For years, Bush said court orders required for spying - Yahoo! News: "In 2004 and 2005, Bush repeatedly argued that the controversial Patriot Act package of anti-terrorism laws safeguards civil liberties because US authorities still need a warrant to tap telephones in the United States.
'Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order,' he said on April 20, 2004 in Buffalo, New York.
'Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so,' he added.
On April 19, 2004, Bush said the Patriot Act enabled law-enforcement officials to use 'roving wiretaps,' which are not fixed to a particular telephone, against terrorism, as they had been against organized crime.
'You see, what that meant is if you got a wiretap by court order -- and by the way, everything you hear about requires court order, requires there to be permission from a FISA court, for example,' he said in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
But under Bush's super-secret order -- first revealed Friday by the New York Times and partly confirmed by Bush and other top US officials -- the National Security Agency does not need the court's approval.
... Vice President Dick Cheney offered similar reassurances at a Patriot Act event in June 2004, saying that "all of the investigative tools" under the law "require the approval of a judge before they can be carried out.""
- posted by geoff @ #