Are foreigners here in US subject to same protections (ie wiretaps?)

[The Straight Story]

This was a sideline discussion I had today with some people with whom I work who are traveling to India. I over head their general discussion and jumped in (as I often do on smoke breaks) and we discussed India and corporate decisions relating to it.

We then transposed when another guy joined in (a liberal guy whom I promptly invited to my party this weekend - playing chess and drinking party) and started talking about osama and then wiretaps. The guy heading to India said 'when I am there I am an American citizen, so I don't think I get a break anymore than anyone who visits here should get one' - and this spiraled into the whole wiretap here and is it ok and so on (and yes, it was a 3 cig break).

The general gist was - if they tap someone not a citizen and that leads to a citizen then there is probable cause to listen in, similar to police having probably cause to enter your home without a warrant.

I got the impression that the going to India guy trusted our government a lot more than I did. But then I got to thinking about this as well:

Maybe the WHOLE IDEA is to get people to see government as bad and corrupt, inept, and just plain crappy. In the 90's people I worked with distrusted clinton, now they distrust * even more, and eventually maybe they hope that we will dismantle the social programs for the many to the benefit of the few. The few benefit as the many slave away for a pittance for them....

[Warren Stupidity]

1. The FISA regulations prohibit warrantless domestic wiretaps

and searches regardless of your citizen/non-citizen status. If you are here legally they may not legally snoop without a warrant. So yes foreigners are covered as well.

[cali]

2. No.

This is a power grab, pure and simple. Call it unitary executive power, call it the imperial presidency. Whatever. bushco and cheney are on the record about "restoring" presidential perrogatives. And the NSA spying has incredibly dangerous implications. Even if you stretch credulity to the ludicrous point of excepting that they're only listening in on the bad guys (and we already know that's not true), the corruption of process via the bypassing of the FISA laws specifically aimed at the exec branch is waaay out of line.