Dispatches from the Creation Wars

The DOJ claims that they've fixed those problems:

The Justice Department, in response to inquiries from The New York Times, acknowledged Wednesday night that there had been problems with the N.S.A. surveillance operation, but said they had been resolved.

As part of a periodic review of the agency's activities, the department "detected issues that raised concerns," it said. Justice Department officials then "took comprehensive steps to correct the situation and bring the program into compliance" with the law and court orders, the statement said. It added that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. went to the national security court to seek a renewal of the surveillance program only after new safeguards were put in place.

This would be a whole lot easier to believe if the same people who say they've fixed the problem weren't invoking the state secrets privilege in court. Hell, they don't even think the courts should have any authority at all to even consider whether the laws were violated under the previous administration, even after acknowledging that the program was operating outside the bounds of the law. So why, exactly, should we trust that they aren't still violating the law?

The FISA statute has penalties for violating that law for a reason. The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, thinks that those penalties should be completely unenforceable, that no court can even consider the possibility that the law might have been violated.

The questions may not be settled yet. Intelligence officials say they are still examining the scope of the N.S.A. practices, and Congressional investigators say they hope to determine if any violations of Americans' privacy occurred. It is not clear to what extent the agency may have actively listened in on conversations or read e-mail messages of Americans without proper court authority, rather than simply obtained access to them.

The intelligence officials said the problems had grown out of changes enacted by Congress last July in the law that regulates the government's wiretapping powers, and the challenges posed by enacting a new framework for collecting intelligence on terrorism and spying suspects.

And guess what? Obama voted in favor of those changes. There was nothing wrong with the previous FISA standards (other than the Bush administration's refusal to comply with them). The rule was simple: you want to wiretap anyone or intercept any communication originating inside the US, you go to the FISA court, which operates in secret so there's no risk of releasing classified information, and you get a warrant.

Hell, you didn't even have to show probable cause. And if you had to make a snap decision, you could go ahead and intercept the communication and you had 72 hours to go to the FISA court retroactively to get the warrant. But even those very minimal safeguards were too much for the Bush administration and Obama voted to weaken them.

And here's how bad things got as a result:

Separate from the new inquiries, the Justice Department has for more than two years been investigating aspects of the N.S.A.'s wiretapping program.

As part of that investigation, a senior F.B.I. agent recently came forward with what the inspector general's office described as accusations of "significant misconduct" in the surveillance program, people with knowledge of the investigation said. Those accusations are said to involve whether the N.S.A. made Americans targets in eavesdropping operations based on insufficient evidence tying them to terrorism.

And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact -- as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 -- with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman's conversations, the official said.

The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.

I don't trust any president with such power. You shouldn't either.