Domestic Spying in the 2008 election

One of the big issues of the 2008 presidential campaign is Domestic Spying, the effects of which I will go into further on in this blog entry. For those who don’t know what domestic spying is, it breaks down to our own government spying on United States citizens who are suspected of working with terrorist groups like al-qaeda. The problem behind it is that the government is doing this without the people knowing. They’re listening in on telephone calls and other forms of telecommunications in hopes of catching someone in the act of treason against the United States. The government is supposedly attempting to protect us by doing this but in the process is opening a “can of worms” in a constitutional sense. Is the government allowed to spy on us without us knowing? What parts of our Constitutional rights are being infringed upon by them doing this? What can the citizens of the United States do to stop this?
In 2002, President Bush signed a secret order allowing the N.S.A "to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."(Arena) His goal in this was to collect vital information before the opportunity for it to be missed was, well, missed. The thinking behind this seems sound enough, but it is technically illegal. The government has a court system set up, called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, to permit domestic spying. To gain a warrant to begin listening in, the government had to bring sufficient evidence before this court to prove that there was legitimate reasoning behind them wanting to domestically spy on the set people. By signing this order, President Bush gave the N.S.A. a “shortcut” around the courts that would allow them to spy without going through these courts.
Is this an infringement of Constitutional rights? Lee Giles, of the Peninsula Gateway, believes so. “They should not be allowed to spy on us without some sort of reasoning,” claimed Giles. “The fact that they can violate my privacy without my permission or my knowledge is unconstitutional.” On August 17, 2006, a federal judge ruled that it wasn’t and ordered it ended immediately. “U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor struck down the NSA program, which she said violates the rights to free speech and privacy.” (Mears, Koppel) The Bush administration argued back that it was not and appealed the decision.
However it got to where it is, Domestic Spying is bound to play a role somewhere in the 2008 election. Some indications have thought that the Democratic Presidential Candidates will run hard against Bush’s Domestic Spying bill. (Melber) While the Democrats generally thought to run across the board against the bill, the Republicans may prove to be a little more “creative” on how they approach the situation. Some may support it while some are bound to condemn it. We’ll just have to wait and see how it pans out in the actual election.