NSA Attempts to Wire-tap Nameless Congressman

I don't have too much to say about this, because it still seems like a developing story, but buried at the end of a large and disquieting article about NSA "over-collection" in the last year (this is a nice way of saying that the NSA is eavesdropping almost indiscriminately), we get this piece of information:

And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.

The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.

Two things. One, as best as I can tell, this is the product of that FISA bill that was passed last year, in the midst of election season, that outlined a really over-broad range of abilities for the NSA to "over-collect". Obama supported it and took a little bit of heat, but that anger dissipated quickly and it never stuck on him (mostly because the only people that were mad about it were people who were going to vote for him anyway). My fervent hope is that a) this becomes a big story and b) Obama takes some real heat for it now, from the suddenly libertarian tea-baggers on the right. Even if it's faux outrage, something needs to push back on this hard.

Secondly, what makes this especially disquieting is that it was not a difficult development to envision. When America invaded Iraq, even those of us who strongly opposed up were working under the assumption that it would be a very, very brief war. Its proponents also felt this. Many of the reasons why the US is still there never manifested in an obvious way until a couple of months into the occupation - myopia, poor post-invasion planning, bureaucratic rigidity, etc. - and so unless you believed America intended to stay forever you probably wouldn't have predicted what came next. This NSA wiretapping problem, in contrast, was incredibly easy to foresee. When you give sweeping, ill-defined powers to a bureaucracy, it will act in sweeping, ill-defined ways. We've known about, y'know, checks and balances for a long time now; did anyone really expect the NSA to play nice?