Why the NSA Needs Your Phone Calls…

Do the revelations about National Security Agency phone and Internet surveillance point to the end of privacy, law, and the Constitution? Nope.

There are a lot of reasons to be cautious about rushing to the conclusion that these "scandals" signal a massive, lawless new intrusion into Americans' civil liberties. Despite this apparent breadth, there are a lot of reasons to be cautious about rushing to the conclusion that it signals a massive, lawless new intrusion into Americans' civil liberties. The order seems to come from the court established to oversee intelligence gathering that touches the United States. Right off the bat, that means that this is not some warrantless or extrastatutory surveillance program. The government had to convince up to a dozen life-tenured members of the federal judiciary that the order was lawful. You may not like the legal interpretation that produced this order, but you can't say it's lawless. In fact, it's a near certainty that the legal theory behind orders of this sort has been carefully examined by all three branches of the government and by both political parties.