Big Brother is Watching
"a wiretap requires a court order. ...When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution." - President George W Bush, defending the Patriot Act in April 2004
Little did we know just under one year ago that President Bush was blatantly lying to us (we should have assumed though). When he said the above, the CIA in concert with the White House had apparently already set up wire taps on phones and phone lines throughout the United States WITHOUT acquiring the court orders he spoke of. Bush and Co. will tell you that national security is at stake, and that it makes perfect sense to spy on someone who we know is an Al Qaeda operative. The problem is, most of the people being spied on are U.S. citizens protected by citizen rights, and we don't know for sure that they are Al Qaeda operatives. The Constitution protects our privacy and federal laws call for judicial approval before that privacy can be breached, specifically because we are innocent until proven guilty in this country and our rights cannot be taken away until proven guilty. These are the "Constitutional guarantees" that Mr Bush speaks of - that are apparently not guaranteed under this administration.
Even worse, the White House and CIA are now spending your and my tax money to launch an investigation into who leaked this information to the press. They are not concerned with how this policy came about, how brazenly the law was broken, or who it was that decided that it was OK to clearly break the law. They are most concerned with who let it out to the public. What does that tell me? That they knew exactly what they were doing, what it meant to the freedom of US citizens, and what it meant to the integrity of the Bush administration. Simultaneously, the administration is running investigations into two other leaks - the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame; and the reporting of secret overseas torture prisons used to hold terror suspects in anonymity. In the case of the latter, they claim that the report damaged the credibility of the U.S. But the fact that the government ran these secret prisons is what ruined our credibility, not the report itself!
At what point do we decide that September 11 is not a blank check for the federal government? Because they've been using it like one since September 12. The Bush Administration has been one of the most secretive presidential administrations in the history of this country, and at every turn they cite "national security" as their free pass. National security is most definitely important, but it is not an open-ended excuse for secretive operations, dishonest government officials, and abuse of power that blatantly breaks the legal foundations on which our society was built.
Little did we know just under one year ago that President Bush was blatantly lying to us (we should have assumed though). When he said the above, the CIA in concert with the White House had apparently already set up wire taps on phones and phone lines throughout the United States WITHOUT acquiring the court orders he spoke of. Bush and Co. will tell you that national security is at stake, and that it makes perfect sense to spy on someone who we know is an Al Qaeda operative. The problem is, most of the people being spied on are U.S. citizens protected by citizen rights, and we don't know for sure that they are Al Qaeda operatives. The Constitution protects our privacy and federal laws call for judicial approval before that privacy can be breached, specifically because we are innocent until proven guilty in this country and our rights cannot be taken away until proven guilty. These are the "Constitutional guarantees" that Mr Bush speaks of - that are apparently not guaranteed under this administration.
Even worse, the White House and CIA are now spending your and my tax money to launch an investigation into who leaked this information to the press. They are not concerned with how this policy came about, how brazenly the law was broken, or who it was that decided that it was OK to clearly break the law. They are most concerned with who let it out to the public. What does that tell me? That they knew exactly what they were doing, what it meant to the freedom of US citizens, and what it meant to the integrity of the Bush administration. Simultaneously, the administration is running investigations into two other leaks - the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame; and the reporting of secret overseas torture prisons used to hold terror suspects in anonymity. In the case of the latter, they claim that the report damaged the credibility of the U.S. But the fact that the government ran these secret prisons is what ruined our credibility, not the report itself!
At what point do we decide that September 11 is not a blank check for the federal government? Because they've been using it like one since September 12. The Bush Administration has been one of the most secretive presidential administrations in the history of this country, and at every turn they cite "national security" as their free pass. National security is most definitely important, but it is not an open-ended excuse for secretive operations, dishonest government officials, and abuse of power that blatantly breaks the legal foundations on which our society was built.
posted by bdonin at
1:58 PM
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