It's Official: I've been phone tapped

According to this article in the Boston Globe, I have definitely been tapped.

Far from the initial arguments by the Administration that the warrantless phone taps were only used to monitor suspected terrorists, in fact it appears they were used to tap virtually all international communication, and a fair amount of domestic as well.

My parents took a trip through Europe this year, and they called me on at least two occasions. So this whole warrantless search thing takes on a new meaning for me, when I know that it's highly possible that it affects me in ways more than theoretical.

Now, I know the answer I'm going to get from a lot of people. It'll be something like "Well, you're not a terrorist, so you have nothing to hide, right?" or "No Federal agents came pounding on your door, why are you so concerned?"

But that avoids the point. I'm not supposed to be subject to random searches by my government without a warrant. If I'm not talking on the phone with a known terrorist (and since I myself am not a known terrorist), there's no reason why my conversation should be monitored, and if there's some reason to believe it SHOULD be, there should be oversight to make sure that the reason is true and just.

Oh, and according to this gem from US News and World Report, apparently listening in isn't all they've been doing without warrants. Under a program to monitor for suspicious activity and possible nuclear bombs, over a hundred Muslim sites in and around Washington DC have been monitored for background radiation levels.

On its face, this may be reasonable. But this monitoring often required investigators to enter the property to set up monitors. Which should have required a warrant, but none was ever requested or granted.

And I still want to know WHY. The FISA court is top secret. Warrants can be requested up to 72 hours later, as long as the requesting agency can show good reason why waiting until the warrant could be issued would have hampered the investigation. It would not have been difficult to comply with the law. If their purpose was honest and on the up-and-up, there should have been no trouble getting the warrants approved, and as a secret court, the fact that someone was being monitored need never have become public.

I can only assume, therefore, that there was something in the various monitoring going on that was NOT above board, something which the Administration knew would never pass even the extremely lenient standards of the FISA court, and which they didn't want anyone to know about. Which appears to be what this article from the New York Times is saying.

We can't allow the Administration to simply say "Trust us, we're doing this while protecting your civil liberties". The point of warrants and courts is to have oversight, to make sure that someone other than the fox is guarding the hen house.

Liam.