically any frigging thing he wants and can hold a suspect for several days without charging, and the first 24 hours of interrogation are without access to a lawyer. After charging, he has held people for years without trial, and then decided he didn't have enough to try them and then let them go.

It is a crime in France to merely associate with a terrorist. There is definitely use of the "fear factor" there, as in: don't you dare even try.

They have sort of a combined CIA and FBI in the DST who definitely spy on their own citizens.

There's much more here: Frontline: Al Qaeda's New Front. Especially under the link: "European v. U.S. strategies on terrorism, cross-border and cyber security, terrorist financing, and more."

Getting into the differences as I see them, maybe off-topic to some, and to those I apologize, but as these are cultural issues which interest me greatly:

The U.S. is much less "cosmopolitan," used to more "space" for each person (deep roots in the pioneer myths and the ability to homestead and be left alone in a space of your own) much less willing to "give in" to the greater good of the whole, much more into allowing independent living, to be left alone by the government. It was built by those who didn't want to play the old European civilized rules game. I even see this attitude quite often in "red state liberals," a libertarianism of a certain kind. In the big urban areas of the U.S., you don't see this kind of libertarianism (no big fans of Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death," so sorry); they don't, just for one example, think everyone needs to own guns. The cosmopolitan attitude, less libertarian, comes from learning what it takes to live peaceably in close proximity with others, which is: a give and take of "freedom," that everyone can't do what they want or this thing won't work. The U.S. mostly had enough space over the centuries so that everyone could do a lot more of their own thing. (You might be interested in how this relates to the difference between the attitudes toward owning real estate in the U.S. and in Europe; it is still very symbolic in the minds of many here, symbolic of independence from a landlord or overlord.)

This actually is the basis of a crucial generalization that is often made of the difference between American and European culture, way back to Alexis de Tocqueville. This is the American crudeness and lack of manners etc. that it takes to make what is called civilized society in Europe. It's why Americans were labeled "ugly" in the 50's when they went on grand tours in Europe after WWII. It's proud libertarianism, proud of being free to be your crude self, not giving a damn about rules of behavior. It's why Europeans and America's big cities get along and appreciate one another, and why so many red staters resent Europe's fancy shmancy ways, and why the French intellectual set is fascinated with Route 66 and chrome diners in the desert and rebels without a cause, and why Germans are fascinated with cowboys and Indian stories--it's like alien beings on Mars to them, they don't get it and they're fascinated.

Back to the "red state" attitude about "freedom." This is key to understanding both the Bush and Reagan presidencies. Including the pretend cowboy stuff and the freedom stuff. This  reason for this thread is actually quite ironic; it means W is not a true son of Reagan if he's losing libertarians. In truh, he never was that, they just thought he was. That polls show people are willing to give on some civil liberties after being attacked, to be flexible on that, whether it was after Pearl Harbor or the WTC, this is actually a moderate response, not a radical one, it's not "give me liberty or give me death," it's "ok, maybe it would be a good thing right now not to be so picky." This was Bush's original appeal. The libertarian type conservatives thought he was hiding his true self and would reveal it. They got rooked. He only likes to play at what Reagan did.

P.S. Gandalf, if you've never read any de Tocqueville on America, I recommend you do because I think you would really enjoy it. I guess that from your statements about other cultures like those you make about Italy or the UK.

I think I may address that on the radio tomorrow night. Thanks!

...you certainly didn't seem snippy to me. Really, I agree with the thrust of what you said originally and all of what you've just said, in detail. It just seems to me that the current admin has run through it's goodwill and then some and that's really what's causing much of this reflexive distrust (and also how it's always being expressed in partisan political terms).

When push comes to shove, I agree, and I think that many here would agree were they privy to the process and discussions, with what Ms. Rowley spoke of in her testimony. A big part of the reason that I advocate changing the law is because I don't think of this process and this body of law in terms just of this adminstration, I think of it in the context of its use by Special Agents in the field, folks that I know by many years of reading their writings to be very concerned with exactly this type of balance.

and every day I wonder what will come out next. I do admit glee tho at times. :) I don't think I'm being partisan here, I'm just a pissed off American.

they solved the problem by restricting abroad going lines to a number smaller than 20. I've got much practical experience around here how to build and maintain Totalitarian Information Awareness systems. And it was done before the help of computers.

