An ex-DIA employee claims that they trained for duty in Europe by
surveilling US domestic "radical" bookstores, for instance. The laws are
paraded out in courtrooms for the appearance of propriety. Otherwise,
they're just words.
John Gilmore wrote:
>> A senior British Foreign Office official said in response to the European
>> Parliament report that "any surveillance that there is in Britain has to
be
>> authorised in accordance with the law as does any American activity here."
>
>> However, we can tell you that NSA
>> operates in strict accordance with U.S. laws and regulations in
>> protecting the privacy rights of U.S. persons.
>
>In neither case do they say under what conditions these laws permit
>the monitoring of various categories of citizens (domestic, foreign,
>suspected of this or that, etc).
>
>During the Clipper debate all the official documents were careful to
>say that keys could only be revealed under "lawful authority". They
>REFUSED to say that a warrant from a court was required, though that's
>what the press statements tended to imply, leading us to believe that
>situations existed where they think it's lawful to wiretap someone
>without a warrant.
>
>I suspect that they've jiggered the laws in some way, buried in some
>obscure corner of some law, permission to do whatever they want to
>anybody. Both in the US and UK, of course. There's a theory I've
>seen in a couple of law review articles that says the US Executive
>Branch has the inherent authority to wiretap in national security or
>foreign intelligece cases, with or without a statute or court order
>(the other 2 branches of the govt).
>
> John
>
