I’d hate to think that my fellow Americans would be so gullible as to believe the government’s promises that it was not going to use terrorist legislation against American citizens. Of course when the government makes justifications for overstepping its [digg=http://digg.com/politics/NSA_wiretapping_Americans_without_a_warrant]constitutional bounds to gain “tools” to combat whatever the latest bogeyman happens to be, one can be sure that those same “tools” will soon be used on everyday Americans.
In the latest example, it seems that there was a bit of a screw-up at the NSA and a Washington, DC lawyer was accidentally mailed a log of his private phone calls. Hilarity ensues:
It could be a scene from Kafka or Brazil. Imagine a government agency, in a bureaucratic foul-up, accidentally gives you a copy of a document marked “top secret.” And it contains a log of some of your private phone calls.
You read it and ponder it and wonder what it all means. Then, two months later, the FBI shows up at your door, demands the document back and orders you to forget you ever saw it.
By all accounts, that’s what happened to Washington D.C. attorney Wendell Belew in August 2004. And it happened at a time when no one outside a small group of high-ranking officials and workaday spooks knew the National Security Agency was listening in on Americans’ phone calls without warrants. Belew didn’t know what to make of the episode. But now, thanks to that government gaffe, he and a colleague have the distinction of being the only Americans who can prove they were specifically eavesdropped upon by the NSA’s surveillance program.
The pair are seeking $1 million each in a closely watched lawsuit against the government, which experts say represents the greatest chance, among over 50 different lawsuits, of convincing a key judge to declare the program illegal.
Read the rest here.
