Time for a second look at government spying

Time for a second look at government spying

In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, very few politicians were willing to challenge the administration’s demand for new surveillance powers contained in what was cleverly dubbed the USA Patriot Act.

Indeed, in 2002, Max Cleland, a Democratic senator from Georgia who voted for the Patriot Act, was defeated in a campaign that centered on his reluctance to support President Bush’s Homeland Security Act.

Amazingly, Cleland, a Vietnam veteran who lost three limbs in that war, was defeated by a challenger who had received student and medical deferments during the war but who questioned whether Cleland had “the courage to lead” on matters of national security.

Today, there is a different climate in Washington and national politics.

It is not that Americans are any more willing to be attacked by terrorists than they were in 2002 or 2004, but they have reason to be more suspicious of whether the government is using its expanded powers responsibly.

They’ve come to realize that when government officials are given the authority to snoop into what American citizens are doing, snoop they will.

And last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged that his agency improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during investigations.

Extraordinary letters

National security letters are administrative subpoenas that can be issued under the Patriot Act in terror and spy investigations. They effectively negate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures unless a warrant has been issued by a judge based on probable cause.

They are also extraordinary in that national security letters are so secret that the subject of these searches is not told of their existence and third parties who are required to provide information are barred from discussing it with anyone except authorized government agents.

Obviously such a powerful tool should not be abused.

So the FBI’s acknowledgement that it underreported the number of national-security letters it issued by 4,600 in 2006 is unsettling.

Congress should renew its efforts to establish some type of independent oversight of national security letters. That would provide Congress with the ability to determine whether the extraordinary power the administration has been given is not being abused and whether the letters are as effective an antiterrorism tool as the administration claims them to be.

This is not a call to become complacent about the threat of terrorism at home or abroad, only a suggestion that it is time to reassess whether the Bill of Rights — which defines the United States as a free nation — is being unnecessarily undermined.