FISA is not about cell phones, computers, the Internet, email, or any other form of electronic communication. It is about getting permission to spy on people. It is about protecting the privacy of American citizens.

In the preface to his book, "Applied Cryptography," Bruce Schneier writes:

If I take a letter, lock in in a safe, hide the safe somewhere in New York, then tell you to read the letter, that's not security. That's obscurity. On the other hand, if I take a letter and lock it in a safe, and then give you the safe along with the design specifications of the safe and a hundred identical safes with their combinations so that you and the world's best safecrackers can study the locking mechanism--and you still can't open the safe and read the letter--that's security.

The U.S. government knows more about security than any other organization in the world. With the exception of highly encrypted communications, there is nothing they cannot see.

They can see the origination and ending points in any wireline (ie., land-based) or wireless communication. They can look inside the content portion of those communications. They can create a network of communications among groups of people and track those communications in real time even as those people add or remove communications devices, change physical locations and use different transaction types (i.e, email, cell phone, IM, etc.) to communicate. They U.S. government can do all these things now. They have had the ability to do these things for years.

I can see no reason related to technology that would cause someone like Mike McConnell to make the argument that he is making regarding FISA.

I can, however, suggest several other possibilities. One, since the entire argument as presented is a deliberate lie, perhaps it was intended to take the heat off the current investigations into the administration's willful and deliberate violation of existing law. Two, by finally removing any and all legal barriers to spying on America's citizens in any capacity they desire, they may also intend to remove the pending threat of both criminal suits and class action civil suits against telecommunications companies now and in the future. Three, if past behavior is evidence, the desire on the part of this administration to use the NSA and other security organizations with the U.S. government as a partisan political tool in the same ways they have used the DoJ as a partisan political tool is a real possibility.

It may be all three. Since the American public and its representatives in Congress have such a difficult time getting even the simplest questions answered where the Executive branch is concerned, we will probably not know until years after it is all over and done.

Nuf said.

Why do I ask myself what's wrong with this picture, and why do I suspect that the reason no one blames GWB for warrantless spying is their familiarity with, and support for similar spying on behalf of their own interests?

There is no industry that does not do this. None. Nearly ten years ago I worked with a grocery chain executive that had recently implemented a "loyalty" program for a large store chain. You may have one of these cards. You get a discount each time you scan your card at the checkout. What I didn't know was that they also used the information to identify the path each customer took through the store and the order in which you identified and purchased related groceries (e.g., BBQ, holiday, diet, etc.). They used this information for in-store marketing. Something else I didn't know was that all the stores knew what all the other stores were charging for individual items because a single company sold them that information. The company selling the information acquired the information by putting vans equipped with wireless receivers in various store parking lots around the country for the express purpose of tracking the wireless scans inside the store.

That's just one example. Every industry has its own methods of tracking consumer activity. Our lives are transparent to corporate America. But corporate America does not put people in prison, disappear people or torture people--at least not American citizens. Our government, however, does. That's a big difference and a very good reason to insist on adherence to the rule of law where things like FISA are concerned. I blame GWB VERY MUCH for what his administration has done.

They are doing everything in their power to create a unitary executive. A unitary executive is just another word for a military dictator.

What we can do is to impeach Gonzales, investigate Rove, impeach Cheney (if possible) make Bush as much of a lame duck as possible and then do everything in our power to create a Democratic super majority in the 2008 election.