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The article:

CNN wrote:(CNN) -- President Bush defended Monday a secretive program that eavesdrops on some international phone calls involving U.S. citizens, saying the United States must be "quick to detect and prevent" possible near-term terrorist attacks.

At an end-of-the-year news conference, Bush spent much of his time answering questions about the program, which bypasses the normal procedure of attaining a court warrant and is designed to intercept communications between suspected terrorists in the United States and other countries.

Both Democrats and Republicans have questioned the legality of the program and some lawmakers have called for an independent investigation or congressional hearings.

Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who appeared on several network morning shows, said technological advances used by terrorists made it necessary to conduct the surveillance without a court order.

"We know that a two-minute phone conversation between somebody linked to al Qaeda here and an operative overseas could lead directly to the loss of thousands of lives," Bush said. "To save American lives, we must be able to act fast and to detect these conversations so we can prevent new attacks." (Watch Bush defend use of wiretaps -- 2:48)

"It has been effective in disrupting the enemy while safeguarding our civil liberties," the president added.

But lawmakers, several of whom said Congress hadn't been informed about the wiretap program, also are concerned about the legality of the president's authorization.

Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin told CNN on Sunday that he believes Bush's action violated the law.

"[The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] says it's the exclusive law to authorize wiretaps," he said. "This administration is playing fast and loose with the law in national security. The issue here is whether the president of the United States is putting himself above the law, and I believe he has done so."

Sen. Jack Reed said the president could have gone back to a FISA court after the wiretaps if he was concerned about speed.

"I'm just stunned by the president's rationales with respect to the illegal wiretapping," the Rhode Island Democrat said. "There are two points that have to be emphasized with respect to the FISA procedure: They're secret and they're retroactive.

"There is no situation where time is of such an essence they can't use the FISA proceedings. And so the president's justification, I think, is without merit."

Gonzales said Monday that a congressional act passed after September 11 not only authorized President Bush to use force in the war on terror, it gave the president the power to allow such wiretaps.

"There were many people, many lawyers within the administration who advised the president that he had an inherent authority as commander in chief under the Constitution to engage in these kind of signal intelligence of our enemy," he said.

"We also believe that the authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following the attacks of September 11, constituted additional authorization for the president to engage in this kind of signal intelligence." (Watch Gonzales' explanation of the administration's position --

Signal intelligence refers to intercepted electronic communications, such as phone calls.

The measure meant the president doesn't need to get a court order to request such wiretaps, as called for in FISA, Gonzales said.

Although the NSA is usually barred from domestic spying, it can get warrants issued with the permission of a judicial body called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court. Bush's action eliminated the need to get a warrant from the court.

Feingold, appearing Monday on NBC's "Today Show," called Bush's actions a power grab.

"Nobody, nobody, thought when we passed a resolution to invade Afghanistan and to fight the war on terror, including myself who voted for it, thought that this was an authorization to allow a wiretapping against the law of the United States," he said.

Gen. Michael Hayden, the head of NSA when the program began and now deputy director of national intelligence, told reporters Monday, "I can say unequivocally we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available."

Bush seemed angered that the program was revealed in an article in Friday's editions of The New York Times.

"My personal opinion is it was a shameful act, for someone to disclose this very important program in time of war," Bush said. "The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy."

Bush also said that the program had been discussed at least 12 times with Congress since 2001 and that it was constantly being reviewed to make sure it was being run correctly.

He also said that the electronic monitoring was limited to people with "known al Qaeda ties and/or affiliates." Any domestic calls, the president said, would go through the secretive FISA court.

The program is re-authorized every 45 days, meaning he has given his approval more than 30 times since its inception, Bush said.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the White House should have come to Congress and asked for a new or amended law.

"We've always had these safeguards to prevent abuses," he told ABC's "Good Morning, America."

"They're logical. And if the vice president and president thought that they weren't working, they should come to Congress and say, 'Change the law.' "

This is entirely out of hand. I am an American: you do not dick with my civil liberties, regardless of whether or not you think some terrorist is planning a vague, undefined attack. Whatever happened to "Give me liberty, or give me death!"?

You know it gets really hard to defend his ass when he goes and pulls stunts like this. I'm constantly under fire when it comes to supporting GWB, but when he says and does stuff like this there nothing I can do but shake my head and allow them to critize him, and me.

*is pissed off*

Surlethe, we gave up the idea of liberty or death when we allowed our government the power to do this in the first place. We did it again when we freely and knowingly gave up rights and civil liberties in exchange for "protection" and "defense."

While Bush's actions, as usual, are no less then deplorable and a blatent abuse of power that he will probably never be called to answer for, he isn't the only one out there destroying any sort of privacy we have.

