President George W. Bush, 2004:
“[T]here are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.”
In case you don’t know what’s going on in the world, it was recently leaked that Bush has allowed the government since 2002 to do wiretaps on US citizens without a court order in order to “fight terrorism”, which according to many members of Congress (including Republicans), is illegal.
Even if it’s not illegal, I know Bush couldn’t disclose a classified directive publicly, but why does he need to go into so much detail about how it would never be possible. He should have stopped after the first sentence IMO.
Saw it on Boing Boing