Morning Edition, February 14, 2006 · Renee Montagne speaks with Steve Bradbury, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, about the legal justification for the Bush administration’s controversial domestic surveillance program. Bradbury says existing laws allow for the program because it identifies enemies in the ongoing war on terror.

How disappointing when the represetative of our chief legal branch chooses to selectively quote the Constitution. He rightly indicated that the fourth amendment protects us from unreasonable search and seizure. He failed to mention, however, that the fourth amendment is somewhat specific about how to ensure that a search or seizure is reasonable:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It’s worth reviewing the complete annotations available on that terrorist loving resource, FindLaw.

I am not a lawyer. Richard cites conservative Heritage Foundation’s Paul Rosenzweig in suggesting that the patrons’ privacy was not in fact protected by the Constitution. He weakens his point, though, when arguing that the Constitution must sometimes be circumvented to be protected. Which is it?

It hardly matters, in the end. As I’ve said before, the police and FBI, as armed law enforcement officers, always have a remedy available should they consider the public safety put at risk by an overzealous privacy activist. That they did not could suggest something more dangerous: were these officers simply attemptingf to test their authority and set a precedent for future searches? Or, even worse, did they actually believe that they had the authority to seize library records?

Glick-Weil’s point, entirely missed by Cravatts, was not that the police did not have the right to examine the records of a potential criminal or terrorist. Her concern, which I share, is the privacy of other library patrons. The police should be concerned as well. Any evidence of illicit activites gained through such illegal search and seizure could likely be excluded from prosecutorial evidence as poisoned fruit. Or something. Anyways, I’m not a lawyer.