We Have A Spying Problem

OK so I was wrong. It only shows I don't quite understand the law. Apparently, if you have a warrantless search, anything you find from that appears to be completely inadmissible, even for the purposes of obtaining proper warrants. I was under the impression that was not the case. According to the WaPo

Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court, according to two sources with knowledge of those events.

The revelations infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. Both judges had insisted that no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from their court, according to government sources, and both had been assured by administration officials it would never happen.

So there's a conceptual difference that needs a great deal of explaining with regard to wartime powers and 'the battlefield' when such things are mixed in with the infrastructure of peacetime civilians. I mean, I know that we are in a state of war against certain elements of various worldwide organizations, but I don't feel like I am at war personally.

I worry we may not be able to resolve this without some kind of reform. I don't want to see our system crash. Not that on this particular matter of warrantless wiretaps is more than a minor tactic in a major offensive. Everybody knows this, which is why no injuctions have been sought, but lets see what we see.