Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Victor Davis Hanson is not a stupid guy, which is why I think this claim is more likely just a flat out distortion and that he damn well knows it:
FISA and wire-intercepts of terrorist communications in the pre-Obama president months were once derided as more of Ashcroft-Bush stomping on the Constitution -- except that now ABC News reports that, in fact, US intelligence agencies supplied India with general knowledge of the rough time period, place, and perhaps even method of terrorist attack. Are we to believe that such newfound capability to warn a country 7000 miles away about terrorist infiltration on its borders would be of no utility here at home?
Hanson is beating up a straw man, and not a particularly good one at that. He is pretending, quite dishonestly, that those who oppose warrantless wiretapping by an administration that claims the unilateral and unquestionable authority to tap any phone and intercept any message they like without any safeguards whatsoever are opposed to all intelligence gathering. This is a rather ridiculous lie and he must know that.
I know of no one who objects to unfettered government surveillance on terror targets overseas. The terrorists who attacked Mumbai were never in the US, so mentioning them is utterly irrelevant to the question of warrantless wiretapping of American citizens on American soil. I guarantee you that Hanson cannot produce a single administration critic who objects to the CIA or NSA spying on those planning terror attacks in Pakistan or Kashmir.
Nor, for that matter, will he find anyone who objects to spying on those who are planning terror operations in the United States. The only thing that critics -- and those critics include plenty of conservatives like Bruce Fein -- object to is the notion that the executive branch can spy on American citizens and intercept their calls without complying with even the incredibly minimal safeguards provided in the FISA law.
That is a far more reasonable position than the one that Hanson projects on to his political enemies. But since he has a much harder time defeating the genuine position, he invents a false one that is much easier to vanquish. Quite deceitful.
Politics
Comments
Why is spying on Americans without safeguards wrong but spying on non-Americans without safeguards isn't?
You've always been good at arguing that standards of freedom should apply everywhere, blasting European or Canadian hate speech laws as strongly as probelms in the US, so I'm surprised that you don't seem to be arguing the rest of the world should be protected from people claiming "the unilateral and unquestionable authority to tap any phone and intercept any message"
And in response to some of the likely comments, no I am not saying no surveillance just that if there are things the NSA should not do, it should not do them to anyone.
Posted by: Matty | December 8, 2008 9:49 AM
Not only that, but "utility" isn't the controversial point. Normally conservatives would be the first to acknowledge this, but the point is that there are a lot of things the government could do that would be "useful", that we don't let the government do for reasons of individual liberty.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | December 8, 2008 9:50 AM
@Matty: I will pass on the legal/constitutional issue you raise (since IANAL), but there actually is a practical reason for the arrangement you suggest. If the NSA limits its search to people who are reasonably suspected of having some link to terrorists, then a larger fraction of the data they gather will have some relationship to terrorism. Looking for a needle in a haystack is easier when the haystack is smaller.
Ed's point is an important one: that even though the FISA law provides almost nothing in the way of practical protections, the Bush administration has been unwilling to go through the motions of granting those protections. Yes, it's illegal. It's also stupid, unless the real purpose is to spy on people for whom those minimal protections would suffice to protect them from legal surveillance, because it increases the size of the haystack in which you are looking for the needle.
Posted by: Eric Lund | December 8, 2008 10:21 AM
Posted by: WScott | December 8, 2008 10:48 AM
Spying on your own citizens is a power that is very easy to abuse. Spying on another state citizens is much less so. If the Italian government listens to me saying, "Bush is a nitwit", they have no motivation for action. Our own government might be tempted to punish me.
Posted by: Michael Suttkus, II | December 8, 2008 10:53 AM
Wait, wait, wait....
A deceitful neo-con?
What is going to happen next? Gambling in Rick's Café Américain?
Posted by: NJ | December 8, 2008 11:01 AM
@Matty - in addition to Michael Suttkus' point, our government has much less POWER to punish citizens of another nation. We can't prosecute them unless they enter our borders, we can only attack them if we're willing to commit an act of war in their nation, etc. The most we could normally do (barring illegal acts by spies, Special Forces, and such) is pass on the data to the state in question. If they then choose not to respect the terrorist's civil rights, then that is a problem for that nation's electorate (or subjects) to deal with.
