http://arstechnica.com/…

The executive branch may conduct warrantless surveillance in the name of national security, according to a decision by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Court of Review published Thursday. The decision, handed down in August, but published in redacted form this week, blessed surveillance under the stopgap Protect America Act, which was superseded last year by the FISA Amendments Act.

Like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which issues secret warrants for both physical searches and electronic surveillance under the FISA law, the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review seldom makes its opinions public. In an order dated January 12, however, the Court found the release of an edited, unclassified version of its August opinion to be in the public interest.

The ruling concerns a challenge to surveillance authorized by the attorney general under the PAA. Though the party raising the challenge is not named—the opinion refers only to the “petitioner”—it is likely to be either a telecom or an Internet Service Provider, in principle, however, any entity with information about a target “reasonably believed to be located outside the United States,” such as a university or financial institution. Under the terms of the PAA, the attorney general is empowered to issue “authorizations” for surveillance that has traditionally required a court order issued by an independent magistrate.

For the first time, the Court explicitly asserted an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement for foreign intelligence surveillance meant to serve a national security purpose.

…

Concerns about abuse, the court held, amounted to “little more than a lament about the risk that government officials will not operate in good faith,” a risk present even when a warrant is issued. In effect, the court reasoned that since judges generally presume that law enforcement officials are being diligent and truthful in their applications for a warrant, the same presumption should be granted when intelligence agencies conduct surveillance without a warrant.

The court seemed similarly unconcerned with the danger that innocent persons’ information would be swept up in surveillance, calling such worries “overblown” in the light of “minimization” procedures designed to cull away any such “incidental” collections. “The government assures us that it does not maintain a database of incidentally collected information from non-targeted United States persons,” the Court wrote, “and there is no evidence to the contrary.”

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Nope… nothing about exceptions for national security.

Little more than a lament that government bureaucrats will not operate in good faith? Seriously? So the drug war and Guantanamo and the whole torture debate and corruption scandals and the lying by the Bush administration about their wiretapping program and… and… and… are not enough to have serious questions regarding the bureaucrats moral compass?

http://arstechnica.com/…

The US last week released its 2007 wiretapping stats, and they show that such surveillance is up a full 20 percent over the year before. The number of non-secret wiretaps is higher than it has ever been in the last decade, and not a single application was denied in all of 2007. If you’re concerned about privacy, though, the report makes clear that you’re statistically unlikely to be targeted unless you use a cell phone to run drugs. Murder might also earn you a wiretap, but apart from that, the authorities don’t seem to use wiretaps in all but unusual cases.

2,208 wiretaps were requested last year, up from 1,839 the year before, and the vast majority of them were run by state authorities; only 457 wiretaps were executed by the feds. No applications for wiretap were denied, but this is hardly uncommon. Since 1997, some 15,000 wiretaps have been made, but only four applications were rejected in that entire time.

When we look at the prevalence of wiretaps, two trends stand out. One is that taps are almost exclusively used on “portable devices,” including digital pagers and portable phones. In fact, 94 percent of all taps authorized last year were for such devices. The second trend is that most wiretaps are used in narcotics cases. 81 percent of all taps were for drug-related crime, with murder and assault coming in a distant second (6 percent).

Wiretaps apparently have something in common with shopping at bulk retailers; when you buy more items at once, the price goes down. The cost per intercept has been dropping since 2003, when it peaked at $62,164. In 2007, that number had fallen to $48,477 per investigation. While that still sounds pricey, the report notes that drug intercepts have often been used to make big busts. One set of 2007 wiretaps in Morris County, New Jersey led to the arrest of 105 people; another, in New York, scooped up 51 people, 48 of whom were later convicted. Another 57-day wiretap in California led to the seizure of 40 pounds of methamphetamine, four kilograms of cocaine, and $700,000 in cash.Of course, those are just regular warrants. The Justice Department also released information this week on secret warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. These numbers are also rising, and have been going up since 2001; the increase is a dramatic one. In 2001, the Court approved only 1,012 applications, but approved 2,370 last year.

I’m glad the government is getting a better rate at which to waste our money on rights infringement. Is it likely that these larger drug busts got guys who were actually harming people? Yes, but those people should be arrested for that harm and not providing a drug to another individual in a completely consensual act. This war on drugs is a war on the public. It’s a negative sum game. A drug addiction is a personal problem, a family problem, a community problem. It’s a medical problem. It should be treated as such. In the least I’d like to see some consistency. Alcohol and tobacco are the precursor to far more harm then marijuana or LSD.

And as for the privacy invasion. Wasn’t all this FISA enhancement requested for terrorism? Why are we catching NY governors paying for sex and people selling goods?