Just relating data from different streams is incredibly difficult.  I suspect that the easiest way to describe that would be to say that it is hypergeometric with respect to n.  

Nonsense. There are sufficiently helpful constraints to be used in call data. I wouldn't call the problem intellectually challenging.

More intellectually challenging problem is, how to efficiently hide in spied data streams.

The most prominent results of the American intelligence data mining seem to be:

• al-Qaeda is related to Mao Tse-Tung
  
• al-Qaeda members are fluent in Chinese
  
• al-Qaeda is related to Chinese history students
  
• al-Qaeda is related to professors of history
  
• anybody studying or teaching history is a suspect
  
• having a similar name than an al-Qaeda member means that you are al-Qaeda fan

You see, I never couldn't make that kind of conclusions myself. I was mistaken to think that there are too many spies and too little to be spied in the USA.

...this isn't an issue of NSA targeting me - that I regard as fair ball, same as I regard CSE collection on you as fair ball. This is an issue of CSE targetting me for collection if I engage in certain types of comms generally along the lines of the collection that was authorized by executive fiat - I tend to think that it's an idea with some merit, just the same as I think that NSA targetting you if you engage in analogous comms is an idea that bears consideration, given the nature of the conflict in which we find ourselves. Where my situation is related to the US is that the decision to permit this type of collection on me was taken with an eye at least partially to the relationship between our two countries. Although I tend to think that this decision by CSE was taken primarily for domestic, Canadian reasons having to do with our indigenous security situation, only the truly naive would presume that the decision was utterly unaffected by our foreign relations with the United States, our most important, and most threatened, partner.

Part of my objection to treating American civil rights as somehow unassailable, as many seem reflexively to do, is that for better or for worse, the US does the heavy lifting in the SIGINT world (I've heard statistics to the effect that approximately 98% of our "take" gets cross-decked to Meade for processing without us even touching it, analytically) - if the US, as the key partner in the UK/USA arrangement places undue restrictions (and I admit, it's a big assumption to posit they are undue, but bear with me) on collection on US persons, that can have a really disproportionate effect on things, an effect that is more than just a domestic political issue. It has real effects on the rest of the UK/USA partners, partners who have as near as I can tell, authorized such collection on their own citizens.

I guess my take on it boils down to the intersection of two things that you've said:

and

As to the first issue, though I very much agree that Americans hold their civil liberties more dearly than most other countries that I know well, I'm not sure that that translates into a truly exceptional degree of civil liberty, in spheres other than the national security sphere. Though my civil liberties are curtailed in this aspect compared to yous frankly, I don't think that I'm much less free than you in that sphere, in ways that I find meaningful - and based on what I've seen in some other civil liberties related domains related to criminal justice, I think I'm doing better than the average American, in some minor ways.

As to the second issue, in many ways I think that's obviously to a large extent an unknowable, even were we to be hit with a successful attack tomorrow, or thwart one tommorow. That said, given 1) the widespread talk that I've seen suggesting that stuff is happening in the US below the detection threshold, 2) the views of some analysts suggesting that the lack of attacks is a supply-side issue rather than a lack of capability (i.e., for some reason the opposition has decided conciously not to hit the US, at least for now), and 3) the schmozzle that is the Department of Homeland Security and the apparent shortfalls they have in terms of risk-based approaches, I tend to lean towards the suggestion that, yeah, they may actually be safer.

To sum it up, I dunno what the right answer is, but I know that there's a lot of countries that are moving or have moved in the other direction. Many of those countries have a track record of successfully suppressing indigenous political terrorism at a higher level than the United States has typically faced. Similarly, many of those countries really don't seem to me to have reached any significant break point in terms of civil liberties curtailment. Given all that, and given what the US is willing to do to foreign nationals in the furtherance of its goals, such as the programme of extraordinary renditions, I think it is fair that to suggest that US citizens have another think about their civil liberties in these circumstances.

