US / Denis Staunton: Civil rights campaigners rejoiced this week when President George W Bush abandoned his fight to block a ban on subjecting detainees to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment during interrogations.
Americans who care about individual rights received a shock yesterday, however, with a New York Times report that Mr Bush secretly authorised the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on hundreds of people inside the US without a warrant.
A few months after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the president signed an order that allowed the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and e-mails of "hundreds, perhaps thousands" of Americans and others in the US.
For half a century the NSA has gathered intelligence outside the US, using its 30,000 staff at Fort Meade, Maryland, and listening posts around the world. to eavesdrop on foreign enemies. The agency also listens in to phone lines at the United Nations in New York and foreign embassies in Washington but only with a warrant issued by a secret court in the justice department.
Its activities are so secret that the NSA, although the largest of America's intelligence agencies, is sometimes known as "No Such Agency".
The news that the NSA is spying within America has alarmed government officials as well as civil rights groups.
"This is really a sea change. It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches," one former national security official told the New York Times.
The paper delayed publishing the report for a year after the White House warned it could jeopardise investigations and alert possible terrorists that they could be under scrutiny.
The administration maintains that the NSA needs to be able to move quickly to trace communications to overseas phone numbers used by terrorists and that such phone taps can help to prevent attacks.
Government officials told the New York Times that an NSA operation led to the arrest of Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting al-Qaeda by planning to destroy New York's Brooklyn Bridge.
The US tightened its rules on phone-tapping in the late 1970s when it emerged that numerous anti-war activists and civil rights campaigners were under surveillance. The NSA gave up almost all its spying within the US, and other agencies needed warrants for surveillance operations on American soil.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and military intelligence have monitored peaceful protests against the Iraq war, and the Patriot Act, which is being considered by Congress this week, gives the authorities more power to collect library lending lists and monitor internet use.
Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice yesterday refused to discuss "intelligence matters" but dismissed concerns that the NSA spying operation inside the US could be illegal.
"The president acted lawfully in every step that he has taken to defend the American people and to defend the people within his constitutional responsibility," she told NBC.
The president's climbdown on torture followed votes in the Senate and the House of Representatives that showed overwhelming support for the torture ban in Congress. It represented a major victory for Senator John McCain, boosting his chances of becoming the Republican nominee to succeed Mr Bush in 2008.
Many Democrats are reluctant to campaign too loudly against anti-terrorist measures that breach civil liberties, partly because the "9/11 effect" that helped Mr Bush to win re-election last year remains a potent force in American politics.
A CBS poll earlier this year found that most Americans would be willing to allow the government to monitor the phone calls and e-mails of US citizens as part of the fight against terrorism. Three out of four Republicans favoured allowing such surveillance but 49 per cent of Democrats opposed it, compared to 45 per cent in favour.
Although many Americans fear their fundamental rights are threatened by the administration's approach to fighting terrorism, most remain convinced that terrorism itself is a more present threat to America's values than excessive zeal on the part of Mr Bush.