Our civic protections need protecting

Re “Anti-terror weapons we’re afraid to use,” Opinion, Aug. 19

John Yoo’s claim that “data mining could be controlled and developed so that it ... maintains our privacy” is dubious. The government already disregards the law on domestic surveillance and runs a warrantless surveillance program sidestepping even the ultra-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. The administration explicitly reserves the right to ignore federal laws. Invasions of privacy and repression are probable. Most upsetting is the claim that our “old-fashioned methods” of investigation “did not prevent 9/11.” Wrong -- the government was careless and inattentive, failing to connect the dots of existing evidence gathered by the “old-fashioned” methods. Sept. 11 may prove many things but not that the feds need any more power to spy on Americans.

MICHAEL ZARA

Santa Monica

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How can Yoo, with a good conscience and a straight face, suggest that we should adopt British methodology when he knows -- or should know -- that the British have no written constitution? They can do what they want because they have no Articles 1 and 2, or 1st and 4th Amendments?

And he’s changed his tune over the last year. In December, he argued adamantly that there were no constitutional issues in Bush’s illegal wiretaps. Now he says that data mining “doesn’t raise the same constitutional issues” as the warrantless wiretap debacle. I thought that an attorney was not allowed to defend and then prosecute the same case.

MICHAEL PIERSON

Anaheim Hills

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Yoo speciously claims that the British were successful in foiling the recent airline plot because they were empowered to use data mining on British subjects. An important fact that Yoo fails to mention is that the plot was uncovered when, soon after the July 7, 2005, London train bombings, a member of the British Muslim community actually tipped off the London police to investigate the suspects. Needless to say, had the British government adopted the U.S. government’s policy of endorsing and condoning renditions, torture, secret prisons and military trials, very few citizens (Muslims or otherwise) would come forward to implicate their fellow citizens based on suspicions.

AMIN HAQ

Los Angeles