While We're Busy Counting Political Gaffes

Our leaders continue the difficult and arduous task of securing the blessings of liberty:

The House on Wednesday reauthorized for five years broad electronic eavesdropping powers that legalized and expanded the George W. Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

The FISA Amendments Act, (.pdf) which is expiring at year’s end, allows the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is believed outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted “to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

The government has also interpreted the law to mean that as long as the real target is al-Qaida, the government can wiretap purely domestic e-mails and phone calls without getting a warrant from a judge.

I am guessing we can expect this measure to sail through the Senate, be signed into law by our President, and go completely unremarked by our Serious Persons because it is, well, so thoroughly uncontroversial. Who thinks about 4th Amendment search and seizure issues anymore but the most utterly unserious persons?

This is one of the most distressing elements in our post-9/11 world: that security and surveillance policies that would once have been considered outside the pale now enjoy the imprimatur of bipartisanship. Thus commences a foray in apartment-hunting, otra vez.

---Vitelius