He came from Sudan. He found a job and saw a more prosperous
future.

But Arif Mobasher, 43, still questions America’s promise of true
freedom, especially amid reports that President Bush ordered the
National Security Agency to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails
between U.S. residents and people in other countries without court
approval in an effort to track al-Qaeda.

Even longtime U.S. residents – from those in shiny glass
headquarters for international business to the U.S. Capitol – were
asking questions Friday.

Mobasher dials Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, every week to speak with
his father, mother and brother.

“I’m not talking about anything political,” he said.

But his safest course now, he said, is to assume U.S. spies always
listen and to give up notions of privacy.

“I feel like: Let the government know about everything, so they
can know I’m on a straight line,” he said.

Mobasher was one among several who, finishing Friday prayers at the
Colorado Muslim Society’s southeast Denver mosque, mulled the
implications if the eavesdropping of international communications
without warrants, as reported Friday in The New York Times, is
accepted.

Like him, many come from what the U.S. government calls “countries
of concern.” All make regular phone calls home.

“When I came here, I came for the freedom,” said Miloud Haddou,
33, of Morocco, who heard radio reports at dawn and realized he
could be affected.

Today, in the name of fighting terrorism, the U.S. government “can
do anything to you – get into your business, into your privacy. …
I’m not angry. I never could be angry. But this is kind of
disappointing,” said Haddou, who arrived in the U.S. five years
ago.

Now, in his twice-a-week phone calls to Casablanca, he’ll have to
skirt subjects such as “the situation in Morocco,” he said.
“You’ll kind of worry more about the conversation.”

The question is whether this is legal, said Jim Reis, president of
the World Trade Center Denver, which helps Colorado companies doing
business abroad.

Increased surveillance to stop terrorism “is very unfortunate,”
he said. “… It’s become part of our lives. But it’s got to be done
within the (laws) that govern our country.”

Any eavesdropping “should be stopped until it has court
approval,” Reis said. Computer technology “creates a lot of
opportunities for government to do monitoring. At the same time, it
really begins to infringe on individual rights.”

In Washington, the reports may have influenced U.S. senators who
blocked a vote Friday to extend the USA Patriot Act, the
anti-terrorism law giving law enforcement groups new power.

The NSA surveillance inside the country without warrants is
“deeply troubling,” said U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo.

“If we needed a wake-up call about the need for adequate
civil-liberties protections to be written into our laws, this is
it.”

He stopped short of calling for stopping the practice, however,
saying, “We need more information.”

Some in the Senate have called for oversight hearings.

At the Denver mosque – as merchants sold fruit, cloth and couscous
– some said phone and e-mail snooping may be needed.

“The way the world is going, let them do it. It’s for everybody’s
safety,” said Camran Naimi, 31, who arrived with his mother from
Afghanistan in 1990.

Another person from Sudan, part-time law student Abubakr El-Noor,
31, said he really wants privacy when he calls his girlfriend and
would prefer that U.S. spies “go through the courts” because
“sometimes there’s a good reason … (but) not all the time,” for
surveillance.

But he also figured that “sometimes, to control your security, you
need to do something illegal.”

Grilling chicken in her couscous trailer, Sally Ben, 42, of Morocco
shook her head. When she read the news, “I couldn’t believe it,”
she said.

“I thought: It can’t be. This is the United States.”