hevusa

Exactly.

__________________
--- help me Instant Runoff Voting, you're my only hope ---

"There is no such thing as laziness. Laziness is only lack of incentive." Norman Reider, MD

Morality is not contingent on religion to exist. Therefore religion only detracts from the purity of morality.

sgtdmski

Assuming Bush is breaking the law, I would be more than happy to lead the charge for his impeachment. However, you seem to fail to realize it is not been shown that he is breaking the law. Your assuming he is, but time and again the Court has given the President broad authority when it comes to national security, FDR ring a bell??

dmk

__________________
Conservatism, I repeat is not an ideology. It does not breed fanatics....But if you want men who seek, reasonably and prudently, to reconcile the best in wisdom of our ancestors with the change which is essential to a vigorous civil social existence, then you will do well to turn to conservative principles
-Russell Kirk-

foundit66

Didn't we already have a discussion regarding what the law EXPLICITLY said on this matter?

The quoted section specifies that the law can be used to justify wire-tapping without a warrant IF and ONLY IF "there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party".
In other words, that law cannot be used to justify tapping a conversation where one of the parties is a U.S. "person".
If BOTH the participants were NON-U.S. persons, that would be okay. We could use that law, previously discussed, to wire-tap the conversation without a warrant.

The VERY LAW he tries to use to justify his wire-tapping of U.S. citizens EXPLICITLY SAYS it cannot be used to justify wire-tapping of U.S. citizens.

How is this not crystal clear that he is breaking the law?


There is a specific recourse that MUST be taken for a LEGAL wire-tapping of a phone conversation where one of the participants is a U.S. person.
It starts with a "W", which he should maybe use as a mnemonic.
It ends with a "arrant"...
He needs to get one...

sgtdmski

You seem to forget that the Congress gave the President to use all necessary and available force to fight terrorism. That is law as well. Once again, technology changes and Congress has not bothered to keep up with the changes in time and technology, the President is acting on his authority as Commander-in-Chief to combat further attacks on this country. The Courts have always granted a President, wide sweeping powers when it comes to national security. This has been proven with the Gitmo prison camp. Although not specifically stated in the Congressional resolutions, the Courts held that the camp was acceptable under the guise of the President's responsibility as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Services in conjuction with the Joint Resolution giving the President the authority to use all necessary and available force.

Furthermore, the Constitution protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizures, the question the Court will ask is would a reasonable person think that their phone calls to a known terrorist or a foreign agent not be possibly tapped. The Court will answer that question resoundingly as No, a reasonable person would expect this possibility.

dmk

dmk

__________________
Conservatism, I repeat is not an ideology. It does not breed fanatics....But if you want men who seek, reasonably and prudently, to reconcile the best in wisdom of our ancestors with the change which is essential to a vigorous civil social existence, then you will do well to turn to conservative principles
-Russell Kirk-

onlyoneplanet

By the same token, Congress didn't read those bills very thoroughly either, and the same thing happened with FDR's New Deal. Lo-and-behold, many of his New Deal's programs were scrapped because of conflicts that arose through contradictory effects that some programs had on others. There's a hell of a lot of people who're pretty steamed about this wire-tapping business and if spying wasn't such a quiet business, I think the outrage would be twice as great.

Hell, my photography intstructor has a friend who was approached by the FBI for questioning which spooked her pretty good (supposedly, they're very agressive in their interogation techniques). Apparently, they were under the impression that she was going to medic for the Iraqi insurgency because: 1.) She volunteers as a street medic at protests, and 2.) She was supposed to go to Iraq as a part of some program that helps Iraqi orphans(?). Talk about a total waste of resources.

The point is, I think this is closer to home than a lot of people think.

__________________
\"Are we justified in using articles, no matter how convenient it may be for us to use them, that we know were produced in conditions which bored and even stultified the human beings who had to make them?\"
-John Seymour

foundit66

Yeah.
A law which says the president CAN wire-tap as long as he gets a warrant.
Another law which authorizes wire-tapping without a warrant, but it CANNOT be used against U.S. citizens. And that is precisely the issue of concern here...

If you can show me the law which states he can wire-tap United States citizens WITHOUT a warrant, then maybe you'll have something.

Otherwise, you're just trying to gloss over the illegal activities with generalizing statements...


Really?
The technology has "changed" to the extent that Congress doesn't know how to deal with wire-taps?
I thought they did...


And as it was shown, the laws in this matter have EXPLICIT LIMITS.
Limits which I just pointed out.

Are you saying that Congress has granted the president the power to wire-tap U.S. citizens in a law which EXPLICITLY STATES that it cannot be used to wire-tap conversations which involve a U.S. citizen?