I mean hell, you'd have to be almost completely cut off from the world to have missed some of the most grievous privacy invasions that have taken place recently. And these don't even taken into account the wish list of our own government agencies who want the ability to snoop at will and in secrecy. I'm talking about the normal course of business where our private records are open to unauthorized persons, bandied about, traded, sold, lost and otherwise treated without the respect and care they deserve in violation of the trust we have bestowed upon these entities. The government plays a big part of our privacy inadaquicies, but the corporations are just as much at fault.

In February, a data collection company called Choicepoint revealed that it had sold the private information of 145,000 people to a company that had no business having this information. The irony is quite bitter. Here we have a company with ten billion records that is responsible for running background checks on just about every American citizen and somehow they weren't able to figure out that the company they were doing business with was fradulent.

In March, LexisNexis reported that 310,000 people had their driver's liscense numbers and social security numbers compromised through a subsidiary known as Seisint Inc. It seems that unauthorized accounts were created in the name of various law enforcement agencies and the whole thing wasn't even uncovered until the perpetrator's parents turned him in.

The banking world has been especially hard hit by security lapses involving its customers. Bank of America lost backup tapes with data on 1.2 million federal employees in February. Citigroup managed to top this in June by losing tapes with the records of 3.9 million of its customers. Wachovia employees were implicated in a fraud scheme that involved the records of nearly 700,000 customers. And these are only some of the reported cases. In fact, most of these cases would never have been known to the public if the companies themselves hadn't come forward.

Oddly enough, only one state(California) requires consumers to be notified when their confidential records are given to unauthorized entities. Other states are no in the process of passing similar laws though. This is a relatively recent law too(2003), and may be the reason why so many incidents are being reported which leads one to wonder just how many haven't been over the years.

When you take into account the fact that these companies think nothing of sharing this data with call centers all over the world, regularly ship unencrypted copies of all their databases through commercial shippers, and basically sell their customer's information to anyone willing to pay, it's a wonder there's any semblance of privacy left at all.

Then of course you have your generic screwups where phenomenally stupid things happen due to the people in charge not having a fucking clue. The victim is almost always another bit of privacy.

There was an incident involving at least six universities, including Stanford and M.I.T., where information on the status of prospective students' applications was actually made available online. To anyone in the world. And rather than focus attention on the deplorable security practices that made such a thing possible in the first place, the schools decided to make a big show of rejecting and applicants suspected of using this method to investigate their status. We would expect this kind of treatment if the applicants had actually managed to break intoa computer to get this info. Or even if that they had been the ones to figure it out. But these were people who simply checked a website that had material about them publicly available! Whether they were jsut curious to see their own status or merely checking to see if such a thing was actually wide open to the public, they were hardly the reason why it happened nor were they engaged in any behavior of clearly dishonest nature. Pretending a problem doesn't exist seems to be the preferred method of dealing with such things in th eeyes of our leading universities. It's little wonder so many carry those values on to their respective professions.

In another incident, more than 100 students at the University of Kansas got an email telling them they had failed a class and were in danger of having their financial aid revoked. Every email address was listed in the cc: field meaning anyone getting this letter knew the names and email addresses of everyone else who shared their status. As far as I know, no action was taken against the people responsible for this gross intrusion into people's lives. Clearly there were individuals who were untrained in handling confidential matters who were given access to private records which they shouldn't have been anywhere near. There's nothing to indicate that this sort of thing is at all unusual, based on the many similar stories circulating.

But this kind of sloppiness and gross negligence is only part of the story. The deliberate intrusions by those who are unaccountable are orders of magnitude worse.

And relatively few of us know that Fedex has been permitting federal authorities to peruse its databases and view all kinds of information on who's sending packages where, how they're paying for it, and more - all without those little things called warrents. "Our guys just love it," one senior customers official was quoted as saying. It was almost three years ago that Operation TIPS (Terrorism information and Prevention System) was abandoned because of a public outcry against its Orwellian vision of utility workers, drivers, and delivery poeple being organized into "watchers" who would be on the lookout for any kind of suspicious activity or persons that they came across in their daily routines. With this level of cooperation by Fedex, the same vision is achieved while bypassing all the legalities involved in government. The Department of Justice has praised Fedeex for "passing along information about publicly observed aberrant behavior." So anything abnormal is now to be considered potentially dangerous. What an enlightened approach don't you think?

Airlines have also been caught turning over all kinds of information on its passengers to the government without any legal reason for having to do so. Schools too are being encouraged to hand over their previously condifdential records. And libraries are increasingly coming under pressure to reveal information on who is reading what to the authorities. Fortunatly many librarians hae a very keen sense of the value of our privacy and have been doing everything in their power to subvert and expose these wanton displays of intimidation and abuse of process. But that hasn't been enough to stop libraries like one in Naperville, Illinois from installing fingerprint scanners for internnet access control.

