NYT Article: Police Surveillance of Cyclists as Political Dissidents

wrote:

Bob wrote in part:

Things are seldom clearcut when the law confronts new technology which
is what has happened here.

Fine. Then why not take their case to the court which
already exists to decide just these sorts of issues? Why
not go to congress? Why not stick something in the
Patriot Act. The administration is not empowered to make
up its own laws or ignore existing law as it sees fit.
Although, I suppose they will have to argue that they
are.

r15757,

I don't know where you're going with this, but it's this simple: The
FISA court--which allows you to shoot first and ask questions (up to
72hrs) later was too slow and cumbersome and needed to be circumvented
in the interests of ... of ... of ....

Look, the current administration has already assured you that the only
time they circumvented the process was to wiretap *known* Al Qaeda
agents talking with people in the United States--a
domestic-to-international scenario (all that talk about partnering
with the phone companies to dump and mine massive amounts of data that
may or may not have been domestic-to-domestic aside).

Are you telling me that their word isn't good enough for you? What do
you think FISA's court would have done, anyway? Make them prove out
their case for 'probable cause,' and then--if all went well--allow the
tap?

You know they weren't going to do that. In fact, I can cite you
*five* examples where they *denied* the right to wiretap (maybe after
the wiretapping was done. Maybe) [1]

For shame. You must be French, mais non?

[/sarcasm]

[1] ok, it was out of about 20,000 requests, but ... still ... five is
a *lot*

[snip]
--
Live simply so that others may simply live