In 30 years, from 1979 to 2009, the legal standard for searching and seizing private communications -- the bar that the Constitution requires the government to meet -- was lowered by Congress from probable cause of crime to probable cause of being an agent of a foreign power to probable cause of being a foreign person to probable cause of communicating with a foreign person.
The NSA says that Congress knew about all this, but its members were prohibited from telling the American people. What kind of a democracy is that?
The modern-day British soldiers -- our federal agents -- are not going from house to house; they are going from phone to phone and from computer to computer, enabling them to penetrate every aspect of our lives.
If anything violates the lessons of our history, the essence of our values and the letter of the Constitution, it is this.
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