Who's that tapping at my door?
Okay, maybe there's justification for domestic surveillance in some cases. I can imagine some extreme situations where dedicated Kiefer Sutherland-like agents are trying to prevent an awful disaster and they need to know what a possible terrorist is talking about, even if she is a citizen.
So I have a suggestion: Don't push too hard on regulation for collection of data, push on the retention of information. Let them listen, then delete it immediately. Make them get a warrant to keep it a month, make it public if they've kept it for a year. Very few "timely" pieces of intelligence information are all that useful that long.
Make it a felony and arrest government workers that break this law.
Posted on January 31, 2006
