Bush: Government Can Open Your Mail

Jan. 4, 2007 — -- President Bush says he and other government officials have the power to snoop through your mail without a judge's warrant.

Bush made the claim last month in a signing statement attached to a postal reform bill. Bush wrote that the bill "provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection."

After last year's revelation of Bush's secret domestic eavesdropping program, the move caused waves on Capitol Hill among some legislators who said that it contradicted the postal reform bill, as well as existing law.

"Despite the president's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said to the New York Daily News.

Waxman, the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, co-sponsored the bill.

But White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said today that the signing statement was meant merely "to clarify that he already has the authority" to open mail in certain emergencies.

"The president is not claiming any 'new authority,'" the White House said in a new statement. "The signing statement merely recognizes a legal proposition that is totally uncontroversial: that in certain circumstances -- such as with the proverbial 'ticking bomb' -- the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches."

Lawrimore said such presidential power would not infringe upon Americans' privacy, because it "would only be used in extraordinary circumstances."

The Dec. 20 signing statement said the president had the power to check mail "in a manner consistent, to the maximum extent permissible, with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances, such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."

Privacy experts were divided on whether the president was simply asserting his established authority, particularly because the bill authorized a new class of express mail that could not be inspected without a warrant.