Americans' reaction to the fact that the Bush administration has been bugging their phone calls and e-mail messages for the past three years, outside the law, is provoking increasing fury among the public and in the Congress. It was surely an element in the Congress's decision to extend the USA Patriot Act only until Feb. 3.

It started out that the National Security Agency was intercepting calls between the United States and overseas. Then it turned out that NSA was also "accidentally" picking up some calls taking place purely within the United States. It really doesn't matter anyway, in a sense. The prohibitions governing such intercepts are supposed to apply to American citizens everywhere, so what about an American mother in the United States telephoning her American son in London? Is it legal for the NSA to listen to that call without a court order?

First, Americans were told that perhaps there had been 30 such intercepts undertaken on the orders of President Bush without the required authorization by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Now it turns out, in a separate matter, that NSA and the FBI have conducted surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on advocacy groups like People for Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace. The FBI said it was not monitoring political operations but rather criminal or violent activity at public protests.

Perhaps the only way the Bush administration could possibly convince the American people that its activities are reasonable, even if they are not legal, would be to release a list of those persons whose phone calls and e-mails are being intercepted by NSA.

But the administration can't or won't release those names, claiming security concerns. Or at least that is what it is saying. Could it also be that the list of those bugged contains names of Bush administration political critics? Sen. Russell Feingold must wonder; so must Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

Now James Robertson, a federal district court judge, has resigned from the FISA court, indicating a lack of confidence in the process he was dignifying by his participation.

Members of Congress who were assigned oversight of the NSA's bugging program, including Democratic Sen. John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, have expressed concern and resentment about what the Bush administration did, ostensibly under the Congress's oversight. Briefings by Vice President Dick Cheney, they said, were short, elliptical and not in writing as the law requires.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has scheduled hearings in the new year on the administration's surveillance activities to consider their legality, following hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr.

That is not good enough or soon enough. The first step is that NSA should be forced -- by court order, if necessary -- to observe the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, conducting no further intercepts without appropriate clearance by the FISA court. Secondly, the Department of Defense should be instructed to destroy immediately its entire database of information collected on American protesters that is older than three months, as required.

In other words, stop bugging and stop keeping files on American citizens. Then the Congress can examine with greater care the propriety and legality of the administration's domestic surveillance activities since 2002.