found this today as well. One negative reply letter was also posted. reference: <http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/early/02heym.html> "August 2, 1996 Listening in on Terrorism By PHILIP HEYMANN CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- President Clinton's major proposals for new powers to fight terrorism are useful and pose no threat to Americans' civil liberties. " ( oooookkaaay...) " Many of these measures are intended only to give government as much power to thwart terrorism as it already has to combat other criminal acts." (do go on...I'm fascinated now) " The part of the plan that has drawn the most criticism from across the political spectrum involves proposals to increase the Government's investigative powers, particularly through wiretapping and other methods of monitoring phone calls. " [..snip..] (assertion follows that current laws are inadequate for electronic surveillance against terrorism.) " In criminal cases the courts have never considered the use of devices that record the numbers of incoming or outgoing calls on a telephone to be significant invasions of privacy." (Never mind what the "people" might say) " But there is no similar provision for investigations of suspected foreign terrorists. Under the President's proposal, agents would be allowed to use the devices if they can show that it is relevant to a terrorism investigation." (not exactly sure how a terrorist investigation differs from a criminal investigation...but this is the distinction Heyman is drawing. In his view, current law is not sufficient against domestic terrorist investigation.) " Under current law, officials must get a separate warrant for each phone the suspect uses unless they can prove the suspect is changing phones purposely to thwart investigation. This is a stricter standard than is applied even to requests to plant a microphone to overhear a suspect." [..snip..] " Government agents would still be required to show probable cause that the suspect is committing one of the offenses on the Federal list and that the calls being monitored will concern that crime. " (Gosh! Who knew the government and the FBI were so powerless?) " Philip Heymann, a former Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration, is a professor at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government. Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company " (big shock, eh?) ... To say that Mr. Heymann is being misleading is an understatement. He ignores that the government wishes to be able to wiretap for 48 hours without prior court approval. He attempts to imply that the roving wiretap is focused on an individual rather than a location or locations. And he seems to believe that all of these enormous powers will not be abused. I wonder if he would feel differently if his personal FBI file was among those gathered by the Clinton administration. me -------------------------------------------------------------- Omegaman <omega@bigeasy.com> PGP Key fingerprint = 6D 31 C3 00 77 8C D1 C2 59 0A 01 E3 AF 81 94 63 send a message with the text "get key" in the "Subject:" field to get a copy of my public key. --------------------------------------------------------------