I think that the U.S. government did 911 and that all the LAWBREAKING is an attempt to COVER-UP their CRIMES......The HIGH court has just ruled 5 to 4 THAT detainees DO have habeas Corpus rights!! WHY all this secrecy if THE ADMINISTRATION is INNOCENT? Why did they destroy 911 interrogation TAPES?? See http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1210/p03s03-usju.html Oh you think to hide possible torture crime, not doing 911 crime?? Why did they DESTROY air traffic CONTROLLER 911 TAPES?? see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03EEDF173CF934A35756C0A9629C8B63 Government spying leads directly to blackmail, stolen elections,unchecked corruptions and extra-judicial executions...The stuff of TYRANTS Want more?? try some ANTHRAX See http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/anthrax/anthraxtargets.shtml WAKE UP--ALL YOUR RIGHTS ARE AT STAKE!!

Thanks for that post.

I do think they think that e-mail is "the problem", but I think their analysis is wrong.

You do have a point WRT the confidentiality of e-mails as opposed to "broadcast" radio, but that falls apart if you consider it. There is no problem in snooping any "broadcast" station spewed out there for all and sundry. I doubt that anyone would say that broadcasts of, say WABC, are privileged. It is when the communication is indented to be private or limited as to recipients that FISA becomes important. And even with broadcast, there are means that you can take to ensure that the audicence is not the whole wide world....

I think the issue of e-mail (a non-real-time means of unidirectional communication using store-and-forward technology) can be addressed similarly to § 1801(f)(3), with perhaps some clarification that, in the case of e-mails, it is the location of the recipient's POP3 server that is determinative as to "recipient location". Thus, it's snoopable without a FISA court order if any of the "recipients" are outside the U.S. (or their ISP is) ... as long as any target is not a "U.S. person" (which should be covered by, or changed to be covered by, § 1801(f)(1)). I'd think this a fair compromise and consonant withthe levels of protection previously afforded telephone [which I think is what "wire" means] communications -- although there might be concerns that such an approach would lead to snooping of all [at least partly] foreign e-mail traffic under the 'justification' that no U.S. person was targeted; such dragnet snoops ought to be prohibited under the definition of "targeting".

I think that physical locus of the intercept has become irrelevant and ought to be removed from the FISA provisions (although in practise, it might be harder for NSA and DoJ to walk in to foreign ISPs and demand they provide snoops).

Cheers,