Presidential Snooping Damages the Nation

The Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the assertion that a President may conduct electronic surveillance without judicial approval for national security, noting in 1972 that our "Fourth Amendment freedoms cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances may be conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch." Rather than abiding such a clear missive, the Administration instead is taking the road mapped out nearly two centuries ago by Andrew Jackson, who, in response to a Supreme Court decision he didn't like, ignored it and is said to have declared, "The Supreme Court has made its decision. Now let them enforce it."

Alleged associates of al-Qaeda are today's targets of that breathtaking assertion of presidential power. Tomorrow, it may be your phone calls or e-mails that will be swept up into our electronic infrastructure and secretly kept in a growing file attached to your name. Then everyone you contact could become a suspect, a link in an ever lengthening chain that would ensnare us all in the files of the largest database ever created through unlimited electronic spying that touches every aspect of our lives.

Barr, a Republican, was a member of the House of Representatives from Georgia from 1995 to 2003