Posted by: BobApril | December 8, 2008 11:02 AM
The tension that Matty identifies is one that did occur to me while writing this post, but I didn't take the time to address it. I would say Michael Suttkus is on the right track in distinguishing between the legality of such surveillance here and the legality of such surveillance abroad (though I do recognize the moral argument to be made for consistency here and, frankly, I'm not sure this is a great answer to it). There is far more incentive for the government to abuse that surveillance power in this country than outside of it. Such surveillance is easily turned into a pretext for blackmail of political enemies. We've seen it happen with the COINTELPRO program and civil rights leaders. That's why demanding warrants and a showing of probable cause before spying domestically is of particular importance. That does not mean, of course, that our government would not engage in the same behavior of political leaders abroad; in fact, I have no doubt that they have done so around the world, using surveillance to dig up embarrassing information on world leaders in order to blackmail them into going along with our wishes. But purely as a practical matter, our constitution provides no protection for those people in the way it does American citizens. Is that a satisfactory answer? On a moral level, probably not. But it's still the current reality. Frankly, my thinking on this is not entirely settled and consistent. I'd certainly be interested in hearing arguments on both sides that might help me reach a more consistent conclusion.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | December 8, 2008 11:03 AM
I think you're of a hiding to nothing if you're going to object to unauthorized overseas surveillance. If a large portion of the American public doesn't see anything wrong with the deaths of between half-a-million to a million foreigners so we can "fight the (few hundred) terrorists over there rather than over here" then listening to some of their phone calls isn't going to raise much of stink in the US no matter how egregious it may be.
It's just a fact of human psychology that the further away (in tribal terms) a person is, the less we care about their health, liberty, and well-being. And from what I have observed over the past eight years living in the US, that seems to be even more true the more conservative you are.
Posted by: tacitus | December 8, 2008 11:28 AM
I've always found VDH to be pretty stupid. This is just like, item #1,000 in the pile of evidence.
Posted by: steve s | December 8, 2008 11:44 AM
Posted by: Metro | December 8, 2008 1:24 PM
...now ABC News reports that, in fact, US intelligence agencies supplied India with general knowledge of the rough time period, place, and perhaps even method of terrorist attack.
Assuming these reports are true, this raises some questions that advocates of indiscriminate, unchecked spying almost never address: did the Indian authorities have any reason to consider the information they got reliable? Was information about a Mumbai attack even distinguishable from the rest of the data-noise such spying inevitably produces? Indiscriminate surveillance, with little or no restraint, is bound to catch a lot more meaningless noise than valid threat information, so why should -- how COULD -- Indian authorities have distinguished one bit of ominous-sounding info. from the rest? Given the number of "suspected" "terrorists" our own country has detained and held for YEARS without even specific charges, why should the Indians trust intelligence reports from the same bunch of morons who gve us that policy?
Here's another example from WW-II: conspiracy-buffs often say that FDR had intelligence warning of Japanese interest in Pearl Harbor as a possible target, but chose to ignore it. The whole truth is, yes, he did get such information, but he also got similar information about dozens of such potential targets all over the Pacific -- because the Japanese had, in fact, shown exactly the same interest in all of those locations, not just Pearl Harbor. (Persico, "Roosevelt's Secret War") For the intelligence community, Pearl Harbor didn't stand out in any way until it was too late.
Posted by: Raging Bee | December 8, 2008 1:53 PM
Matty, Good question. You certainly made me pause and ponder, and realize that it's one I need to ponder longer.
Posted by: James Hanley | December 8, 2008 2:07 PM
VDH isn't stupid, but he likes his strawmen. His arguments generally begin reasonably, not morphing to straw until the second page, and even then his challenging prose so overpowers the morph as to obscure it. Here he just wasn't as sublte.
Posted by: Adam | December 8, 2008 4:54 PM
Off topic but not really
The fact that Ed is conflicted about the moral principles involved (on US soil vs. foreign soil - read above),
the fact that a lot of us here are conflicted on this topic and on many major issues,
the fact that we feel that we must work through our conflicts via thinking, reasoning, evidence, and weighing effects,
the fact that we generally see more gray than black and white,
the fact that we look to no supernatural authority, and hold no person, book, or teaching infallible
are all illustrative that we are probably not RWA types.
RWA types love pat solutions and dictates, and revere strength of conviction over right or wrong especially when it comes to their perceived traditions, or things or people that they deem define them as persons.
