Federal Government Spying Without Probable Cause - A Matter of Great Concern

The late renowned journalist Robert Novak (whom I had the thrill of meeting and chatting with at a Cable News Network program in Washington in the mid-1990's) said, “Always love your country, but never trust your government.”  Those sage words come into clearer focus today as we ponder the allegation that federal officials have engaged in a secret program which provides it access to phone and e-mail records of millions of Americans.

I will be the first to acknowledge that this is a new era in which a global war on terror must be vigorously waged if there is to a democratic and free world tomorrow.  Reasonable measures must be undertaken to enable the government to obtain personal information when there is probable cause.  Spying on millions of Americans could not possibly have met this standard.

Many governments have undertaken actions with the best intentions, actions which ultimately spiraled out of control and came to pose a threat to the liberties and freedoms which the American people often take for granted.  Let us hope that the indiscriminate flow of confidential information to the National Security Agency has been caught and exposed in time to pre-empt an attack on our way of life.