quote:Originally posted by interventor:
This bill doesn't affect US residents, period. It only allows warrentless easedropping of foreign to foreign call that go thru US line or switches.
Probablly from Waziristan or Baluchistan to Canada (whole nest of al-Qaeda there) or the triangle region down in South America. Please read bill while engaging brain.
Bush Isn't Spying on al Qaeda ... He's Spying on You
http://alternet.org/rights/58806/?page=1
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The dispute over whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales committed perjury when he parsed words about George W. Bush's warrantless surveillance program misses a larger point: the extraordinary secrecy surrounding these spying operations is not aimed at al-Qaeda, but at the American people.
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But al-Qaeda terrorists always have assumed that their electronic communications were vulnerable to interception, which is why 9/11 attackers like Mohamed Atta traveled overseas for face-to-face meetings with their handlers. They limited their phone calls to mostly routine conversations.
The terrorists also had no reason to know or to care that the U.S. government was or wasn't getting wiretap approval from the secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They simply took for granted that their communications could be intercepted and acted accordingly.
It never made sense to think that al-Qaeda terrorists suddenly would get loose-lipped just because the FISA court was or wasn't in the mix. The FISA court rubber-stamps almost all wiretap requests from the Executive Branch for domestic spying, and overseas calls don't require a warrant.