I never thought I would have to figure out how to keep President Bush from reading my e-mail, but now I do. Congress recently empowered Bush's spies to read my digital correspondence.
Phone calls and e-mails are at risk because congressional Democrats pathetically caved to administration demands on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Much of the debate over the bill centered on retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that helped the administration break the law.
The media and pundits talked less about the changes that endanger Americans' privacy. By passing the FISA revisions, Congress cleared the way for federal snoops to listen in on far more electronic communications, especially those going overseas.
Usually, at this point in a column, I would explain how the country shamefully undermines civil rights to appease fear-mongers. I would passionately argue that patriotic Americans should condemn the changes.
Meanwhile, a little voice in the back of my mind would remind me that like so many stupid things the government does, this does not really affect me.
Except this time, it does. As I studied the government's new power to spy, I realized that I and millions of other innocent Americans must now fight for our privacy from government snooping.
I have been sending a fair amount of e-mail overseas recently.
An English friend from way back contacted me out of the blue. He's living in South Africa.
Two other friends live in Canada. A couple of others travel to Japan now and then.
And a good friend is working for a nongovernmental organization in Liberia, where they do not have phone lines but they do have painfully slow Internet connections.
Complicating things, last month, all of that e-mail started routing to Google Mail rather than the private server that had been hosting it.
Granted, those are not the most incriminating circumstances, but they could...

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