Just plucked from quick surfing:

Dutch Struggle to Prevent Terror and Protect Rights

Elaine Sciolino | Amsterdam | December 26

NYT -

British antiterror operations 'up 75 percent' since bombings

Tom Regan | December 13

CSM-....The Evening Standard reports that British counterterrorism officers are now receiving high-grade intelligence reports daily, rather than monthly, in the wake of the attacks. Mr. Blair said three further "conspiracies" had been stopped since the summer....

Top republican expelled from Sinn Fein admits he was a spy

David McKittrick & James Burleigh  | Dec 17

The Independent -

And this

Britain will be first country to monitor every car journey

Steve Connor | December 22

The Independent - 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.

if instituted in the U.S. west of the Missippi River, I predict would cause another Civil War. Meanwhile, many on the East Coast and in other urban areas have already adjusted to paying road tolls with transponders with bar codes, the local government recording every toll, the records fully subpoenable by law enforcement with a warrant.

I certainly noticed this odd and quite related manifestation:

The U.S. is... used to more "space" for each person...

I found the European concept of personal physical space to be subtly disturbing, oppressive and invasive at first. It took me quite a while to get used to the concept of having a conversation with someone close enough to feel and smell their breath or feel their radiated body heat. This to me as a Canadian was far too physically close, except for my closest friends or a lover.

We North Americans require a greater physical radius for our personal psychological comfort than the Europeans I knew. I found this unchanged in Paris, Seville, Zurich or any of the other places I lived.

On the flip side, I'm sure that before I eventually acclimatized my interlocutors found it disturbing that I was always subconsciously backing away from them :)

"from your lips to God's ear" on this statement:

To summarize, we ought not to be using 9-11 and the need to detect and disrupt terrorism as an excuse for unjustified military interventions.  Use of the military is a very rough tool and structurally ill equipped to deal with isolated cells of terrorists scattered throughout the world.  The threat of terrorism is real and is actually far worse since Bush and his cabal launched their invasion/occupation of Iraq.  Intelligence and law enforcement tools are preferable to the use of the military in that they are much more surgical/precise and allow authorities to target true terrorists without killing and disturbing innocent civilians, inflaming populations - all of which engender more terrorism.

I see amplification of this in Richard Clarke's "Defeating the Jihadis: A Blueprint For Action":

The Concentric Circles of Jihadism:  When thinking of the growth and evolution of jihadist threat, it may be helpful to think of the  relationship among distinct groups as four concentric circles.  In the inner circle are the terrorists of  the al-Qaeda organization, whose population is probably in the hundreds.  The second circle  contains active members of other jihadist groups, many of whom are willing to commit terrorist acts  personally and die in the process as suicide bombers; it probably contains several tens of thousands  of people.  The third circle consists of those who identify with the jihadist cause or aspects of its  ideology, and who might, if called upon, facilitate logistical or financial activity.  This circle, which  tends to support more "Islamist" governments, may contain tens of millions or perhaps as many as a  few hundred million depending on the criteria.  The outer circle is that of the Islamic world, the  followers of the Prophet Muhammad both in majority Islamic countries and scattered throughout  the world. They number over one billion people, most of them non-Arab.

Key to the overall management of the U.S. response to the jihadist threat is an understanding of  how each U.S. action impacts each of the four concentric circles.  It may well be [that ill-considered actions undertaken in the first or second circle] may be counter-productive to gaining  support in the third and fourth circles within that country and undermine our longer term goals of  diminishing the appeal of the jihadist ideology to those societies.  Understanding those trade-offs and making them an explicit part of the policymaking process will be key to the overall long- term  success in suppressing the jihadists.

Effective action in any one circle is not devoid of ramifications in another. The use of military intervention is a blunt tool for the necessarily intermingled civilian populations that are the natural milieu of the terrorists; the consequences of injudicious use are increased support in other circles. Injudicious deployment of military force has produced - and will continue to produce - the exact opposite of the desired strategic result; "being a hawk" and "winning a series of battles" may well be exactly the recipe for losing this war.

