"Unprovoked Wars, Torture, Invasions of Privacy & Dictatorship"(Findlaw)

Why Get A Warrant?: The President's Admission that He Authorized Warrantless Domestic Surveillance
By SHERRY F. COLB
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Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2005

How The Attacks of 9/11 and Their Aftermath Bear On The Warrant Requirement

When pressed for an answer to such an obvious question, the President invokes national security. He suggests that the only way to survive in an age of terrorism is through secret surveillance with no accountability beyond the executive branch. The problem with such a suggestion is that it is both wrong and dangerous.

The suggestion is wrong because we now know that the problem on September 11th was not the failure to have gathered intelligence. It was the failure to read the intelligence we already had (about flight schools and planned airplane attacks on the World Trade Center towers), to which the administration had ready access. The problem, in other words, was too much -- and poorly organized -- information, rather than not enough. The continuing broad surveillance of U.S. citizens, without oversight, thus promises only to aggravate matters.

The suggestion that terrorism requires warrantless surveillance is dangerous too, because there is no stopping point to the argument that "we're doing everything, regardless of the law, to prevent the loss of life." The argument justifies unprovoked wars, torture, endless invasions of privacy, and the creation of a dictatorship the structure of which might come to resemble that of the very enemies from which the President wishes to protect the people of the United States.

The warrant requirement is a critical component of our democracy. Right now, it ensures that someone outside of the Bush Administration might be in a position to criticize and veto decisions that could be biased, mistaken, and ultimately fatal to the freedom that Bush and his critics alike hold dear.

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20051228.html