Editorial: Snooping without a warrant

Monday, Jan. 8, 2007 | 7:23 a.m.

With a few strokes of his pen last month, President Bush signed a new U.S. Postal Service law and added a statement that says the government can open U.S. citizens' mail without first obtaining a search warrant.

The law, which Bush signed Dec. 20, requires government agents to obtain warrants before they open someone's first-class letters. But Bush added what is called a signing statement, in which the president noted that warrants are not needed in the event of emergency situations.

U.S. Postal Service officials have said they do not object to Bush's alterations to the law. But his end-run around Congress' intentions drew swift criticism from lawmakers and from citizens' rights and privacy advocates. According to a recent story by USA Today, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called Bush's addendum a "last-minute, irregular and unauthorized reinterpretation of a duly passed law" and said that it is the type of action that "voters so resoundingly rejected in November."

When it comes to Americans' privacy, Bush just doesn't get it. His domestic surveillance program, in which he allowed federal agents to forgo warrants and monitor the overseas e-mail and telephone communications of Americans, was struck down by a federal judge last fall. And yet Bush persisted in pushing the program - first by filing an appeal of the judge's ruling and then by trying to get his Republican supporters in Congress to change the law.

Now, Bush actually changed the intent of a law as he signed it, granting federal agents the freedom to snoop without warrants under vague emergency situations that are not defined.

This kind of meddling by the president must stop. One would think that after the Republicans' defeat in the November elections - which happened largely because Americans had lost faith in Bush's policies - Bush would learn. But he is either unable or unwilling to understand that privacy is an American right and the government must present sound reasons in the form of a warrant to breach that privacy.