Snip from an opinion piece by digital security expert Bruce Schneier, following up on last week's New York Times story on domestic spying by the NSA:
[T]he president's wartime powers, with its armies, battles, victories, and congressional declarations, now extend to the rhetorical "War on Terror": a war with no fronts, no boundaries, no opposing army, and — most ominously — no knowable "victory." Investigations, arrests and trials are not tools of war. But according to the Yoo memo, the president can define war however he chooses, and remain "at war" for as long as he chooses.
This is indefinite dictatorial power. And I don't use that term lightly; the very definition of a dictatorship is a system that puts a ruler above the law. In the weeks after 9/11, while America and the world were grieving, Bush built a legal rationale for a dictatorship. Then he immediately started using it to avoid the law.
This is, fundamentally, why this issue crossed political lines in Congress. If the president can ignore laws regulating surveillance and wiretapping, why is Congress bothering to debate reauthorizing certain provisions of the Patriot Act? Any debate over laws is predicated on the belief that the executive branch will follow the law.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune Link (Thanks, Robert K. Brown)
Reader comment: JonS says,
This is the link to Schneiers op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on his own blog, and includes a bunch more links plus reader feedback. He's written a couple more blogs about the NSA thing over the last couple of days[/url], and the rest of his postings on security are interesting too.