When it comes to the distinction between use of intelligence and law enforcement, we need to consider going back to the law enforcement model which is based on criminal prosecution (and the criminal procedure that emanates from the Constitution, mostly from the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments).   Time-tested law enforcement methods, constrained by long-standing criminal law, and perhaps supplemented with intelligence methods, should form the backbone of our efforts to combat terrorism.

Agreed wholeheartedly.

I agree with "artappraiser" that French, German and other European intelligence/law enforcement agencies have historically been far more aggressive and effective in combating terrorism than U.S. agencies.

Naturally, but there is an extremely important factor which unites Germany, France and Britain (and Canada, as - barring the repatriation of the Canadian Constitution, the ramifications of which are still being tested in the court system - we never had a "watershed moment" like the American Revolution where we completely divorced ourselves from inherited policies and attitudes of our European forbears).

It's the "elephant in the living room" fact that seems to have gone unmentioned. France, Britain and Germany were/are Imperial, colonial powers.

Many of the powers pointed to are not newly enacted to combat terror but are in fact characteristic of the inherent structure of Empire and colonialism. Flight from - and rejection of - some of those exact powers are what caused America's birth.

It was to escape this very paradigm that America created the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Rather than declaring the Great Experiment a partial failure, abandoning its central principles and fleeing backwards to become "Europe II", America should be seeking an American solution worthy of the giants that built it. It is improper for America to take its cues from the same Imperial, colonial powers it explicitly renounced as legal/philosophical/moral justification for its own action.

Historically, Britain, France and Germany enacted the laws of Empire and colonialism in order to protect themselves from the inevitable blowback of Empire and colonialism. If Americans are arguing the need to hew more closely to less liberal European laws originally designed for central control of Empires and colonies, other Americans in return must say "instead of questioning the laws themselves, it is time to question being on a path that seems increasingly to require laws such as those."

and I for one sincerely hope your campaign advisors feel that it will be a good idea for you to continue to speak out on this in such a nuanced manner, in a bigger arena than forums like this when the time is appropriate. I'd hate to see you underestimate your name recognition with the American public and the respect that many of all political persuasions would give what you have to say. It mightjust benefit all of the Dem candidates in 2006 if you did so. Just one civilian poll watcher's humble opinion.

Dave you have absolutely no say on the intrepretation of your activity.  None.   It's left to someone with no oversight.   You may believe you're an upstanding guy, but when it comes your activity, you don't have a say in that.   That's what is wrong with it.  Some wingnut getting his/her arse chewed by a superior may think, you're good enough quota and to ease the chewing.  You're view does not matter.  You don't count.  

...you have effective oversight on it right now, even if the FISA process is followed to the letter? Given the approval statistics out of FISC, that's something of a leap of faith.

As it happens, I'm willing to make that leap, because I know a little bit about the process, but coming at it from the perspective of an outsider without that knowledge, I probably wouldn't. This perception that FISC was essentially a rubber stamp is widespread - to the point that Ms. Rowley actually pointed out during her testimony on at least one occasion.

Look, the bottom line is that I'm not saying that you have to change your laws to make me or my countrymen (or any of your other allies, for that matter) happy - clearly these are your laws, your history, your institutions, and your Constitution, but you owe it to the rest of us to at least think about it. When we thought about our policies and procedures, we thought about it with an eye to our relationship with our valued allies. Where I was talking about "American exceptionalism" here is in the sense that when you guys talk about this issue, regardless of which side of the aisle the talking is coming from, it's very uncommon for the issue of allies to come up - the issue seems overwhelmingly to be discussed in the context of your politics. Though it's appropriate that that be dominant, it's not the only relevant lens. A Canadian observer could be forgiven for thinking that many Americans are willing to fight the War on Terror to the last extraordinarily rendered Canadian (paging Mr. Arar) before they're willing to give up any civil liberties - to be clear, I don't think that's a true perception, but it is a viewpoint that I've heard expressed up here, and it's one that damages our relations and needs be defused.