I have really got to get back to preparing for my talk tonight. But I thought this emailer makes a good point:
I’m not sure I agree. Gonzales said it wasn’t Bush’s policy to authorize policies that violate existing laws. So far I don’t think it’s been established that anything in the NSA program violates FISA or any other law. I hear a lot of speculation about what the NSA might be doing and the use of (deliberately?) imprecise terms like “warrantless wiretaps” and “domestic spying” but very little hard information. It seems that NSA could achieve its aims legally by targeting non-US phone numbers and collecting the intelligence outside the US and I don’t see any reason to assume that they are behaving illegally when they don’t have to.
Very truly yours,