Security, balanced

The 9/11 hijackers had been living quietly among Americans before the day of their suicide mission. A logical response was to search for more terror cells inside this country, even if eavesdropping on e-mail and phone calls had to be part of the deal. Just as logical was a stepped-up effort to ferret out terrorists abroad, exploiting U.S. capabilities to listen in on communications.

The issue raised by these efforts has had to do with constitutional protections that are important safeguards for American citizens. Standard practice has been that when the government wants to intercept so-called communications within U.S. borders, court approval is required. No such restrictions apply with regard to foreign communications -- sensibly so.

It turns out that three years ago, the Bush administration moved to extend the kind of eavesdropping that government agents can do on their own say-so. As The New York Times reported last week, President Bush by executive order broadened the mission of the National Security Agency to allow more eavesdropping on people in the United States.

The order has meant that the NSA, without obtaining a warrant, can monitor communications between someone within U.S. borders and someone overseas. That kind of spying may well be necessary. But the administration has not made a solid case for why the activity should not have to comply with the same rules that cover strictly "domestic" spying -- i.e., get a warrant. About 500 people in this country are said to affected.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is set up specifically to hear such requests in closed session. What's more, that court consistently grants permission for eavesdropping on domestic targets, suggesting that it hardly can be viewed as an obstacle to national security. The court and congressional leaders were told that the ramped-up spying was being done, but that falls short of the standard of scrutiny Americans have a right to expect. The court's authorization should be required.

Tension between constitutionally protected civil liberties and national security needs also has come to a head in the debate over reauthorization of the Patriot Act. The House has approved a measure to keep the law in effect, but minor differences remain between the president and Senate Democrats. Those differences are not worth letting the law expire.

The Patriot Act's most questionable aspects -- allowing agents to riffle through properly protected private information such as records of books an American is reading, or a person's medical files -- have been addressed. A critical change allows booksellers, librarians, college registrars and others who have custody of records to object in court to turning over that material to the government.

Certainly the ongoing threat of a terror plot justifies increased intelligence gathering. Even so, heightened security-mindedness can be abused with resulting harm to personal liberties, and for that reason it's been healthy for Congress to respond to concerns raised by privacy advocates.

What's not needed now is a game of chicken between the White House and the Senate. A deal needs to be struck to keep the Patriot Act alive.