Sen. Feingold weighs in...

Here's a brief excerpt from Sen. Russ Feingold's statement on the floor of the Senate during the historic mini-filibuster of Sen. Chris Dodd:

Mr. President, the stakes are high. I want my colleagues to understand the impact that the Protect America Act and the Intelligence Committee bill could have on the privacy of Americans. These bills do not just authorize the unfettered surveillance of people outside the United States communicating with each other. They also permit the government to acquire those foreigners’ communications with Americans inside the United States, regardless of whether anyone involved in the communication is under any suspicion of wrongdoing.
There is no requirement that the foreign targets of this surveillance be terrorists, spies or other types of criminals. The only requirements are that the foreigners are outside the country, and that the purpose is to obtain foreign intelligence information, a term that has an extremely broad definition. No court reviews these targets individually. Only the executive branch decides who fits these criteria.
The result is that many law-abiding Americans who communicate with completely innocent people overseas will be swept up in this new form of surveillance, with virtually no judicial involvement. Even the Administration’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program, as described when it was publicly confirmed in 2005, at least focused on particular terrorists. What we are talking about now is a huge dragnet that will sweep up innocent Americans.

Senator Feingold hits the nail on the head when he uses the term "dragnet." How many academics planning an international conference want the government to listen in on their phone calls? Importers/Exporters? Simple tourists? Its patently absurd to suggest that we should just surrender our privacy rights in such a wholesale fashion.

You can read more of Sen. Feingold's statement here. Its too bad more Senators didn't show the same awareness of this issue's importance.