So far, the only reactions to the problems that we've seen seems to involve a combinatoin of marketing new products and blaming anyone who uncovers the weakness. Nothing new there. The sad fact remains that if we don't take action, our privacy will continue to mean less and less. There's nothing in it for the powers that be since they can jsut sell new products to "protect" us and create an element of fear that will lend itself to passing whatever new bit of legislation strikes their fancy. Expect a push for mandatory identity cards that will "protect your identity" from the evil people who wish to steal it. Get ready to buy insurance policies to protect your privacy from the very same companies that compromise it in the first place. And expect not to collect a dime from the true identity thieves - those who turn your life into a commodity to be bought and sold; they will be sure to cover their asses admirably and turn the attention on the small time crooks as the cause of the problem.

It's all well and good to be publicly aware of such injustices but action needs to be taken as well.

Implementing the Data Protection Act in the USA (or if they already have it, ENFORCE it) would outlaw the whole "Trading of Data" thing and stop most of it from happening.

As for Bush's Wiretapping...

When the fuck is that git gonna get impeached?!

He won't Dakarne. The reason the issue hasn't even been brought up seriously among those in power is that those that can impeach him are overwhelmingly in his court, a majority at last count are republican and why would they want to impeach him? He's their leader!

I mean hell the man apparently called the constitution just a goddamned piece of paper, (linky Note: I just found the link and the quote and thought it was humerous even if untrue. I don't find this credible, lacking other provable sources, etc. But I state that it wouldn't surprise me that he said something to this effect.) and is still in office. I mean hell, the wiretapping among other things would get just about nearly any other president impeached. Fuck, we tried to impeach Clinton over a fucking blowjob!

Hell, there are at least 3 articles we could legally impeach bush over that I can think of:
Article I
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has conspired to exceed his constitutional authority to wage war, in that:

On March 19, 2003, George W. Bush invaded the sovereign country of Iraq in direct defiance of the United Nations Security Council. This constitutes a violation of Chapter 1, Article 2 of the United Nations Charter and a violation of Principal VI of the Nuremberg Charter. According to Article VI of the United States Constitution "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;". George W. Bush has thus acted in violation of the supreme Law of the Land by the following acts:

• Invading Iraq with United States military forces.
  Sacrificing the lives of hundreds of American soldiers.
  Killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and conscripts.
  Rejecting possibilities for peaceful resolution of the conflict by rejecting acts of compliance by Saddam Hussein with the United Nations Resolutions, and ignoring the findings by Hans Blix that inspections were working to disarm Iraq.

Article II
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has subverted the principles of democracy, by the following acts:

• Providing misinformation to the United Nations Security Council, Congress, and the American people overstating the offensive capabilities of Iraq, including weapons of mass destruction, as justification for military action against Iraq.
  Repeatedly manipulating the sentiments of the American people by erroneously linking Iraq with the terrorist attacks of September 11th by Al-Qaeda.
  Repeatedly claiming that satellite photos of sites in Iraq depicted factories for weapons of mass destruction in contradiction with the results of ground inspections by United Nations teams.
  Providing the International Atomic Energy Commission with forged documents describing the sale of uranium to Iraq by Niger, and referring to that sale in the State of the Union Address after being told by the CIA that the documents were forged.

Article III
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has threatened the security of the American people, by the following acts:

• Diverting military resources from pursuing known terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden who have repeatedly attacked the United States of America.
  Generating ill will among the peoples of the world with an offensive and aggressive foreign policy.
  Weakening the effects of International Law by defying the United Nations thus encouraging other nations to violate International law by example.
  Proposing military strategies involving the first use of tactical or low yield nuclear weapons in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty, which is an inherently destabilizing strategy that encourages participants in a conflict to strike before the other side can do so.

How this guy even got elected in the first place is truely beyond me. Not saying the people he was running against were winners either, but still.

Nitpick: The link of bush calling the constitution a peice of paper is not from anything approaching reliable.

Indeed. Notice I said apparently, never claimed it was holy writ. But I'll edit to make sure it's understood that even I don't find it that credible though certainly humerous and about on par with Bush's mentality.
I mean the man's been quoted with statements that are just as similar:
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - Bush, May 21st 1999
"If this were a Dictatorship, It'd be a heck of a lot easier, Just so long as I'm the Dictator" - Bush, December 18th 2000

It honestly wouldn't surprise me if he said something to that effect though. It really wouldn't.