In today's New York Times, Philip Bobbitt says in "Why We Listen":

In the debate over whether the National Security Agency's eavesdropping violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, we must not lose sight of the fact that the world we entered on 9/11 will require rewriting that statute and other laws. The tiresome pas de deux between rigid civil libertarians in denial of reality and an overaggressive executive branch seemingly heedless of the law, while comforting to partisans of both groups, is not in the national interest.

Who watches the watchmen? On one hand, it's tricky to safeguard the data and trust the users of a vast database to stay narrowly focused. On the other hand, users do very little to secure their cordless and cell phone and internet traffic and send out email messages as plain text. Should they enjoy any privacy protection at all?

It really is a most difficult question. I not sure there really is any absolute answer in this matter. And I am pretty sure that no answer will come from partisan sniping whose only real aim is to bring down the other guy.

The only thing I'm sure about is that if one fine day I find that my only options are to jump or burn I sure as heck am going to wish someone had been listening.

I have come to the conclusion that many of the issues that face us in this war can be summed up by the following: You have two children. The boat is sinking. There is only one place left on the last life boat.

Choose.

Period!

We each start out with an infinity of unenumerated rights which are only limited by physical realities or the will of others. Some of these bullies are terrorists that want us dead, taking away our right to live. Others are members of our own government, regardless of intent, that would take away anything we hold confidential.

I say we draw the line at our border and with citizens abroad. I believe we need to secure our borders and revoke citizenship and expel those that would conspire in clearly delimited activities aimed at physically harming citizens anywhere they happen to be. We haven't done that.

We need to be proactive in going after threats abroad. Foreign governments need to prove they are our friends by actively helping us identify terrorists within their borders. Any that defy us should have immigration rights of their nationals revoked.

It doesn't bother me that the government is listening in on foreign phone calls. It would bother me if they didn't. However, citizens should have the presumption of innocents which means a warrant should be issued before any wire taps within this country. I want terrorists that are citizens actively hunted by our FBI. I would like to see them lose citizenship and all the rights that confers. After we expel them, I want the CIA (one that has our national interests) to see who they associate with and keep tabs on them.

The whole terrorist threat comes down to people we need to watch. We need eternal vigilance. It's what we pay taxes for.

Most email and internet communications (and cellphone calls) are the electronic equivalent of sending a postcard, given the nature of those communications. How much privacy protection should users of these services get, indeed?

I thought the lessons of 9/11 were that we need better human intelligence; that the FAA failed to ensure safe civil air travel; that the various entrenched bureaucracies involved with keeping tabs on foreigners were dangerously uncoordinated; that many parts of the government failed to share information with each other so that the overall picture could be assesed/preventative action taken.

There is a common thread of institutional decay here.

I don't see how monitoring American's phone calls will make the government more coordinated and less Katrina-like, except perhaps if they focussed that same capability on Capitol Hill, causing deparments to know what each other are doing and assimilating all those disparate databases into one big database, which experts would then datamine and visualize in hyperbolic trees to deduce what is actually going on in America.

Have we heard of even one instance where a U.S. citizen, born and raised here has had his phone, e-mail, fax etc. bugged? Or have we heard of an instance where two such people are being or have been bugged?

Thus far the phone calls, e-mails, etc being watched are people who are in contact with known or suspected terrorists or enemies of our country living elsewhere. The people currently being watched inside the U.S. are people living here on green cards, or people who have become citizens who are working outside of the oath they took to become citizens. Hopefully anyone who is here illegally who shows up on this radar is being closely watched and will be pitched out.

Having stated what I firmly believe is actually happening, lets look at what could happen.

The NSA, FBI, CIA could be listening in on my phone calls and here me telling my wife we need to have meatloaf for supper, and please make some of those biscuits that blow up really big. They'll hear my next door neighbor telling her boyfriend she can't go clubbing tonight, she got too bombed last night and she has exams coming up.

Now the computers listening in for keywords like blow up and bombed may kick out our conversations to be watched. But if we ARE NOT really doing anything wrong, what's the BFD? THe watchdogs are not going to spend millions or months looking at us. Why is this listening in any more of an invasion than letting a cop hide behind a shrub and then lighting me up with his radar gun to see if I am speeding? Or pulling me over if I am weaving to see if I am drunk? I sneezed and wobbled the wheel, but without looking at me I could potentially be out there killing someone with my car. This is how normal innocent things happen every day to normal innocent people.

This whole thing is such a bunch of partisan cr@p ola' I can't hardly believe its getting this amount of air time. Where is the liberal out cry to see who leaked this story? Why isn't this a leak to be looked? Why is Ms Plame a big deal, but another security leak is NOT a big deal? It is all politics, that's why.

Now. Where are the people who have had their lives harmed? How many cases of false imprisonment have occured due to these phone taps? If even one person could be found in jail falsely, for 10 minutes even, the media would be plastering their face all over the nation. Cindy Sheehan would be off the front page and jailed "Bob Smith" would be on every telecast, radiocast and newspaper front page.

This is all a bunch of liberal we hate "W", he's breaking the law, someone save us from these Nazi tactics hype.

Depending on the Cell Phone being used, it can be pretty damn secure to anything other than a government agency with the correct key.

There have been lab based demonstrations of how you could, in theory, break the GSM encryption algorithms, but I'm not aware of anybody actually showing it done in practise.

If you can get inside the network and have the correct keys then it's straight forward, but it's not like the bad old days when pretty much anybody with a scanner could listen to cell phone calls.

I don't know enough about CDMA but based on how they multiplex the signal across different base stations, I would image it would be even harder to crack.

The mob watches the watchmen.

I think it was on this site, but if not, I recall someone mentioning the IRS database containing far more information that is dangerous to the average citizen than NSA. The NYT is not ringing the alarm bell against the IRS intrusion into our personal lives.

The IRS knows my SSN, my employer, my salary, where I live, if I'm married or not, how many children I have, my children's age, whether or not my children are students, and then if I try to take full advantage of the IRS for my taxes, I have to provide them with whom I provide charity, how I spend my money, and what durable products I own.

Politician already misuse this data. What's the topic in almost any major campaign season? "Did candidate release his or her tax filings?" How does that information get used? Is it used to the benefit of the person that filed?

Yes, the information collected by the government is likely to be misused. However, I'm less worried about my phone call being monitored than I am about the information that is already collected. Heck, call it a government service that you don't have to fill out a form explaining the phone call. If I have any complaints, it would be the waste of resources dedicated to figuring out that most phone calls are harmless.

Depending on the Cell Phone being used, it can be pretty damn secure to anything other than a government agency with the correct key.

Even unsecured cellphone communications are supposed to protected with laws to punish those who misuse their access to such communications.

But apparently if you're a member of the Republican House leadership and a Democrat congressman gives an illegally obtained tape of your conversations to the New York Times, those laws don't apply...

"Silent leges inter arma."

("Laws are silent in time of war.")

Marcus Tullius Cicero, 54 B.C.