There’s been some terrific analysis in the blogosphere about whether President Bush is correct that he had the power to authorize warrantless surveillance. (See here and here for a roundup of posts.) The arguments thus far focus on what the President has already done, but the President has stated that he will continue the warrantless surveillance [link no longer available] “for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens.”
Judge Richard Posner has written an op-ed in the Washington Post today where he calls for a massive program of surveillance of U.S. citizens — their email, documents, phone conversations, nearly everything they say or do — regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing or not. Posner’s argument is quite startling and troublesome. Posner writes:
A story in Wired reveals that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has been editing his own Wikipedia entry:
In addition to the blog post roundup I did yesterday, here are more blog posts about Bush’s NSA surveillance worth reading:
An interesting article from Salon discusses how Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft assist the Chinese government with censorship. The companies filter out search results that the government wants to censor, and they help the government track down individuals engaging in criticism and dissent:
In this post, I aim to explore more in depth whether Bush had the legal power to authorize warrantless NSA surveillance. As I was putting the finishing touches on this post, I noticed that Orin Kerr beat me to the punch, and I find that we’ve identified the same issues and are in substantial agreement. His post is a lot longer and more detailed than mine (which is quite long itself), so read mine for a broader overview and Orin’s for the treatise-length account.
There is a lot of great analysis and opinion in the blogosphere regarding Bush’s authorization of warrantless NSA surveillance. Here are some useful links:
The ending of this season’s The Apprentice (with Donald Trump) has everybody talking. Rebecca Jarvis and Randal Pinkett were the finalists, both of whom Trump thought were outstanding stars. He hired Randal and later asked Randal whether he should also hire Rebecca. Randal said “no” because “there can be only one Apprentice” and the show is called “the Apprentice, not the Apprenti [sic].” Ann Althouse has more details and extensive commentary here and here.
Yesterday, I blogged about a startling story in the NY Times about President Bush’s authorizing the NSA to conduct domestic surveillance without a warrant or even a court order. According to the NY Times story, the “legal opinions that support the N.S.A. operation remain classified.”
Today in the NY Times is a follow-up story about the legal basis for the President’s actions. According to the story:
Responding to reports that revealed that the President authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance within the US, President Bush said: