Bush Wiretapping Program Violates Federal Law on Surveillance.

While the Founding Fathers drafted the United States Constitution to prevent just what happened in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the case of domestic wiretaps, the modern day Republicans simply scrapped the Constitution to wiretap their own and undoubtedly the Bush wiretapping program violates federal law.

This all began with the passing of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Law in the late 1970s to create a special secret court to authorize wiretaps on Americans in order to gather intelligence.

Under George W. Bush, even the requirement of a warrant was scrapped as the federal government created the NSA warrantless wiretapping program in which the National Security Agency could listen in on any and all calls between an American and a foreign national.

This was nothing new however as the United States and the other four members of the UK-US Security Agreement have been using the ECHELON program to listen in on calls and read electronic communications from all around the world.

Bush Wiretapping Program Violates Federal Law: FISA

In the nineteen seventies the United States Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Act allowed the federal government allowed to spy on individuals living within the United States under two preconditions.

Firstly, the federal government, mainly the National Security Agency, would need to provide evidence that the person that they want to wiretap is involved in some way with a possible foreign threat to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and obtain a warrant for a legal wiretap from that court.

The second precondition is that only calls being made from or going to foreign nations may be wiretapped and no domestic calls may be.

Bush Wiretapping Program Violates Federal Law: Warrantless

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration had no idea what to do to prevent future terrorist attacks (reading State Department memos warning you of an attack and not firing all the gay Arabic translators who could have translated the intelligence could have been a good start).

Despite it being a fairly simple procedure to acquire a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court which gave the federal government the benefit of the doubt in almost all cases, the Bush Administration wanted to spy on every single American.

The National Security Agency tapped every phone and listened to any and all conversations that ‘they believed’ to be international calls.

This power was of course abused as several former workers in the program have detailed instances of listening in to people having perfectly innocent conversations and even having phone sex.

Undoubtedly, the Bush wiretapping program violates federal law.

Bush Wiretapping Program Violates Federal Law: Response

Rather than impeach, punish, or even admonish the Bush Administration for the worst case of breach of Constitutional rights since the USA PATRIOT Act, the Congress (who is afraid of being called wimpy Commies if they do not help Bush destroy the Constitution) the Congress helped Bush continue to wiretap Americans.In an Amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the United States Congress overwhelmingly voted to remove the need for a warrant to tap American residents.

The bill also gave the telecommunications companies which were complicit in allowing the United States Federal Government to tap American phone lines complete immunity.