Spying; FISA

A hand-picked White House advisory panel finds no reason to object to President Bush's warrantless surveillance program against American citizens. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Board says the civil liberties of American citizens are not violated by warrantless electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking.

After operating mostly in secret for a year, the five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Board is preparing to release its first report to Congress next week.

The report finds that both the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program and the Treasury Department's monitoring of international banking transactions have sufficient privacy protections, three board members told The Associated Press in telephone interviews.

Both programs have multiple layers of review before sensitive information is accessed, they said.

"We looked at the program, we visited NSA and met with the top people all the way down to those doing the hands-on work," said Carol Dinkins, a Houston lawyer and former Reagan administration assistant attorney general who chairs the board.

"The program is structured and implemented in a way that is properly protective and attentive to civil liberties," she said.

What a surprise it is learn that a panel of Bush's cronies approves of his little pet project. This just in: water is wet.

As with most defenses of Bush's activities, this one manages to be completely beside the point. I'm not a high-powered Republican lawyer with connections to the White House, but I know the difference between "legal" and "illegal."

"Legal" refers to something that conforms to, or derives its authority from the law. The relevant law in this case is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to gain court approval for the kinds of electronic surveillance that Bush is conducting against American citizens. This, and not the degree of "protections" built in to the program, is the issue.

Arguing the merits of Bush's unlawful surveillance program is meaningless and insulting. If George W. Bush stole my car, I would not be interested in his assurances that he was driving it within the speed limit. I would want my car back, and I would want him to go jail for stealing it. Likewise, I am not interested in assertions that Bush's unlawful electronic surveillance program is being conducted "in a way that is properly protective and attentive to" my privacy. I want the unlawful electronic surveillance to stop, and I want him and his underlings punished for having engaged in it.