Spitzer: It's the big brother who should bother us

Gov. Spitzer's bust should give pause to those in Congress who are ready to hand President Bush a free pass to continue his six-year campaign of warrantless spying on Americans.

What nailed Spitzer, we now learn, was a series of bank transactions he had with the bank account of the Emperor's Club VIP call girl operation.

Now reportedly, this particular probe was being conducted by the IRS, which allegedly was investigating the Emperor's Club. Once the IRS discovered it had caught the New York governor in its web, it forwarded the case to the US Attorney General's Office, where it was pursued by the FBI, apparently on the instructions of AG Michael Mukasey. The investigation moved from monitoring the bank to monitoring phones, and Spitzer was captured talking to the Emperor's Club dispatcher. Bingo. Promising Democratic political career ruined.

Now the monitoring of the Emperor's Club was reportedly done with a court-ordered warrant. That's fine.

But this case shows us how people can get caught up by this kind of investigation really quickly.

Now imagine that instead of a call-girl operation, this had been a mosque or an international charity organization, and suppose you were someone who had made a call to ask about making donations to help the victims of the last earthquake in Indonesia? If that mosque, or charity, happened to be on the list of outfits being monitored by the NSA's computers, your call might well have been picked up. Then the focus would shift to your phone and your internet server, and conceivably every communication you made would bewatched.