To what extent did Washington and Lincoln approve warrantless electronic surveillance?
150333
Well, obviously they didn't approve electronic surveillance at all, seeing as electionics didn't exist then. They DID, however, spy on Americans, but at the time there weren't any laws against them. In Bush's case, there is clearly a law (called FISA) that specifically doesn't allow electronic surveillance without a warrant.
530548
Contact your local DA or Assistant State Attorney. They can give you the Statutes pertaining to Surveillance in your City/State.\n\nIf your State allows this, you can start a petition drive. Get the required number of signatures and it can be put on the State Ballot. If voted in the State Legislature will have to enact the law.\n\nYou can also see you state Rep. and Senator and talk to them about submitting a change to the law. This usually doesn't work very well. If you can convince them to submit it, committies can bog it down and refuse to let it come to a vote.\n\nThere are a few screwed up Liberal states, like Maryland, that have these kind of laws. Most states allow you to video and audio an employee working in your home. A person working for you, in your home, has no reasonable expectation of privacy. Like working in an office, the only reasonable expectation of privacy a person has, is when they go to the bathroom. Anywhere eles in the building can be monitored.
847435
patriot act-  the NSA can pretty much record whatever they want.
132110
Not really.  The NSA intercepts are legal under Article 2 of the Constitution (Sections 1 & 2) both in the Oath of Office and vested with the powers as commander-in-chief, plus the joint Congressional resolution of Sept. 14, 2001 which is legally a declaration of war against al-Qaeda\n\nBesides, the European democracies have been doing stuff like this for decades, and to an extent that would give the ACLU massive cardiac arrest.  The city with the greatest degree of CCTV and other surveillance is London, and the  European police and security services don't have the same restrictions that American police do, And in France, you're guilty until proven innocent.  Something to keep in mind.
638339
It's kind of a false dilemma.  Security and freedom can coexist, it just makes it a little harder.  I personally would rather be able to read, write, think, or say whatever I want without sanction than feel secure under surveillance.
489537
They knew SOMETHING was coming (remember that report they had in 8/2001, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack inside the US"?), but not exactly what. \n\nI do think Bush & Co. would like a police state, and are trying to get one. Now they are saying that congress cannot investigate the NSA because they don't have the security clearance to do so. Sounds like a free ticket to do whatever they want to me.\n\nOne world government would not work, there are too many ideas of how things should be run. What kind of government would it be? Some group, somewhere, would hate it no matter who was running it. Also there is too much division between wealthy countries & poor ones, secular societies & religious ones. What would be the consensus on, let's say, guns? Most European countries ban them outright, and would not agree with a gov't that allowed them. The US would not agree with a gov't that banned them.
45306
By the authority vested in me as President by Sections 102 and\n   104 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C.\n   1802 and 1804), in order to provide as set forth in that Act (this\n   chapter) for the authorization of electronic surveillance for\n   foreign intelligence purposes, it is hereby ordered as follows:\n\n     1-101. Pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence\n   Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(a)), the Attorney General\n   is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign\n   intelligence information without a court order, but only if the\n   Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section.\n\n     1-102. Pursuant to Section 102(b) of the Foreign Intelligence Act\n   of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(b)), the Attorney General is authorized to\n   approve applications to the court having jurisdiction under Section\n   103 of that Act (50 U.S.C. 1803) to obtain orders for electronic\n   surveillance for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence\n   information.\n\n     1-103. Pursuant to Section 104(a)(7) of the Foreign Intelligence\n   Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1804(a)(7)), the following\n   officials, each of whom is employed in the area of national\n   security or defense, is designated to make the certifications\n   required by Section 104(a)(7) of the Act in support of applications\n   to conduct electronic surveillance:\n\n       (a) Secretary of State.\n\n       (b) Secretary of Defense.\n\n       (c) Director of Central Intelligence.\n\n       (d) Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.\n\n       (e) Deputy Secretary of State.\n\n       (f) Deputy Secretary of Defense.\n\n       (g) Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.\n\n   None of the above officials, nor anyone officially acting in that\n   capacity, may exercise the authority to make the above\n   certifications, unless that official has been appointed by the\n   President with the advice and consent of the Senate.\n\n     1-104. Section 2-202 of Executive Order No. 12036 (set out under\n   section 401 of this title) is amended by inserting the following at\n   the end of that section: ''Any electronic surveillance, as defined\n   in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, shall be\n   conducted in accordance with that Act as well as this Order.''.\n\n     1-105. Section 2-203 of Executive Order No. 12036 (set out under\n   section 401 of this title) is amended by inserting the following at\n   the end of that section: ''Any monitoring which constitutes\n   electronic surveillance as defined in the Foreign Intelligence\n   Surveillance Act of 1978 shall be conducted in accordance with that\n   Act as well as this Order.''.                          \n\n                                                              Jimmy Carter.\n\nFormer President Jimmy Carter, who publicly rebuked President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program this week during the funeral of Coretta Scott King and at a campaign event, used similar surveillance against suspected spies. \n    "Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision -- we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Mr. Carter said Monday in Nevada when his son Jack announced his Senate campaign. \n    "And no one knows how many innocent Americans have had their privacy violated under this secret act," he said. \n    The next day at Mrs. King's high-profile funeral, Mr. Carter evoked a comparison to the Bush policy when referring to the "secret government wiretapping" of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. \n    But in 1977, Mr. Carter and his attorney general, Griffin B. Bell, authorized warrantless electronic surveillance used in the conviction of two men for spying on behalf of Vietnam. \n    The men, Truong Dinh Hu
423824
Washington and Lincoln.
