Well, I think I've finally figured out why President Bush's wholesale, warrantless, eavesdropping campaign on Americans via the NSA is okay despite the Fourth Amendment prohibition on warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures.
Here's the way intelligence gathering is supposed to work, constitutionally speaking.
We can turn our big radio-wave antennas outward to pick up signals coming across the airwaves from anyplace in the world, because they come from foreigners and our constitution does not go out of its way to protect foreigners who are in, well, foreign countries.
We can listen to them to our heart's content, and we do.
But that leaves a big, black, doughnut hole as to us. We're not allowed to listen in on us. If you were a terrorist, what would you do? Come straight to America as soon as you could, to continue plotting, planning, and executing without fear of getting caught, just as on 9-11.
But our intelligence officials aren't called that for nothing, so they come up with a plan to prevent America from becoming a black hole of non-intelligence, despite appearances to the contrary.
Our officials reason that since we can't eavesdrop on us, why not get the Canadians to do it. They're good at intelligence and always help us out when we have an intelligence failure, such when our embassy in Teheran was captured by Iranians and our staff was kidnapped and held captive just like in the days of the Barbary Pirates, only we didn't happen to have a Lt. Stephen Decatur handy to help us out this time. The staffers who escaped were hidden-out and put up by the Canadian Embassy which means we owe them a LOT.
So one of our top intelligence guys puts in a call to Sgt. Mackenzie of the Royal Canadian Intelligence Service to ask whether they'd like to do us a little favor. How about you nice Canadians turn your giant radio-wave antennas this way, vacuum up all the signals, and let us know if you come up with any terrorists. We'll do the same for you. Turnabout is literally fair play when it comes to giant antennas.
Eh, okay, that sounds fine, says Sgt. Mackenzie, we're happy to do that for our friendly neighbors to the south, especially if you'd kindly remove the tariff on lumber, please, and, oh, one other thing. We don't have all that expensive equipment that you Yanks have. Love to help you out, but ta-ta.
Our Agent 007 thinks, why don't we just lend the Canadians a little of our equipment: a few antennas, a couple of computers, or maybe just erect a feed line from the Canadian antenna direct to our computers in Washington. Same thing, but a little less expensive. But this requires White House clearance. Bush hands the matter off to Cheney because Bush has a war to fight and doesn't want to be bothered by little nuisances like the Constitution.
Vice-president Cheney, who likes to grab the bull by the horns when he isn't out shooting lawyers, reckons that this is a waste of time and money. Why build antennas in Canada when we can just turn around the ones we have here, at a great savings in time, money, and effort?
What do you mean this is unconstitutional? You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.
Maybe THAT'S what's been going on.
Can you imagine intelligence agencies ignoring what goes on INSIDE this country? It might be nice to know what goes on in Timbuktu, but don't we really want to know what's going on here?