NYT Editorial Board Slams Obama On Tracking: ‘Administration Has Now Lost All Credibility’

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43. Here's one:

Editorial

The Eavesdropping Continues

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In a disturbing article in The Times on Wednesday, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau said that Congressional investigations suggest that the National Security Agency continues to routinely collect Americans’ telephone calls and e-mail messages — perhaps by the millions.

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President George W. Bush started violating that law shortly after 9/11 when he authorized the N.S.A. to conduct domestic wiretapping without first getting the required warrant. When that program was exposed by The Times in late 2004, the Bush team began pressuring Congress to give retroactive legal cover to the eavesdropping operation and to the telecommunications companies that participated in it.

That finally happened in the heat of the 2008 campaign. Congress expanded FISA and gave the companies blanket immunity less than a day after the bill was introduced. We doubt if many lawmakers read the legislation. President Obama, who was still a senator at the time, voted for it, even though he had been passionately denouncing illegal wiretapping for months.

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We do not believe that Mr. Obama is deliberately violating Americans’ rights as Mr. Bush did, and it is to his credit that the government acknowledged part of the problem in April. But this nation’s civil liberties are not predicated on trusting individuals to wield their powers honorably. They are founded on laws.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/opinion/18thu1.html