Allsburg, I know I'm an extremist on this issue but to me the 1978 FISA law is travesty enough. I'm a citizen. My government should respect my rights even if I travel abroad. Now, that doesn't mean my government should enforce my rights at the point of a gun. If I go to visit a dictatorship where there is no free speech and I criticize the government, I don't expect the US to go to war on my behalf if I'm taken in. But I do expect, even while I'm on foreign soil, that my government will respect my rights. My government should at least try to get me released. My government should at least take umbrage.

Now, it's true, my government doesn't owe somebody in Zimbabwe 4th amendment rights. My government is free to eavesdrop on Zimbabwean phone calls. But if my government knows I'm on the other end of that call and my government doesn't have a court-ordered reason to eavesdrop on me then my government should defer to my rights and not to its curiosity about Mr. Zimbabwe.

The U.S. government's commitment to the Constitution should be more about its citizens than about geography.

Which brings us to Gitmo. I don't see it as a constitutional issue (though when we flat out control a territory it should be considered US territory) as it is a human rights issue -- we're party to plenty of treaties that say those people deserve better treatment then they're getting.

Allsburg, your logic about FISA is not at all clear.

So, here are some questions I have, none of which need to be answered specifically:

Why are you okay with the U.S. government intercepting all of your phone and internet activity as well as your entire family's? Why are you okay if the government knows which websites you visit, what browser you use, when you log on and off, what your passwords are, what your obsessions and politics are, what topics you research, what you buy online, who your friends are, what they say on the phone or write to you in an email? Are you so oatmeal that you think the government wouldn't pay attention to you? Did you ever say anything regrettable in a TPM comment or email to someone? Did you ever write the word "al-Qaeda" or "assassination"? Do you ever reveal other people's secrets? Are you pro-abortion? Are you religious? Do you have any chronic medical concerns? Are you seeing a shrink? Is everyone you know oatmeal too? Any law-breakers among your associations? Anyone you know do drugs? Everyone pay all their taxes?

Strangely, you seem to want a degree of anonymity here at TPM. Why don't you reveal your entire name and your address and your family members' names and Social Security numbers and your email to all of us at TPM? In other words, why do you trust the government more than you trust the people you talk to every day at TPM? If you're so trusting, why don't you tell us more about yourself?

You don't reveal more about yourself because you don't want anyone to abuse your personal information. Because someone could hurt you or your family in some way with certain types of information, am I right? I'm pleased you have some protective impulses. You don't have enough of them, however.

So just for fun: imagine if the collection of your personal data were outsourced to a contractor.

One quick, but important, question:

You say the folks in Gitmo are concerned with 6th Amendment speedy trial rights and habeas corpus "But do these rights apply to foreign nationals held by the US Government on foreign soil? It's another fuzzy boundary problem"

6th Amendment - Bill of Rights - rights of citizens and those residing in US. Agree that's fuzzy.

Habeas corpus, Article 1 (sec 9 I believe) is not a **right** conferred on citizens, or people in the country, or anyone in particular ---- it is a *limitation* on the government's power to imprison. The government doesn't have the POWER to hold anyone - anywhere - without being subject to a writ of habeas corpus filed by the one imprisoned, and that limitation can only be rescinded under specific circumstances, not present in Gitmo. It's a vastly different provision, with a very different history, than anything in the Bill of Rights.

You don't shock me -- I, too, am not too worried about the impact on my life if the FISA bill passes and have some faith that the situation might be vastly improved (perhaps with an Obama presidency and Obama-appointed judges) before I was affected. But the habeas corpus position of that 4-person dissent .... it utterly terrifies me.

Allsburg,

Although you may not be concerned about the Constitution itself, I don't think that changes your argument significantly. In the end, you're concerned about us violating international laws and values as expressed in the Geneva Conventions. I think that this all leads to the same point: when America disowns values that are classified as "global" (all of which are completely in line with what America claims as values), its reputation and status suffer.

Your post was enlightening since it presented a different reason to be concerned about FISA, but it really doesn't change much in my mind. Compromising "global" or American values is an awful idea and should never be done, period.

I would like to add a personal footnote to the discussion about invasion of privacy in the hope of offering one element of wry comfort to those who fear FISA's reach; to wit -- pity the poor bastards who have to listen to tapped phone lines over a prolonged period of time.

In 2001, my spouse, an international corporate lawyer, had, among his clients a French/Belgian/Italian conglomerate with decidedly dubious business interests in Europe, the US, South America and offshore -- a client, for what it's worth, to whom I objected strenuously and often. (Yet, as my spouse pointed out at the time, whose payment of fees for legal services rendered I did not reject.)

In May 2001, the head of this conglomerate was indicted, as an individual, for money laundering. Fortunately, for him, he was not in the States at the time, and therefore was able to escape arrest by heading back to France.

Because the client was petulant about having to stay in France to avoid extradition, much immediate governmental and legal wrangling ensued in which my husband was involved on his behalf. (As you may imagine, this led to escalated domestic wrangling, which was anything but temperate.)

After 9/11, the client -- take a deep breath -- saw it as an opportunity to bargain his way out of trouble. He instructed my husband to contact a friend at the State Department to offer what the client referred to as "verifiable terrorist financing links" which he was prepared to communicate...but only if the FBI and DOJ agreed to drop the charges against him.

My husband, complacent that his own role was "merely that of the attorney," agreed to do it. And literally within twenty-four hours of that call, there was an odd lapse on our phone line before the dial tone kicked in, as well as a tinny echo during conversations.

At this point, I asked my husband to choose between continuing to represent this client and continuing to be married. He dropped the client. And sometime after that, the phone weirdness stopped.

Fast forward to 2005 when -- after an intervening hurricane destroyed the house and the city in which we lived -- my husband and I decided it was as good a time as any to divorce.

I moved back to my favorite city in the south; my spouse surprised me, or maybe not, by moving to France, to again represent his former client. And I discovered that although I had a new house (that I paid for with the grace of family money) and a new phone (in my name alone) I once again had the same dial tone lag, and the same echo chamber that I had had before. This continued for another year. During that time, my estranged spouse and I had predictable, if only episodic, transatlantic conversations in which we quarreled about everything from the disposition of the few remaining marital assets to evaluations of respective character...always with the echo chamber in the background.

Eventually, for reasons of his own, my husband quit representing the client in question and so -- although to this day I have no idea whether, or not, the client actually had useful information that he was prevailed upon to impart -- I do know is that sometime after that attorney/client relationship was finally severed, my phone suddenly started behaving normally again.

A friend with a highly developed sense of irony suggested that the normalization of my phone actually had nothing to do with a resolution of the client investigation; but rather, that it was a straightforward decision made in self-defense by the poor bastards in the Quantico basement who, in hopes of getting a lead on a potential money trail, instead spent years, off and on, listening to a marital blood bath.

Not a comforting thought in terms of national security allocation of personnel assets, but perhaps a consolation to those who fear FISA's reach.

Allsburg,

I'm disagreeing with the characterization of a conversation that crosses international borders is different and lacks protection.

I disagree that Congress can implicitly abrogate part of a treaty.

I think the Constitution is always connected to any law, i.e., the constitutionality of any law is an issue.

I think the basic gist of laws involving privacy, national or international, is that executive functions cannot listen in without involving a judge. I don't understand where Congress has the authorization to grant the executive branch the power to override what I view as a right protected by the Constitution. That can be done by amendment only.

These are political statements on my part. Just saying I disagree with your position. I'm not willing to allow the executive branch of the government this kind of power.

I agree that enforcement is the problem. Is it always a problem. Laws don't enforce themselves.