or so both a judge in court and a presidential report concluded.
which is hardly surprising. as was obvious from the beginning, the one group that expects to be surveilled is al qaeda. we already know they use couriers. so we should have had little expectation that broad surveillance is effective against the most threatening sort of terrorism.
but of course, broad surveillance is also a breach of the fourth amendment. and in a nation of laws, that is a problem.
now it is time for policy to change the structure of the nsa's operation. in order to make it conform with the principles the us claims to stand for.
it has to change to targetted surveillance based on reasonable suspicion rather than the fourth-amendment-breaching monster that has evolved in the dark.
that same standard should operate everywhere that governments have control of their countries and operate according to the rule of law.
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