While the debate rages across the country as to exactly how legal the NSA wiretapping is, we should perhaps take a few minutes to look at what is happening in my home country, Australia, which unlike America doesn't have a Constitution to fall back on.
Legislation is about to be passed by parliament that will make covert wiretapping on innocent Australian citizens legal. Accordingly, the legislation, which has already been introduced to federal parliament, gives enforcement agencies a power of last resort to tap the phone of an innocent party without their knowledge or against their wishes in order to identify a criminal or terrorist target, if other investigative methods have failed.
Now, I have to ask, but is this where the US is heading as well? So far the mantra from the right has been "in the best interests of national security", and it appears that this overrides any Constitution, Amendment, or law that would indicate otherwise. Australia doesn't have the fallback of a Constitution so the government is left unchecked to implement pretty much what it wants in the belief that it's "best for the country".
How long will it be do you think before this legislation makes its way across the ocean? The government has already begun to shred the Constitution, so once that pesky piece of paper is out of the way, how long will it be before the NSA has the unchecked power to covertly wiretap? Scary stuff.