668332
People are missing the point. There may not be an expectation of privacy requiring a warrant, but the phone call database is in direct violation of applicable federal law.\n\nWhether I have anything to hide or not is irrelevant. It was against the law for the NSA to be doing what they are doing, especially if it has been going on for years. See the 1986 Stored Communications Act.
360681
IF it is done legally, then no.  As long as the spying is consistant with Constitutional protections against unwarrented intrusions into my private life, then I won't worry.  Let the government agencies get warrents first.
774265
Well, it isn't just cameras that have placed Britain as number one in the league of snooping in the world.\n\nEvery time you use a credit card, there is a computer record of it.\n\nEvert time you pass a vehicle licence number recognition camera, there is a record of it.\n\nThe police illegally hold DNA samples of school-children.\n\nThe various data-bases are designed to track our every movement, our every internet site, our proclivities, our criminal records (if any), any salacious gossip the police may care to place "on file" as "soft evidence", so colled "intelligience" which can be anything, financial records held by banks, tex authorities and now an attempt to link the NHS to a national database.\n\nIt is indeed a very serious issue, because the people who operate these data-bases and surveillance systems, are really not controlled or properly managed by anyone, and because even the Home Office is theoretically controlled by politicians, the permanent civil servants are the ones who decide what can and cannot be collected and stored.\n\nIt is the biggest single threat to freedom and democracy that there is, and we are walking blindfold towards a situation far, far worse than anything dreamt up by the "Stazi" in Eastern Germany.\n\nThe trouble is, the politicians in all their stupidity may have made it possible, but can they stop it?  Indeed, would they want to stop it, given that  political power is based on the paranoia of being thrown out at the next election, and they MUST be seen to be doing something, no matter how ineffective or pointless that action may be.\n\nBritian is not just becoming a police-state, it already IS a police-state,andthe only thing standing between "us" and "them" is the power of the EU and human rights legislation.\n\nAs for the right to privacy and freedom of information exchange, that went out of the window years ago, and is set to get very much worse, and with it will come either social revolution or totalitarianism.\n\nThe choice is ours, or theirs, as the case may be.
676097
Lincoln, Washington, FDR, JFK
33711
Yes.  Three of the main ones did.  The one exception so far has been google.  And this wasn't about national security... it was about the effectiveness of porn filters.  They wanted to see what searches came up with porn, and what filters it beat to still show up.
