Art Bell speaks with Roger Tolces, a Los Angeles private investigator specializing in electronic countermeasures, about the erosion of privacy under warrantless wiretapping and data mining. The conversation follows House passage of a bill legalizing the Bush administration surveillance program, with Art playing devil advocate on whether the terrorist threat justifies such measures.

Tolces explains how NSA supercomputers scan phone calls and internet traffic for flagged keywords, identifying lines of interest without naming a target. He details how the 1996 CALEA law required phone companies to pre-wire every line for law enforcement. Art agrees to let the government see his phone records, bank records, and browsing history, prompting Tolces to ask what privacy remains.

The debate centers on whether the Fourth Amendment can survive mission creep, with Tolces drawing parallels to Orwell 1984 and warning that unchecked surveillance leads to corruption. He cites a case where a library patron researching Islamic topics was seized and had his hard drive copied without a warrant. Art counters that if such surveillance could have prevented September 11th, the tradeoff may be justified, while Tolces argues the real intelligence failures were human, noting flight school warnings went ignored while billions funded electronic dragnet systems.