Whitehouse 02_06_06 re Warrantless Wiretaps.

Dear Mr President: I don't know where to begin. The disagreement seems to be profound, and the room for graceful compromise vanishingly small. Mr President: If Al Quida exposes me as a member of their organization by calling me on the phone, or e-mailing me, and I am discovered by the Dept Of Homeland Security giving all zeal and diligence for National Security, I expect them to go running printout in hand, gleefully delighting in my carelessness to the nearest judge to get a warrant. They have three days to do so. I fail to see the problem. On the other hand, neither of us can afford to lightly disregard the advice of Ben Franklin that "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." The appearance is that a warrant-less wiretap would allow the wiretap work to be done by machine and not a person. This sort of mass accrual of data by anyone violates the bill of rights, specifically in the 4th amendment. Nor is the mathematics really favorable. Assume a profile that detects 99 terrorists out of 100 "hits," or 99% Assume a population of 5,000,000 people. If there were 1000 terrorists, the profile would pick up 990 of them leaving 10 unaccounted for. On the other hand, the 1% of incorrect "hits" would be picking up 50,000 United States citizens, and marking them as terrorists, when they were never connected with terrorism at all. 50,000 false positives is the kind of error in terms of numbers we expect machines to make. I am not sure how a mathematician actually compares the 990/50,000 or the 10/50,000. But the ratios are so bad that politicians have to consider the fallout in terms of votes. Please give every consideration to some compromise, such that warrant-less wiretaps can be relegated to the history of hiccups in the system, and once again require our officers of the law to fairly consult judges. If the judiciary is compromising security, by all means moot that issue, but as a legitimate citizen, warrant-less wire taps are cause for grave concern. Yours sincerely, Rob Johnson