I’m the first to admit that I had no idea about FISA – the Fone Invading Spy Act, the law that says you need a secret judge to get authorization for your wiretap, even if the authorization is after the fact. I operated under the assumptions of modern culture that my government would spy on me whenever it wanted to (c.f., “Enemy of the State,” “The Net,” “Above the Law,” “Sneakers”). Can’t tell you how many conversations I had on my cell or at home where someone would say, “It’s between you, me, and whoever’s listening.” Glad to hear that there are laws to prevent this from happening; don’t know if that will make me any more cautious on the phone. Not that I’m doing anything!

What I did not realize, however, is that terrorists know the laws better than I do. I suppose that’s part of the terrorist training curriculum. I can imagine the syllabus entry: “FISA’s Too Slow! Relax! You Can Make Calls Inside the US to Foreign Countries Without Getting Wiretapped.” (I suppose it doesn’t have to be part of the training program… maybe if you grow up in a terrorist friendly village, you learn it by osmosis (Hard to tap osmosis… Hmmm)). Now why, you say, do I now know that this must be part of every terrorist’s internal mindset? I came to this realization when President George W Bush got really mad because someone disclosed the secret wiretaps.

Before I actually read through the paper on this breaking story, I heard about these secret wiretaps on my local news radio and just shrugged it off. “Secret wiretaps, humph!” I said to myself, “Major movie studios have been telling me about them for years.” But the President knew, as all those terrorists knew, that secret wiretaps were illegal. Therefore, because of the lengthy, onerous procedures of FISA, terrorists could operate willy-nilly. I mean if terrorists weren’t FISA-savvy, why would the President be mad?

Let’s say that they weren’t FISA-savvy. If some of the card carrying members of ______ (your least favorite terrorist organization here) thought the Bush/Cheney government would eavesdrop on their conversations, they would have not relied so heavily on transmitting their secrets over the phone lines, would they? They would have figured out how to carry out operations by phone or other means so that they wouldn’t be caught if wiretapped. If this were the state of the terrorist thinking, then secret wiretapping would reveal little to no info. Terrorists must have been confident in the law-abiding President and FISA, in order to conduct such operations by phone, and we know this because Bush is so angry at the disclosure of this now not-so-secret wiretap program and his telling us of how this is helping terrorists (Might also be possible that potential illegalities are exposed, but that’s another topic).

It must be the case, since Bush is angry and believes that this was not illegal, that terrorists knew about FISA, knew that America wouldn’t break laws to try to prevent another attack, and that they would phone each other with reckless abandon, knowing the law on wiretaps, or at least slowness of FISA, was on their side. They had to believe this or they wouldn’t be using their phones to conduct terrorist business.

Bush, therefore, tricked the terrorists for the last few years. He convinced the terrorists that the USA was a law-abiding country (let’s ignore prisoner treatment for now) and was therefore going to not interfere with even the questionable-public’s phone conversations. There must have been some weighty conversations going on given how the terrorists must have believed in FISA.

Potential Terrorist Phone Conversation
Ted (terrorist #1): “Bill, I have this secret plan to blow up something. Can you help me get $1,000,000 in C4?”
Bill (terrorist #2): “Ted, aren’t you worried that the US Government is listening to our call?”
Ted: “No dude, remember our training on FISA?”
Bill: “Oh yeah, it’s so lengthy and onerous to hear our calls; we can speak freely about our plans.”
Ted: “Right on. Now about our evil plot and the C4…”

To have some yahoo inside blow the entire secret wiretapping gambit is a travesty.

I mean look at just some of the quixotic odds that Bush had to ignore in order to make this secret wire-tapping a success. Below are the probabilities that:

- terrorists believed we were law abiding – 1,000,000,000 : 1
- terrorists, so believing, would give up good information over the phone, instead of speaking covertly or otherwise – 50 : 1
- our intelligence apparatus would be able to sift through the millions of phone conversations (including those of PETA and other anti-war camps) and find the various needles in the haystack that would thwart a terrorist attack – 10,000 : 1
- if we found the right needle from the right haystack that it would lead to the right action to prevent a terrorist attack – 500 : 1
- if the secret wiretaps were disclosed, it could bring a criminal case / probe – 1 : 100
- a case / probe would lead to impeachment – 3 : 1
- lessening of trust from Congress – 1 : 1,000
- lessening of trust of American people – 1 : 3
- making lawmakers less effective – 1 : 1,000,000

Even without baking in the jeopardy to the President, the odds of preventing a terrorist attack as stated above are about 250 quadrillion to 1. 250,000,000,000,000,000 : 1. Pretty low odds.

But, we also need to assume how the President looks at his decision analysis. There is a rationale to all of this. Here is what I imagine the President’s calculus must look like to justify such measures:

- a stem cell – nearly infinite worth
- a human embryo – infinite worth
- one American – infinite worth
- reinvoking 9/11 = priceless

When you look at it multiplying 250 quadrillion to 1 odds against priceless and infinity values, (namely, anything that supports saving those stem cells, embryos, non-captured Americans, and 9/11 memories) most any action is justified.

The problem lies with whatever alternatives there were (not just for this, but for Iraq, ANWR, etc.). Given the infinite values will always justify anything, you can still act more cost effectively if other measures improve on the 250 quadrillion to 1 odds you’ve set off with the secret phone taps. But, since we’re not the President, we can’t know what he knows until far after the fact, even if then.

So, relax about this whole FISA thing. At the end of the day, the President’s career, criminal record, and the Constitution may be in jeopardy, but for any chance of stopping terrorists, especially as the President must believe, savvy ones, we’ll always do the right thing as long as there’s some chance we’ll be right given infinite values for the above; however infinitesimal.