Bush Signs Law Widening Reach for Wiretapping

Bush Signs Law Widening Reach for Wiretapping

President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.

And a little later:

By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on [international telephone] conversations without warrants — latching on to those giant switches — as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas.

I think what’s interesting about this isn’t so much the obvious point about the government intruding into people’s private lives (there’s always a minimum of “intrusion” in a modern nation-state), but rather that people in general aren’t that upset about it, like those people in reality TV shows who willingly submit themselves to 24 hour surveillance.

So maybe we should reframe it: perhaps this law isn’t simply an outgrowth of the “war on terror,” but that instead this and the “war” are more deeply connected to today’s sociopolitical dynamics than we’d like to think…