The New Wiretapping Program

I’m really not sure what the big deal is about this news that the NSA wiretapping program is not going to be reauthorized by Bush when it expires.  I mean if you read all the reports coming out it appears that the Administration got what it wanted.  The whole reason they set up the program in the first place was because the FISA warrants took too long, but now:

Gonzales said a recent secret-court approval allowed the government to act effectively without the program.

[…]Gonzales said a judge on the secret FISA court recently approved a government proposal allowing it to target communications into and out of the United States when probable cause exists that one person is a member of al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization.

He reiterated the administration’s position that the surveillance program has been legal, but said the government will now have the ability to act with sufficient “speed and agility.”

So now Bush submitted a plan to FISA where they can still monitor communications into and out of the US when one of the participants is a terrorist, AND do it quickly.  That means no 48 hours to get a approval.

I take this to mean that its a blanket authorization if they have probably cause.  They will more then likely have to prove that PC at a later time but they can now monitor the conversations in real time.

Dafydd:

Let’s keep our heads, shall we? The president who designed and authorized this program isn’t going to just give it away; and there is no reason to doubt the elite media when they quietly admit, in the body of the articles, that indeed the FISA court gave Bush and Gonzales exactly what the administration itself proposed.

Orin Kerr on whether this program is a blanket order (whereby they do not need approval for each and every wiretap) or the opposite:

Some readers suggest that the language that "the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the [FISC]" suggests that there will be case-by-case approval. I don’t think that’s right. FISA orders do not run indefinitely: FISA orders can be good for up to one year, and must be reapproved after a year. As a a result, the statement that the program will now be "subject to approval" by the FISA Court might just mean that in one year DOJ will go back to the same judge and get him to issue the order again.

It’s amusing actually.  To think that President Bush, a man who has shown absolutely no qualms with pissing the left off if he thinks its in the interest of this country, would just sell out the program due to pressure from the left….quite ludicrous.  Come on people.  Get a grip. 

As the AG noted, they have been negotiating with FISA over this program since 2005 and every 45 days Bush has approved the extension of the program.  Once a program was hammered out that both sides liked the old program will expire.  The new program accomplishes everything the old one did.

So whats the big deal?

Of course the left and the media (one and the same?) are trying to spin this as a win for their side but that is to be expected.  They spin almost EVERYTHING that way.

But this is NOT a win for the nimrods on the left.  This is a big win for those who want our country to be secure.  Why?  Well now the press and the courts cannot yammer on and on over a program that was perfectly legal to begin with.  The program is gone and now the FISA court has approved the EXACT same program, albeit with a different book cover.

UPDATE

Here is the letter the Attorney General sent to the leadership.

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