Disappearing civil liberties

The revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA)'s wiretapping of U.S. residents without warrants just keep coming. I'm so frustrated and angered by these developments that I'm not even really sure where to start.

Today, USA Today broke the story of the existence of a massive database of American's phone calls. Bush's response? "U.S. Spying Is Not Widespread".

After September 11, 2001, President Bush issued a secret executive order authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct "warrantless electronic surveillance of international communication on anyone who was suspected of having links to a terrorist organization such as al-Qaeda or its affiliates" (from Wikipedia.org). The existence of the executive order was revealed in December 2005 by the NYTimes (the article is now hidden behind their pay-for-access site, but is available here). There were many concerns about the legality of warrantless wiretapping especially since a court (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court aka F.I.S.A) already exists to expedite warrants for overseas wiretapping.

Then we had the revelation that AT&T helped the NSA in conducting illegal warrantless wiretapping. Although the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T does not include the government, the Department of Justice has requested that evidence be suppressed on the basis of 'national security'.

Of course, this comes in the context of the PATRIOT Act renewal and a massive increase in the last few years of surveillance on Americans. For example, the disclosure that no warrants were issued for 3,501 FBI investigations. And the NSA has just closed down an inquiry into their "Terrorist Surveillance Program," by refusing to grant security clearance to the lawyers in the Department of Justice.

Just how deep does this go? I think Ars Technica has a good take on the whole issue. Please read it - it's not that technical and hopefully gives you a good idea about why you should care about all of these revelations.

I think we should be very worried about just how much our civil liberties have been compromised in this so-called "war on terrorism". I know everyone thinks I'm a nut when I push for everyone to encrypt all of their email, nay, communications. But with these revelations, hopefully more people will begin to take this threat to privacy a lot more seriously.