At the risk of sounding elitist (I really feel that I am just stating my considered observations from decades of living) we are the 49% of the educated world that must always maintain control.
I calculate in a society like the USA's there are 30% RWA, and 21% just plain too lazy, apathetic, scared, self-centered, and/or ignorant to be freethinkers and who will go with the flow mostly (true swing voters in a basic sense). So that leaves us 49% who let reason and facts, consequences to liberties, and fairness play in our morality and decision-making. Those three ingredients make for arduous but fun mental times.
Just be aware that we drive the RWA followers crazy angry (with our "freethinking" and dissident ways) and cause the RWA leaders to push for more power holding and/or retaliatory actions to quell us.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | December 9, 2008 7:49 AM
What is to stop the FBI from giving Britain a list of US citizens on U.S. soil to be monitored through Britain's facilities, and then asking for a report?
Posted by: Gingerbaker | December 9, 2008 8:43 AM
I find it strange why many amercian citizens believe that rights only extends to US citizens.
Granted, I believe that Ed thinks many rights are universal, freedom of speech, and a right to counsel and a fair trial. But as an outsider it looks like to many US citizens, such trivialities are of no consequence, when the victims are foreign.
If it was discovered that the Danish Military Intelligence, had kidnapped foreign nationals from allied countries, send them to foreign dictatorships to be tortured and killed, the Government would fall in about 2 seconds flat, at most 4 days, if it happened on dec 24th.
We actually had something like this happen, when the Danish government decided to put a hold on allowing some people to have their spouses join them in Denmark, this delay meant some of them were killed. Even though the spuses were not Danish citizens, this meant the government had to resign.
But you elected the same government for a second term, even after they have tortured an killed foreign nationals?
And I get Gingerbakers point, but my guess is that Ed would have a problem with foreign intelligence monitoring US citizens, its only US intelligence monitoring foreign citizens that is OK by him. Am I right Ed?
Posted by: Soren | December 9, 2008 9:25 AM
Matty -
I'm not nearly as conflicted as others here seem to be about your point. To me it's pretty cut and dry.
I absolutely believe that the safeguards that (should) protect Americans from unfettered surveillance by their government, should protect citizens of other countries. But not from surveillance by my government. Rather, they should protect such citizens from surveillance by their own governments, because as others have noted, that is an inherent danger to a free and open political process.
I do believe that we have a responsibility to utilize the intelligence we gather outside the U.S. carefully. History has repeatedly shown that interfering with the political process of other nations is fraught with considerable risk and is usually, if not always a very bad idea. I also believe that it is dangerous to gather too much intelligence, because as others have pointed out, we can create too big a haystack through which we must search.
The danger inherent to fettering foreign intelligence officers, is that they deal with rapidly changing situations that may require they take actions without communicating with superiors for extended periods of time. While I lack the naivety to pretend spying is anything like we see in the movies or a good spy novel, I am also not naive enough to assume that spies always have the ability to ask permission before, or soon after they decide upon a new course of action, based on information they have gathered.
And yes, the same could be said of domestic law enforcement. The difference is, that we have a responsibility to our citizens and our constitution that outweighs the need for unfettered intelligence gathering. Too, when spying on Americans and those granted the legal protections of Americans, the risk of abusing the system for political gain is much greater - the stakes are more personal. In essence, people in the U.S. have far less to gain through abusing surveillance authority in other countries, than they might on U.S. soil.
Posted by: DuWayne | December 9, 2008 10:09 AM
Gingerbaker:
Well, first, I suspect this is illegal in at least one of the countries involved, though I could be wrong.
But here's the real question: What does Britain get out of this? The Brits aren't going to put their resources at the FBI's disposal unless doing so gives them SOME benefit. IF you're proposing a reciprocal arrangement, you run into the issue of population size, there are a lot more Americans to monitor, which means the Brits would be doing most of the work.
Now, if there's some evidence that the Americans in question are actually a danger to Britain, that would be a different story. But in that case there would be evidence, which could be taken to a judge to get a warrant. Perhaps a secret judge who issues warrants for the flimsiest of reasons. The Bush Administration refused to be subjected to even THAT tiny bit of scrutiny.
Posted by: phantomreader42 | December 10, 2008 12:39 PM