Spying and efficient government do not go together

The admission that the Administration has been snooping into the bank records of millions of Americans without a search warrant prompted Treasury Secretary John Snow to quickly jump to the President's defense and justify the program.  However, his justification was not a good one.  Interestingly, he thinks that the government spying on its citizens actually helps protect individual privacy:

Outgoing Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said that the program, ineffect since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is the thing"I'm proudest of" in his tenure and insisted that strong safeguardsprotect the privacy of individual Americans. "It's really government atits best," Snow said at a news conference. "It's responsiblegovernment. It's effective government."

But is this really effective government?  John Allen Paulos, a professor at Temple University, says it is a waste of resources:

It should be reiterated that such broad scale wiretapping and datamining is not only of questionable legality if not downrightunconstitutional, but it is also ineffective and a waste of resources.Terrorism is a problem, but so are handguns, health care, the deficit,the environment, education, and a host of other issues that are moreimportant to our personal and, I think, our national security.

Legally speaking, spying on Americans by the NSA for terrorism purposes must be be done with approval from the FISA courts, which was the whole reason FISA courts were set up in the first place -- according to the 1976 Foreign Surveillance Act.  Secondly, the act of a phone company handing over records of its customers, whether to the government or anyone for that matter, violates the 1996 Telecommunications Act that was specifically designed to protect consumers.  Thirdly, preventing both judicial approval and legislative oversight into this program runs counter to the constitution itself.  But as far as legal problems are concerned, this is just scratching the surface.  So, for many reasons, the Administration has a long way to go in order to justify such a program.
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Other blogs writing about this issue: Finance Trends Matter, Moron Cowboy, The Truth about Political Stuff, The Indisputable Truth, News Coma, On Life as I Know it, Majikthise.