Is that what you are saying?


That's all well and good.
Back to the wire-tapping now?
An issue which Congress is CURRENTLY INVESTIGATING?

It would seem to me that if Congress had granted the president this right, these investigations wouldn't even be necessary.

Did Congress perhaps give the president the right to wire-tap U.S. citizens without a warrant, and then renege on the power that they had given the president?
Did Congress perhaps give the president the right to wire-tap U.S. citizens without a warrant, and then just forget that they had done this?

Or is it more the truth that Congress EXPLICITLY FORBADE the president from using that legal section of legislation to wire-tap U.S. citizens, and the president decided he didn't care?


Oh. Come ON now Sarge.
Do you REALLY THINK that is what the courts will be asking???
Nothing like rewriting the REAL issue before the courts, is there.

I mean, earlier you were quoting the actual law they would supposedly use to justify the situation.
Now you back-peddle to generalizations and a modified question which is quite ludicrous.

The question for "unreasonable search and seizure" revolves around "Reasonable expectation of privacy". Not the "possibility" that it could be tapped.
--------------------------------
Reasonable expectation of privacy
Not every incident where an officer ascertains information is considered a "search." An officer who views something which is publicly viewable (for instance, by looking through the window of a house from the street) is not conducting a "search" of the house. In Katz v. United States (1967), the Supreme Court ruled that there is no search unless an individual has an "expectation of privacy" and the expectation is "reasonable"—that is, it is one that society is prepared to recognize. So, for example, there is generally no search when officers look through garbage because there is no expectation that garbage is private (see California v. Greenwood (198). Similarly, there is no search where officers monitor what phone numbers an individual dials (although Congress has placed statutory restrictions on such monitoring). This doctrine sometimes leads to somewhat unexpected results; in Florida v. Riley (1989), the Supreme Court ruled that there was no expectation of privacy (and thus no search) where officers hovered in a helicopter 400 feet above a suspect's house and conducted surveillance. The Supreme Court has also ruled that there can be no expectation of privacy in illegal activity. Therefore, investigations that reveal only illegal activity (such as some use of drug sniffing dogs) are not searches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_...s_Constitution
--------------------------------

And you'll note that the last statement involves "no expectation of privacy in illegal activity". As when an illegal activity ACTUALLY exists. Not just when people SUSPECT it could exist because you're calling a foreign country that terrorists live in...

The issue is not whether or not it could "not be possibly tapped".
That is NOT the issue at all.
I could make a phone call to my aunt in Ohio realizing that it could be "possibly tapped".
Utilizing such a question as the litmus test for the government's capability to tap a phone is absurd and ludicrous!

foundit66

To look at a similar case, whereby somebody was using a phone to make illegal activities and the issue of the 4th amendment came up, I present this case:


Charles Katz was convicted in California of illegal gambling. He had used a public pay phone booth in Los Angeles to place bets in Miami and Boston. Unbeknownst to him, the FBI had attached an electronic eavesdropping device to the phone which recorded the conversation. Katz was convicted based on recordings of his end of the conversations. He challenged his conviction, arguing that the recordings could not be used as evidence against him.

Holding
So long as an individual can justifiably expect that his conversation would remain private, his/her conversation is protected from "unreasonable search and seizure" by the Fourth Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment protects people, not just places. Therefore, the rights of an individual can be violated, regardless of whether or not there is physical intrusion into any given area.
A warrant is required before the government can execute a wiretap, and the warrant must be sufficiently limited in scope and duration.

Decision and rationale
In the decision the Supreme Court sided with Katz, holding that the Fourth Amendment protect his right to privacy, wherever he may be. Justice Stewart wrote, "wherever a man may be, he is entitled to know that he will remain free from unreasonable searches and seizures. No less than an individual in a business office, in a friend's apartment, or in a taxicab, a person in a telephone booth may rely upon the protection of the Fourth Amendment." The thrust of the Court's argument was that the Amendment protects people and not just places. This ruling also extended the protection of the Fourth Amendment to include private conversation in addition to coporal objects.

"The Government's activities in electronically listening to and recording the petitioner's words violate the privacy upon which he justifiably relied while using the telephone booth and thus constituted a "search and seizure" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment."

Justice Harlan's concurrence
In his concurrence, Justice Harlan noted that precedence has established two requirements for a person to justifiably rely that his conversation is private: (1) the individual must "have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy," and (2) society must be prepared to recognize that this expectation is (objectively) reasonable. To Harlan the fact that the booth was enclosed was vital to the decision.

