Fourth Amendment to United States Constitution, Sez:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

December, 2005:

New York Times reports that USA President GWBush had ordered the National Security Agency to conduct extensive surveillance of international phone calls with no warrants or authorization by any American court -- even the secret court that will issue a warrant after the fact in emergency situations.

GWB Dec, 2005, in confirming his authorization of the NSA program without judicial warrants and his refusal to stop the program, Sez:

“one end of the communication must be outside the United States.”

Disgraced USA Repub President Richard Nixon, before he was forced to resign the Presidency when the Watergate crimes he authorized were revealed in 1977, Said:

"Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal"

USA Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testifying April 6, 2006, about GWB's NSA Program to the USA House Judiciary Committee with USA Rep. Gerald Nadler:

NADLER: Number two, can you assure us that there is no warrantless surveillance of calls between two Americans within the United States?

GONZALES: That is not what the president has authorized.

NADLER: Can you assure us that it's not being done?

GONZALES: As I indicated in response to an earlier question, no technology is perfect.

NADLER: OK.

GONZALES: We do have minimization procedures in place...

NADLER: But you're not doing that deliberately?

GONZALES: That is correct.

World Socialist Web Site in Framework For A Police State article, Sez:

"The secret surveillance program reported by USA Today goes far beyond the program for intercepting international phone calls which was revealed last December through a leak to the New York Times. In what one source for the USA Today story called “the largest database ever assembled in the world,” the NSA has compiled a record of nearly every phone call made in the United States since 9/11, combined with a historical record of phone calls going back for many years before. The records include the phone number from which each call was made, the number dialed, and the duration of the call.

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USA Today said the program did not involve actual listening to the conversations—a physical impossibility given the billions of calls monitored—but rather the amassing of information for data mining, in which complex software programs are used to find patterns in the calling. Having created “a database of every call ever made,” the NSA is in a position to track down the personal, business, social and political affiliations of any person targeted by the US government.

According to Leslie Cauley, the reporter who wrote the story, “Chances are that your cell phone calls, as well as your home phone calls, have been tracked.” She added in a press interview that there was a “high likelihood” that this information was being passed on to the FBI and CIA.

AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth control local, long-distance and cell phone service in most of the country. A fourth company, the much smaller Qwest, has refused to participate in the NSA program. The Denver-based Qwest provides local phone service in 14 western states as well as long-distance service in some areas. According to the USA Today article, Qwest balked at going along with the NSA program because of its dubious legality.

The phone companies were asked to provide the complete past telephone history of all their customers, as well as regular updates of contemporary phone usage. This means that the NSA now possesses a historical database that extends back at least to the 1984 breakup of the old AT&T monopoly, if not back to the oldest records available. The lifetime telephone usage of virtually every living American is now in a government dossier.

The NSA database could be used to track down anyone associated with political organizations opposed to the policies of the Bush administration, such as socialist, antiwar, civil rights and civil liberties groups. Anyone in regular telephone contact with such organizations is undoubtedly flagged as a potential “terrorist” in the NSA database. In the event of a roundup of such political opponents, the database would supply the names and phone numbers of all those in close contact with those targeted for arrest, thus providing a road map for further arrests and detentions.

Searches of the NSA database could also pinpoint all those who regularly called selected countries overseas, thus generating a list of potential targets for immigration raids. The database could also be used to monitor phone calls made to the media—such as those from the whistleblowers who spoke to the Washington Post about secret CIA torture centers in Eastern Europe or who exposed the illegal NSA monitoring of international phone calls. The White House could also identify government employees who regularly call Democratic members of Congress.

The information could be used to intimidate and blackmail individuals and coerce them into informing on friends, relatives and business associates.

As with all its other attacks on democratic rights, the Bush administration is defending the massive NSA phone spying as an “anti-terrorist” measure. But it is preposterous to claim that the federal government needs information on the call patterns of every American in order to locate and monitor a handful of terrorists. Nor would there be any reason, in relation to anti-terrorist investigations, for the NSA to accumulate the records of phone calls made long before Al Qaeda came into existence."

GWB in an emergency press statement May 11, 2006 trying to quell sweeping outrage after it is revealed that his NSA no-warrant spying program has acquired hundreds of millions of phone records from law abiding American citizens, Sez:

"We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al-Qaida and their known affiliates. So far we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil."

Washington Post Sez:

"Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their (purely) domestic calls, as well. That step still requires a warrant from a federal judge, for which the government must supply evidence of probable cause."

CNN's Jack Cafferty Sez:

"We better hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that's standing between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. He's vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records and yours, and tens of millions of other Americans.

Shortly after 9-11, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth began providing the super secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens, all part of the war on terror, President Bush says.

Why don't you go find Osama Bin Laden and seal the country's borders and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports?

The President rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in USA Today and he declared the government's doing nothing wrong and all of this is just fine.

Is it? Is it legal?

Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens? Because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn't have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation.

Read that sentence again.

A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it's not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says okay and drops the whole thing.

We're in some serious trouble here boys and girls.

Here's the question.

"Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or permission?"

If it doesn't it sure as hell ought to."

Kate Martin, Director, Center for National Security Studies, Sez:

“If they don’t get a court order, it’s a crime.”

Think Progress, Sez:

"...three telecommunications companies – AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth – provided phone call records of tens of millions of Americans to the National Security Agency. Such conduct appears to be illegal and could make the telco firms liable for tens of billions of dollars."

Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News, Sez:

"At what point will we finally say enough!

"Well, if it keeps me safe, if it prevents some crazy (terrorist) from blowing my (backside) off, it's a price we all have to pay," a friend only a few minutes ago told me.

It is why I fear that the terrorists won long ago. Perhaps it was the passage of the Patriot Act that triggered and, later, confirmed this thinking, the way it not long ago forced Joyce Meskis at the Tattered Cover bookstore to hire lawyers and actually go to court to prevent the government from learning what her customers were buying and reading.

It is virtually inescapable, the daily chatter about freedom, about defending it, about spreading it and democracy around the globe. Those in power utter this to us, almost reflexively now, as if a mantra.

Today, I truly wonder what that word means. I used to think that I knew: It's what they taught us in civics class.

Now, I barely recognize it."

David Keene, The American Conservative Union, Sez:

"The American system was set up on the assumption that you can't rely on the good will of people with power."

Conservative Columnist, George Will, Sez:

"[Executive] powers do not include deciding that a law -- FISA, for example -- is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'"

Liberal Columnist, Jim Hightower Sez:

"If Bush can spy illegally, arrest citizens and throw away the key, sanction torture, lie, make his own laws and not be held accountable, then what can't he do?"

Wall Street Journal, 5/11/2006, Sez:

President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. Roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say “things in the country are going in the right direction,” while 69% say “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.”

Raw Story, 5/11/2006, Sez:

"Concern is building among the military and the intelligence community that the US may be preparing for a military strike on Iran, as military assets in key positions are approaching readiness..."

7:03:17 AM