Another day, another outrage -- or in this case, two

Isn't it fun to wake up every morning and find your government has commited another outrage? Today, there were two. First, there's the news on the front page of the NY Times that the Pentagon and the CIA are engaged in un-warranted snooping on our bank records. It takes a long read through the article to find the point where we learn that there are significant legal questions about this practice:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Rumsfeld directed military lawyers and intelligence officials to examine their legal authorities to collect intelligence both inside the United States and abroad. They concluded that the Pentagon had “way more” legal tools than it had been using, a senior Defense Department official said.

Military officials say the Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978, which establishes procedures for government access to sensitive banking data, first authorized them to issue national security letters. The military had used the letters sporadically for years, officials say, but the pace accelerated in late 2001, when lawyers and intelligence officials concluded that the Patriot Act strengthened their ability to use the letters to seek financial records on a voluntary basis and to issue mandatory letters to obtain credit ratings, the officials said.

The Patriot Act does not specifically mention military intelligence or C.I.A. officials in connection with the national security letters.

Some F.B.I. officials said they were surprised by the Pentagon’s interpretation of the law when military officials first informed them of it. “It was a very broad reading of the law,” a former counterterrorism official said.

Of course, the government takes its usual position that a) they don't do this very often, and b) when they do, it's super important to save us from the evil terrorists who are bent on our destruction:

Carl Kropf, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said intelligence agencies like the C.I.A. used the letters on only a “limited basis.”

Pentagon officials defended the letters as valuable tools and said they were part of a broader strategy since the Sept. 11 attacks to use more aggressive intelligence-gathering tactics — a priority of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The letters “provide tremendous leads to follow and often with which to corroborate other evidence in the context of counterespionage and counterterrorism,” said Maj. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman.

Government lawyers say the legal authority for the Pentagon and the C.I.A. to use national security letters in gathering domestic records dates back nearly three decades and, by their reading, was strengthened by the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.

Notwithstanding the claim that the spying is necessary to protect against terrorists, it turns out that the information is usually useless. But, they hang on to it forever, nevertheless:

Usually, the financial documents collected through the letters do not establish any links to espionage or terrorism and have seldom led to criminal charges, military officials say. Instead, the letters often help eliminate suspects.

“We may find out this person has unexplained wealth for reasons that have nothing to do with being a spy, in which case we’re out of it,” said Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official.

But even when the initial suspicions are unproven, the documents have intelligence value, military officials say. In the next year, they plan to incorporate the records into a database at the Counterintelligence Field Activity office at the Pentagon to track possible threats against the military, Pentagon officials said. Like others interviewed, they would speak only on the condition of anonymity.

As if that wasn't sufficient unto the day, buried deeper in the Times is a story on how restrictions on the military's ability to tap our phones have also been removed from the Army Manual.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 — Deep into an updated Army manual, the deletion of 10 words has left some national security experts wondering whether government lawyers are again asserting the executive branch’s right to wiretap Americans without a court warrant.

The manual, described by the Army as a “major revision” to intelligence-gathering guidelines, addresses policies and procedures for wiretapping Americans, among other issues.

The original guidelines, from 1984, said the Army could seek to wiretap people inside the United States on an emergency basis by going to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, or by obtaining certification from the attorney general “issued under the authority of section 102(a) of the Act.”

That last phrase is missing from the latest manual, which says simply that the Army can seek emergency wiretapping authority pursuant to an order issued by the FISA court “or upon attorney general authorization.” It makes no mention of the attorney general doing so under FISA.

And, if you believe the government's response to this one, I've got a bridge over the East River I'm willing to sell cheap:

Bush administration officials said that the wording change was insignificant, adding that the Army would follow FISA requirements if it sought to wiretap an American.

You may, of course, recall the numerous occasions prior to the revelation of NSA wiretapping without warrants when Bush assured us that the government only taps the phones of Americans pursuant to a warrant. This was even while he knew that the NSA was wiretapping Americans without warrants under his orders. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.