Bush defends mail access law

Privacy advocates say it's ambiguous
BY MIMI HALL and DAVID JACKSON
USA Today
Jan. 07, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The White House on Thursday defended a policy that allows the government to open mail without a warrant, despite criticism that the crime-fighting tactic might lead to privacy breaches.

Bush administration and U.S. Postal Service officials said citizens' mail remains constitutionally protected from unreasonable search and seizure. But White House spokesman Tony Snow said the government needs the power to inspect mail in emergencies.

The mail controversy erupted Wednesday after a report in the New York Daily News that on Dec. 20, President George W. Bush attached a so-called signing statement to a new postal law. The statement grants the government the authority during emergencies to bypass a law forbidding mail to be opened without a warrant.

Snow said Bush was reiterating authority the government already has under the law.

Postal Service spokesman Thomas Day concurred. "The president is not exerting any new authority," Day said.

Snow didn't say what emergency circumstances might warrant inspections of the mail.

Privacy-rights advocates expressed concern that the administration could loosely define emergency situations to include looking at mail sent by or delivered to people who might wrongly be included on the government's terrorist watch lists.

The American Civil Liberties Union said such "deliberate ambiguity" is troublesome.

It "raises a red flag because of President Bush's history of asserting broad powers to spy on Americans," ACLU director Anthony Romero said.

Others accused Bush of making an end-run around the Constitution and Congress.

"This opens the door into the government prying into private communications," said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice. "It's something we associate with a totalitarian or police state."

In Congress, where Democrats took control of both houses Thursday, some lawmakers expressed unease about the practice.

"Every American wants foolproof protection against terrorism," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

"But history has shown it can and should be done within the confines of the Constitution. This last-minute, irregular and unauthorized reinterpretation of a duly passed law is the exact type of maneuver that voters so resoundingly rejected in November."