"War on Terrorism" and invasion of privacy

The “War on Terrorism,” unbounded in scope, geographic area, and duration, has been used to justify the systematic assault on the privacy of American citizens and residents, in the form of wiretapping on their telephone and other communications without a court-approved warrant or showing of probable cause. This is also an assault on the separation of powers and the constitutional restrains on the authority of the executive branch, exemplified by specific past Congressional legislation constraining warrantless eavesdropping without judicial oversight, and an assault on corporate accountability, in the form of impunity for telecommunications firms that cooperated in breaking the law. Congress is now complicit in these assaults, providing retroactive corporate immunity and actually broadening the scope of such eavesdropping, in so-called “compromise” legislation.