Big Brother may not be watching yet, but apparently the government is listening.

Recently the New York Times exposed a shocking bit of news – the National Security Agency (NSA) has been secretly conducting warrantless phone-taps of citizens believed to be somehow linked to al-Qaeda since 2002, under an executive order from President Bush. Although complete details are unknown, it is known that the targets of this wiretapping included many American citizens on U.S. soil.

Bush and his administration stand by this decision, claiming they have the power to do so under the War Resolution following September 11.

When this issue was exposed to the public, it created widespread controversy, leading to a questioning of the legality and constitutionality of the NSA wiretapping.

While Bush, Attorney General Gonzales, and countless others defend the legality of the phone-taps, and claim that it was, in fact, all for the safety of American citizens, evidence shows that the truth is not as clear cut.

Or perhaps the issue is clear cut. These wire-taps directly violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed in 1978. FISA bars any wiretapping or surveillance of American citizens without authorization by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or additional congressional authorization. In our country, no one should be above the law, whether or not they claim to be breaking that law for what they consider a good reason. The resulting Judiciary Committee investigating the entire incident proves that even high officials in our government are unconvinced of the program’s legal standing.

In a 2004 speech, President Bush stated that, “A wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed… When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.” Interesting words for a man who had two years before authorized warrantless wiretaps.

Moreover, is it morally right for our government to be listening in on our conversations? According to the ACLU and many other organizations, no, it is not. These groups – mainly composed of lawyers, journalists, scholars, political activists, and different organizations which are often in contact with the Middle East – feel that their First and Fourth Amendment rights are being violated because of their belief that their conversations are being intercepted. They argue that their personal liberties and privacy rights are being compromised, regardless of whether the wiretapping is considered legal based on federal law.

In December, Bush defended his actions, saying that he was expected to “do everything in [his] power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect [the American people] and their civil liberties.” This is a strange way to defend our liberties, though. It presents quite a paradox – protecting civil liberties by infringing upon them? Not only that, but Bush seems to have a skewed idea of doing everything in his power “under our laws.”

Bush also said, in a 2004 speech, that “constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.”

The administration has been shielding information from the public which should have been available all along, according to the Freedom of Information Act. Many groups have used this argument to force the government to divulge information regarding the wiretapping.

Overall, it seems as though the executive office has been gaining too much power over the past few years. Bush’s executive order has led to accusations of a major abuse of power. Bush has overstepped his boundaries as President by violating the system of checks and balances in place to prevent such an abuse of power.

And all of this is for what? According to one source, less than 10 citizens each year have aroused enough suspicion in their intercepted phone calls to warrant further investigation, and the wiretappings led to few potential terrorists not already known. All of this secrecy and all of this questionable activity for minimal results. Perhaps the only reason the NSA could not go through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was because they knew they did not have enough evidence to warrant the surveillance of these citizens. The lack of results produced by this program certainly support this idea.

There you have it: our government has been depending on a program which is most likely illegal and unconstitutional, and has not yet proved itself to have an ends which justifies the means. It is no wonder this program has been faced with negative feedback – some people in our country are smart enough to realize a bad idea when they see it.

(Quotes courtesy of www.cnn.com.)

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Our illustrious president is under fire again—this time from the radical leftists concerning alleged illegal wiretapping without official warrants. The past three years have been characterized by accusations of misleading the nation with false evidence about weapons of mass destruction. I suppose it’s time to move on to non-existent, spurious accusation #2: the violation of privacy.

As they say in Iraq, same Shiite, different day.

Don’t get me wrong. Opening the trusted New York Times every morning and reading the many accusatory headlines is in many ways reassuring: it indicates that our society is open enough to question the political status quo. I’m certainly glad questions are being raised about the extent of executive authority in the United States.

But I’m not happy that this wiretapping debate has been reduced to mere political slander and pointless accusations. Never before in American political history have facts been discarded and replaced by caprice and whim, save perhaps for the era of McCarthy.

Regardless of where your political opinions lie, no one would argue that facts are not a necessary part of any debate. So how about we do just that: examine the facts.

According to the inept neo-Marxists like Al Gore (I mean, he did invent the internet) and DNC honcho Howard Dean, George W. Bush violated our constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy.

That’s new. How creative.

Please, find me this mysterious right to privacy. Find me where it says we are guaranteed this shield from government intervention in our private lives?

We’re not. This is not to say, however, that no right to privacy exists at all. Privacy was virtually created by Justice Douglas who proclaimed that a certain degree of privacy exists in the “penumbra of the Constitution.” Confusing as hell, I know. This is just a fancy way of saying that nowhere in the constitution does there actually exist privacy rights, but the overall spirit of the document embodies such rights.

Fair enough. I’ll buy that. But legally, this means that this right to privacy is not enumerated, but has developed over time via case law, such as in Griswold vs. Connecticut and—eek—Roe vs. Wade. But to actually claim a grievance over a right that is more implicit than anything is simply insane.

So what actually happened? The President of the United States—you know, the guy trying to make sure islamofascists don’t blow us up—permitted the National Security Agency to tap into phone calls coming from overseas into the United States. The NSA may monitor any calls that they feel pertain to matters of national security.

Does this mean that good ‘ole George can tap into your phone while you’re talking to your girlfriend tonight? Well, yes.

But it is important to note that the government is not using wiretapping to arrest common criminals that do things like, oh I don’t know, steal cars or extort money. Rather, wiretapping is used only to capture the most dangerous pieces of human scum on the Earth—those who see no difference between an armed enemy and any ordinary man or woman going to work.

What is really going on here is a spike in executive prerogative that many Americans are loath to accept. However, this is not without historical precedent. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, stretched the Constitution to its limits during the Civil War, as he engineered all sorts of military gambits and suspended the writ of habeas corpus—two decisions that theoretically belong to the Congress, not the President.

Nevertheless, good things, as Martha Stewart would say, emerged from this bending of the Constitution. The point is simple: why waste all of our energies trying to derail a program that is inarguably a success? Perhaps I’ve been a little dazed and confused for the duration of my high school years, but the last attack on American soil occurred on September 11, 2001.

Be that as it may, nothing is wrong with the heated exchange of ideas. Discussion is beautiful. Dissent is beautiful. But an overly literal reading of an organic document that is designed not only to protect our rights, but our lives as well—that, my friends, is deadly.