Liberty Maven

According to the media the big debate over the FISA warrantless wiretapping bill is because the Democrats don’t want retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies and the Republicans do. Indeed this is an important part of the debate, but it is hardly what the real debate should be. It just shows that our lawmakers care little about the rule of law in the Constitution. If they did care the debate would be about whether it is permitted by the Constitution to spy on American citizens without a warrant.

Instead they focus on the telecom immunity portion which is almost just as bad, but from a liberty standpoint focusing on this portion of FISA reeks of political misdirection. The recent so called compromise on FISA by the Democrats clearly demonstrates neither party truly cares about “upholding the Constitution”. Someone needs to remind them of their oath.

It is good advice to always be weary when a lawmaker uses the word “compromise”. A zebra truly is a horse designed by a committee. This FISA zebra like so many others coming from “compromise” just means a bigger and costlier federal government and less freedom for American citizens.

It is close to impossible technologically to guarantee that government eavesdropping as outlined by FISA will only be done when one side of the communication resides outside of the United States. This says nothing of the fact that government required monitoring systems put in place by communications companies give hacker terrorists another method of breaching the system. So it can be argued that FISA is not just unconstitutional but it makes America more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, not less.

In fact this type of attack has already occurred in Greece leading up to the Olympic Games in 2004. That attack and other technological issues regarding FISA are explored in depth in an article by the IEEE Computer Society’s Computer and Security publication earlier this year.

FISA is yet another in the litany of “good sounding” legislation with horrible unforeseen consequences.