[Infowarrior] - Bush administration defends emergency mail inspection

[Richard Forno]

Bush administration defends emergency mail inspection
Posted 1/4/2007 10:39 PM ET
By Mimi Hall and David Jackson, USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-01-04-mail-inspection_x.htm

WASHINGTON ‹ The White House on Thursday defended a policy allowing the
government to open mail without a warrant, despite criticism that the
crime-fighting tactic might lead to privacy breaches.

Bush administration and Postal Service officials said citizens' mail remains
constitutionally protected from unreasonable search and seizure. But White
House spokesman Tony Snow said the United States needs to have the power to
inspect mail in emergencies.

The mail controversy erupted Wednesday after a report in the New York Daily
News that President Bush on Dec. 20 attached a so-called signing statement
to a new postal law. The statement grants the government the authority
during emergencies to bypass a law forbidding mail to be opened without a
warrant.

Snow said Bush was simply reiterating authority the government already has
under the law.

U.S. Postal Service spokesman Thomas Day concurred. "The president is not
exerting any new authority," he said.

Snow did not say what emergency circumstances might warrant inspections of
the mail.

Brian Walsh, a lawyer at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the
authority likely would only be used in extreme cases, such as if police
learned a bomb or an envelope containing anthrax or another biohazard was in
the mail.

If the government didn't have the authority for prompt inspections, the mail
‹ particularly overnight delivery ‹ could become "a courier service for drug
dealers or terrorists," Walsh said.

Privacy rights advocates expressed concern that the administration could
loosely define emergency situations to include looking at mail sent by or
delivered to people who might wrongly be included on the government's
terrorist watch lists.

The American Civil Liberties Union said such "deliberate ambiguity" was
troublesome.

It "raises a red flag because of President Bush's history of asserting broad
powers to spy on Americans," ACLU Director Anthony Romero said.

Others accused Bush of making an end-run around the Constitution and
Congress.

"This opens the door into the government prying into private
communications," said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for
Justice. "It's something we associate with a totalitarian or police state."

In Congress, where Democrats took control of both houses Thursday for the
first time in 12 years, some lawmakers expressed unease about the practice.

"Every American wants foolproof protection against terrorism," Sen. Charles
Schumer, D-N.Y., said. "But history has shown it can and should be done
within the confines of the Constitution. This last-minute, irregular and
unauthorized reinterpretation of a duly passed law is the exact type of
maneuver that voters so resoundingly rejected in November."