Bush administration pulls back on surveillance agreement

Senior U.S. administration officials have told the U.S. Congress that they could not promise that the Bush administration would fulfill its January pledge to continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program.

Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.

As a result of the agreement in January, the administration said that the domestic spying program of the National Security Agency had been brought under the legal structure laid out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which required court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of U.S. citizens and others within the United States.

But the senior officials, including Michael McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said Tuesday that they believed the president still had the authority under Article II of the U.S. Constitution to once again order the NSA to conduct surveillance inside the country without warrants.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/02/news/spy.php

I don't recall anything in Article II that would permit surveillance without warrants. I do remember a bit about the fourth amendment. Something like "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated..."