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Edited on Sat Feb-09-08 02:25 PM by Leopolds Ghost
The filtering system for phone and e-mail on ALL long distance networks is completely beyond the 4th Amendment and cannot be made subject to it.
It would have to be completely disbanded if warrants were required.
This is not about individual traces on overseas terrorists.
They are monitoring all electronic communications including your own, with the consent of your phone provider, and wish to legalize their actions.
As Rocklefeller admitted, this is about setting up filters -- filters run by servers in switching stations the size of a city block on the grounds of Fort Meade. These filters process all communications in the US (up to several petabytes) and violate the 4th Amendment.
Under the new law this violation will be OK provided the "ultimate target" is overseas. Spying on intermediate US citizen targets without a warrant, in an indefinite chain of degrees of separation will be legally permissible.
The NSA will no longer be described as a black op and the federal government will be legally able to acknowledge its existence and the existence of the server farms that are reading this, right now, and filtering it for code words (such as "NSA" and "terrorist").
In addition, one should not think wiretapping was not the real issue but retroactive immunity is.
Either it should be a criminal anti-4th Amendment act or not.
If it is legalized, then telecoms will not be prosecuted on the grounds that the government, Democrats AND Republicans is now encouraging their spying and should not penalize them for doing so without authorization.
That is why Citibank got away with renaming itself "Citibanc" and illegally purchasing investment firms to become the worlds largest financial institution illegally, in anticipation of the Clinton banking deregulation act which retroactively legalized their mergers. Then they changed the name back.
In the interim they were operating under soon-to-be defunct New Deal prohibitions on an organization calling itself a "bank" purchasing investment companies.
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