Wiretapping your phone and mine
I wrote this article and submitted it as an op-ed piece. It was published in the Asheville Citizen Times on February 14, 2006.
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For several weeks now, Americans have been aware that our government is eavesdropping upon our private communications, calling these activities a “terrorist surveillance program.” These invasions of our privacy, we are told, have all been in the name of homeland security and have been characterized as part of President Bush’s war on terrorism. I’m only a physician, not a spy, but I cannot believe we have come to this.
Since the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, the specially appointed Sept. 11 Commission as well as a House and Senate Joint Intelligence Committee on Sept. 11, 2001, have investigated this act of terrorism as well as our intelligence-gathering system. Both groups have had much to say. Our intelligence community has been inefficient, poorly organized and ill-equipped in general. Looking back specifically at what led to Sept. 11, these study groups have identified a number of signs we missed or misread, bits of evidence we did not take seriously enough, instances of poor communication between government agencies and failures to properly interpret the intelligence that was being gathered prior to the attack on Sept. 11.
One of their most worrisome findings is the fact that the powerful government agencies charged with protecting Americans from terrorism — the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and State Department — were not working cooperatively. In all the pages of recommendations made by the Sept. 11 Commission and the House and Senate Joint Intelligence Committee, however, there was not one suggestion that our government should secretly violate the privacy of its citizens by eavesdropping upon their telephone calls and e-mail.
In order to prevent the government from misconstruing or abusing its powers, our Founding Fathers adopted the Bill of Rights in 1789.
It would seem, however, that in the year 2006, in the name of homeland security and with frightening language about the possibility of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, our government is coming very close to violating several of the rights that are basic to American democracy.
The First Amendment addresses the right to free speech, the Fourth Amendment assures citizens that their privacy will not be violated without due cause, and even the Sixth Amendment, which addresses criminal trials, requires that the accused be confronted with the witnesses against them.
Does secretly eavesdropping on American citizens’ conversations square with these constitutional provisions?
I would imagine that most Americans are like me — we don’t want any more Sept. 11s, and we are satisfied that the official criticisms of the agencies in our government charged with protecting our security and the recommendations for improving our intelligence community, listed below, make a lot of sense:
• Both the Sept. 11 Commission and the House and Senate Joint Intelligence Committee found that neither the U.S. government nor the intelligence community had developed a comprehensive strategy for dealing with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida.
• Both groups noted that the intelligence community was not well organized or well-equipped to combat global terrorists with targets inside the United States.
• They recognized that our intelligence community is not prepared to handle the volume of foreign-language data that comes in relating to terrorism.
• They recommended that we combine strategic intelligence and operational planning against international terrorists by creating a National Counterterrorism Center.
• They recommended that we unify the intelligence community under a new national intelligence director and develop mechanisms to share information among all the arms of government that participate in counterterrorism.
Let me repeat, however, that nowhere in their analysis or recommendations did either study group mention, much less suggest, warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens.
Even if a good case for governmental eavesdropping could be made, does the evidence we now have about the events leading up to Sept. 11 suggest that a measure such as this could have prevented the murder and destruction that took place that day?
I don’t think so.
Writing assistance by Catherine Ross, PhD.
Jane’s mother has passed. Jane is the brilliant owner and author of 
