Big Brother's watching us

We spoke in class yesterday about the Government's surveillance programs and the limits they place on listening in to phone calls etc. Here are two articles (number 1) (number 2) detailing the ACLU's issues with the surveillance that's taking place. The first article describes a secret government memo that the ACLU claims says that the government doesn't think the fourth amendment applies to terrorism suspects. However, the ACLU has not seen the memo in question since it is still classified. The second article details ACLU lawsuits over alleged information sharing between the DoD and the FBI. The ACLU argues that the DoD has the ability to collect only certain types of information (such as bank records) and that the FBI can collect other types of information (such as emails). But apparently, the ACLU argues, the two cannot share information with each other in pursuit of potential criminals. They must do it on their own.

These articles relate to our discussion in class regarding the merits and trade offs of increasing security and moving towards an intelligence state. At this point, for obvious reasons, the government does not disclose the specifics of their surveillance programs for fear that the terrorists they watch will know what's going on. However, this leads to other problems such as groups like the ACLU demanding full disclosure and fearing the worst (true or not) when they do not have all the information. This dilemma of how to go about gathering intelligence and how much information to disclose about their programs will haunt the government's efforts for the foreseeable future. I believe it is in our interests not to know what is going on to a certain extent. I propose that an independent intelligence oversight board of some sort be created with access to all the efforts and programs the government uses to gather intelligence. This board would then rule on the constitutionality and legality of any method or instance of info gathering. This group would represent the public and the public's interests. That way, the government would not be able to abuse their power and move us too close to a Stallinesque Intelligence State while at the same time allowing the government to gather intelligence without suspects knowing about their methods and preventing frivolous lawsuits and uninformed complaints by groups such as the ACLU. What do you guys think?