318926
Actually, the US Supreme Court has NOT addressed warrantless wiretaps as they are being done by Bush. To the contrary, the Supreme Court has said (see Hamdi v. Rumsfeld) that the current poltiical situation is "not a blank check" for the President to do anything he wants, regardless of existing laws.\n\nIn fact, there are two reasons why warrantless wiretapping is not authorized, and is explicitly illegal under specific laws that were intended to cover this exact situation.\n\nFirst, FISA passed by Congress thirty years ago explicitly states the conditions under which surveillance can be conducted, and was passed specifically to address monitoring of US citizens communicating with people in another country, where one or more were suspected of being a threat. FISA requires that even in an emergency, the wiretapping agency get a warrant from a judge within 72 hours AFTER the tap is initiated. This defeats any argument made about their not being enough time to act within the bounds of law, and Bush has admitted that he's never even applied for the warrants afterwards in an attempt to obey with the law.\n\nInterestingly, some of big names opposing FISA being passed thirty-years ago include Bush Sr., Rumsfeld and Cheney. So, they were told, by Congress explicitly, that they ideas about inherent presidential authority were wrong. So, not only is Bush breaking the law, but he's breaking a law that was specifically set up to govern this very action, after his top advisors were told what the law was in this exact situation.\n\nSecond, there is the ridiculous claim that Bush is acting under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which the administration argues implicitly allows such actions. However, the AUMF is two paragraphs long, and states only that Bush is authorized to send military troops to Afghanistan, pursuant to the War Powers Act.\n\nWhat does the War Powers Act say? It limits presidential authority to send troops or deploy domestic assets unless authorized by Congress (since only Congress can declare war, and only Congress has jurisdiction for making domestic laws). The War Powers Act also specifically says that the President does not get any implied powers under this law, and that the President must obey all existing laws even when exercising explicit powers.\n\nYou can't claim implied powers based on a law that says "no implied powers". That's basic legal theory 101. It's like trying to argue it doesn't count as treason because the traitor chooses to call it something else. Performing actions that explicitly breaking laws that were intended to cover this exact situation is breaking the law, pure and simple.
955740
IT IS NOT SECURE, The technology it will be based on has been cracked ALREADY!\n\nIt will FAIL in it's intended purpose, cost a FORTUNE and not work!\n\nApart from the very valid civil liberty concerns (completely reversing the relationship between citizen and state making the state the master and the citizen a tagged serf), and the idea that this means that for the first time all innocent citizens will be in effect asking for the state's permission to exist in their own country. tagged, tracked, monitored, spied on at all times. \n\nThis is a chilling trend, Government becoming more and more secretive whilst expecting the electorate to be ever more open to intrusive privacy destroying spying from the state. \n\nExcuse me big brother state, but what I do, and who I am, and where I go, so long as it is all legal, IS NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS!!!\n\nBut even allowing for those arguments, the technology will not work and it will be a massively expensive, unethical, immoral failure.\n\nRead the news story below. It cannot work to stop crime as it has already been hacked!\n\nBTW to the ignorant and dangerously stupid woman who anwered above stating that any action that stops even 1 crime is worth it??? Hand yourself in to the police now, it may stop you commiting a crime! Would you approve of the police locking up everyone, as if we were all in prison already, we would not be able to commit a crime at all?
171065
Calling them warrantless wiretaps is a little like saying FDR implemented warrantless arrests whenever an Axis soldier was captured in WW II.  Everyone agrees that the President has the authority to conduct intelligence operations on foreign communications, of whatever nature, in war or peacetime.  And virtually everyone agrees that the US Constitution forbids the warrantless interception of domestic communications.  The question is, whether such operations can be conducted on communications that cross the border.  Current US law, passed in peacetime, says that any communications involving "US Persons", that is, US citizens, legal US residents, or US corporations, cannot be intercepted without a warrant, even for intelligence purposes.  A special court was set up to deal with classified warrants.\n\nNow, the Bush administration's claim is that the authorization to go to war, which Congress passed, implicitly authorized warrantless intercepts as a part of fighting a war.  They point out that US law also forbids the warrantless detention of a US person, but that obviously in war you have to be allowed to capture enemy combatants, and indeed the courts have upheld the right of the administration to detain prisoners without a warrant.\nThe administration also points to a long history of interception of cross border communication during wartime, going all the way back to George Washington, so as to make their case that such intercepts are an inherent part of warfighting, and as such, authorized by Congress when they authorized the war.
983891
The problem with the Patriot Act is that while it does provide a clause allowing judicial oversight, Title IV Section 412 includes provisions for judicial review in detentions, and Title II deals with warrant requirements for electronic surveillance, it does not make this oversight mandatory.\n\nThis means that these provisions are allowed to go unenforced. You see, the Executive Branch is in charge of this enforcement. So what we are seeing now and basically have a wide-open window to is when the laws get in the way of what Bush wants to accomplish, he just chooses not to enforce them.\n\nAlso, the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments are limitations on government action, and apply to anyone under US authority or control. Nowhere does it mention 'citizen'.\n\nAs far as warrantless wiretapping, 50 U.S.C. §1801 et al. Warrantless wiretapping is illegal under FISA if any US citizen or resident alien is a party to the conversation. Also 18 U.S.C. § 2511: Compliance with FISA "shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance... may be conducted". The Patriot Act runs head to head into legalities here.