U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27wiretap.html?_r=1&hp

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:26 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Wants to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   When the general counsel for the FBI says "We're talking about lawfully authorized intercepts. We're not talking expanding authority", she deserves a serious hearing. She is, after all our public servant, executing the electorate's will. The request comes however against a backdrop of lawless behavior by our own public servants. In the only case to go to trial, judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the NSA's wiretaps of al-haRamain violated the 1978 FISA statute.  We still don't know how many illegal wiretaps were placed, or against whom they were placed, or indeed if they are still ongoing.  In the end, Congress may pass the legislation that the FBI is asking for. It would be foolish to do so before we have learned how existing authorizations have been trampled.

Barry Levine