Monday, September 11, 2006

Bush's Forgets Own FISA Changes

So you've probably heard Bush complaining about how the FISA court isn't sufficient to keep up with the current threat to the country, hence he's needed to use warrant-less wiretaps. You might have forgotten that Bush and Congress worked together to modernize FISA in October of 2001 to be able to better combat terrorists.

Glenn Greenwald points out that Bush's current complaints are the same as his previous praise. From 2001: "The existing law was written in the era of rotary telephones. This new law that I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet, and cell phones."

And from now: "When FISA was passed in 1978, there was no widely accessible Internet, and almost all calls were made on fixed landlines. Since then, the nature of communications has changed, quite dramatically. The terrorists who want to harm America can now buy disposable cell phones, and open anonymous e-mail addresses. Our laws need to change to take these changes into account." See that jump from 1978 to now, skipping the changes he himself made in 2001. I'm pretty sure disposable cell phones (or at least calling cards) were around in 2001 and I'm very certain anonymous email was.

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