"It [the telephone booth] is a temporarily private place"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States


The question you injected Sarge, has no place in this issue. It's a question which YOU created, which has no origin in our laws or in our courtroom. It's what YOU would like the question to be, not what it ACTUALLY is...
The question is not whether or not whether or not their phone conversation could "not be possibly tapped".

The question is whether or not the U.S. citizen could have a reasonable expectation to privacy. And if there is a reasonable expectation to privacy, then a WARRANT is required...

And if you have a "SECRET" program to monitor phone conversations, which the public is not informed of, then how in the
h-e-double_hockey_stick can a citizen "expect" that his conversation could not be private with no warrant?

sgtdmski

You continue to avoid the main issue, that of National Security. It is a simple premise and one that the Court has maintained time and again, that the President has vast authority when it comes to matters that regard national security. Just earlier today, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by a citizen against the administration under the auspices of national security, stating that when it comes to national security the court has no authority over the president.

The problem with Congressional resolutions is that they are often broad. Case in point the Joint Resolution passed by Congress authorizing the President the use of force in the war on terror. Since this law is the newer law it outweighs the older law passed by Congress. Congress is no claiming that if they wanted the president to have this authority that they would have specifically given him the power, however, because the resolution was broad the president enacted the program.

Time and again you analysis of the Fourth Amendment is correct, however, you show no cases that involve national security. That is the problem. The court has always given the president broad powers to act in the interest of national security. Once again, the Court has upheld the Gitmo detention camps under the Joint Resolution passed by Congress authorizing the president to use force, the resolution did not specifically give this power to the president, however, because it is overly broad, the Court recognized the presidents authority in matters of national security. This is the road block that one faces. If this goes before the Court, as it most likely will, you can more than expect the Court to uphold the presidents actions. No amount of Congressional hearings can determine whether the President broke the law, only the Courts can do that. Hearings at this time are mute.

dmk

__________________
Conservatism, I repeat is not an ideology. It does not breed fanatics....But if you want men who seek, reasonably and prudently, to reconcile the best in wisdom of our ancestors with the change which is essential to a vigorous civil social existence, then you will do well to turn to conservative principles
-Russell Kirk-

foundit66

Like you continue to avoid the main issue of what IS the law?

But along the lines of your accusation, I am not avoiding that issue at all. I would support some of these wire-taps, but the wire-taps must be AUTHORIZED through the PROPER CHANNELS. I think I've already stated that.
No short cuts.
No usurpation of unauthorized power.

There are means to obtain warrants, and if those warrants are obtained, these illegalities would disappear while "National Security" would be maintained.
It's just that simple.


Could you give more details about this case?
The devil is often in the details, and you have given essentially none.

But regardless, that isn't a blank ticket for the president to do as he pleases.
At the heart of things, your response sounds like a means to ignore the fact that the president is acting in an ILLEGAL manner, just because he claims to be acting in the interest of "national security".


Oh. Silly me.
So this "Joint Resolution" authorized "the use of force in the war on terror" AGAINST U.S. CITIZENS???

It authorized the president to spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant?

You keep trying to generalize this issue to avoid the specifics.
I can't help but note that you aren't even trying to argue that he has the "legal" power to wire-tap U.S. citizens anymore.

Is this implicit acknowledgement that the President's actions are illegal, but should be ignored because of "national security"?


Giving the power to act in a "war on terror" does not negate our U.S. BILL OF RIGHTS.

Quick quiz. Which is more powerful.
Our CONSTITUTION and it's amendments, or a "joint resolution" passed by congress?

Can congress just negate our Bill of Rights by a "joint resolution"?
Tell me you don't believe that.


It is true that the Fourth Amendment has not truly been tried against "national security". It has been used to ensure the rights of murderers, child molestors, gangsters, etc...
But it has not been really used (in my observation) on the issue of U.S. citizens who HAVE NOT EVEN BEEN ACCUSED of being terrorists...

But along the lines of Gitmo...
How many "Gitmo" prisoners are U.S. citizens?

I think the issue of "Gitmo" should be re-examined to see if any actual effect on National Security has actually been seen. If a President claims that a person must have his rights denied because of "National Security", shouldn't there be some mechanism to ensure that his claim is actually accurate?
Judging by results, I would say Gitmo is essentially a failure.
"The United States is holding about 500 men at the U.S. naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba. The detainees are accused of having links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or al-Qaida, though only 10 have been charged since the detention camp opened in January 2001."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060216/.../un_guantanamo


Part of the problem is that this IS NOT a "road block".
The president DOES HAVE the power to wire-tap U.S. citizens, WITH A WARRANT.
The issue at hand is the president is being too lazy to observe the proper channels. He COULD get LEGAL search warrants, but he just is not using the proper channels.

Why is that?

foundit66

New use for Phone Tapping...