President George W. Bush's war on terrorism strikes another body blow to the Fourth Amendment. Our right to privacy--already bloodied by administration claims that the government has the right to listen in on our telephone calls, intercept our e-mail messages, and open our mail--is now up against Washington State's new "enhanced" driver's license. In tune with federal anti-terrorism law, these driver's licenses can be used to search out personal information from government databanks. On March 23, Michael Chertoff--head of the Department of Homeland Security--came to Washington State to bless our new driver's licenses.

The Fourth Amendment is supposed to guard against official snooping. Without a warrant, authorities can't open locked glove compartments, raid our houses, read our mail, rifle through our desks, or eavesdrop on our cell phones.

The right to privacy isn't hard to figure out. For example, no one paid much attention last month when the Washington Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Valdez and Ruiz. When a deputy sheriff in Vancouver stopped their van because a headlight was out, he found two packages of a "crystalline substance"--that turned out to be methamphetamine--hidden behind a cup holder in the back seat. Valdez and Ruiz were convicted of drug possession with intent to deliver. But because the search was illegal, Valdez and Ruiz went free.

Sure, the Fourth Amendment protects the guilty as well as the innocent. But what if the bad guys aren't drug dealers or small-time criminals, but terrorists?

One TV commentator derided the notion that terrorists have Fourth Amendment rights as "retarded." Most people don't agree. But still, we might not mind so much if the FBI used an illegal wiretap to stop another terrorist attack. No one wants to see another pile of smoking rubble like the World Trade Center.

But like it or not, suspected terrorists have privacy rights, even when it comes to electronic surveillance. The Fourth Amendment covers electronic eavesdropping, or what the US Supreme Court has called "unsuspected governmental incursions into conversational privacy." The Court has said that even if national security is at stake, domestic electronic surveillance without a warrant is illegal.

In spite of the law, Bush admitted--after the press forced his hand--that he had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance. In a December 2005 press conference, the President said:

We know that a two-minute phone conversation between somebody linked to al Qaeda here and an operative overseas could lead directly to the loss of thousands of lives. To save American lives, we must be able to act fast and to detect these conversations so we can prevent new attacks.

The NSA couldn't bother with search warrants, Bush suggested, because we have to be "fast on our feet and quick to detect and prevent."

Bush's lawyers finally agreed--after the ACLU successfully sued--that the NSA would in the future ask a special secret federal court for warrants against terror suspects.

But the fight isn't over. In a statement accompanying his signature on a change in the postal laws, Bush opined that for "foreign intelligence collection," the government could under the right circumstances open mail "otherwise sealed against inspection." In other words, if Bush's people want to, they can read our mail.

The Fourth Amendment doesn't allow the sheriff in Vancouver to rummage around illegally in the back seat of Valdez and Ruiz's van. Nor should Bush be permitted to use terrorism as an excuse to trash our constitutional right to privacy.

--Carol S. Arnold is a Seattle attorney and freelance writer.