Editorial: Permission, please

On one hand, it should come as little surprise that the National Security Agency secretly cast a broad net over Salt Lake City to intercept private electronic communications during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. On the other hand, the nature of the surveillance only adds to concerns the NSA has too often leaped past the boundaries of legal propriety in its efforts to thwart terrorism.

In the context of the time — five months after the Sept. 11 attacks — it is reasonable the government deployed resources to guard against an assault on such a high-profile international event. But again, it isn't what the NSA did, but how it did it. The agency positioned itself with the help of Qwest Communications to intercept virtually every email and text message out of Salt Lake City for six months, without notifying local authorities and without apparently any judicial oversight.

The action effectively turned upside down the premise of constitutional protection against unwarranted search and seizure. In essence, for six months, everybody in the Salt Lake metropolitan area was considered, de facto, a suspect.

Given separate news recently that the NSA admitted to overstepping constitutional bounds in three subsequent but similar data collection efforts, the Olympics episode only tends to confirm worries the NSA views its mission as one in which the ends justify the means.

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