Letters to the Editor
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Image Caption
Look at the caption image. Their ears are huge! Who photoshopped it? Joke?
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the efficiency of fear
The plaintiffs in these cases seem to be basing their arguments on this: A government given unfettered power to spy on its citizens will force those citizens into submission not only by the assertion of that power but even more by the possibility of its assertion.
Tyranny can be very efficient that way.
Didn't the founders of this country have precisely that sort of tyranny in mind when they wrote the Constitution?
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Bring it On! ( the dissent I mean)
It's a relief to read that there is broadening dissent over the NSA wiretaps. Although it doesn't include my favorite liberal Bill Maher who recently stated that he supported Bush's illeagal surviellance program while hosting Larry King. C'mon Bill! Even if the program had some legitimacy how can one entrust Bush and Co. to run it properly (as in ethically) after 9/11 , missing WMD'S , torture at Abu Grahib , billions of dollars lost in Iraq, Plamegate, Katrina .... need I say more.
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Even stranger than you know
It's nice that the ACLU lawsuit includes some journalists and researchers.
How much stranger and stronger if it included:
Family members of service men based in Iraq or Afghanistan who feel they can't express themselves honestly in their phone and email conversations with their loved ones.
Congresspersons who regularly visit Iraq and Afghanistan who feel they can't perform their oversight duties due to a lack of privacy in their communications with their staff back in Washington.
Or maybe it hasn't dawned on these two groups that they are precisely within the oversight guidelines laid down by the President?
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re: Even stranger than you know
Family members of service men based in Iraq or Afghanistan who feel they can't express themselves honestly in their phone and email conversations with their loved ones.
IANAL or a service man, but I would be really surprised if they have the legal right to confidential communication while they are deployed abroad. It is probably like being in jail, where they can read your mail and listen to your conversations. There is plenty of good reason for this--to make sure they are not passing on tactical information, etc.
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Why the presumption...
...that only international conversations are being intercepted? Because Bush said so? Since we know Bush and his minions have lied bout everything else, why would they stop with this?
Wouldn't a more likely presumption be that they are, in fact, surveilling intra-national as well as international communications? And, for that matter, that they have also targeted journalists and/or domestic opposition?
Especially given that it is already a published fact that the Defense Dept's intelligence arms have spied upon domestic political and even environmental groups even after it has been demonstrated that they are not in violation of the law, nor a threat to the nation. Not to mention that it is also a published fact that the HSA has already been misused for domestic political ends (that would be tracking the errant Texas Democratic state legislators when they went missing to try to deny a quorum for DeLay's gerrymandering of the state). And these are only the abuses that we KNOW of so far; a reasonable inference would be that there is far more of which we do not yet know, out there waiting to be found, or to be whistleblown.
And if some NSA or other spook is reading this... bite me. It's my country too, twerp. In fact, given that I understand and support the Constitution as it's written, and the current administration clearly does not, it's arguably MORE my country than theirs.
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The Road From Baghdad To Wigan Pier
From out of Left field shoots Christopher Hitchens. Now my brain really hurts. After emerging as the WHIG's poster boy intellectual booster for the Iraq fiasco, this is something of a volte face. Perhaps he had an epiphany on rereading Orwell.
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Domestic
There was no logical reason for the White House to circumvent the FISA court, if they were only interested in monitoring international calls. There seems to be this Leftist consensus that the neocons chose to eschew the legal process only to probe and expand the limits of their own power. Certainly, Bush's outright admission that he'd gone around the law looked like a big fuck-you to a cowering Congress. But they didn't want this publicized. It's all bluster. They don't have a legal leg to stand on. It's just that rabidly defending their actions is the only shrewd PR move, now that they've been outed -- and moreover, it's the only way for them to retain control of the debate in a way that might forestall exposure of the real reason for their extra-legal activities.
There are only two logical reasons for circumventing the quite efficient FISA court. They are:
1. There is simply so much wiretapping going on that it would be impossible to approve case by case, and,
2. Some of that wiretapping is happening domestically.
Read the Wikipedia page on "eschelon." The NSA program electronically surveils virtually all communication worldwide. Oh - except for domestic calls within the US. That would be unconstitutional.
QED: The NSA flipped the switch to monitor domestic calls as well. They can't strain them or sort them; they just grab all of them. That's why the Administration can't go to the court. What would they say? "Hey, we're wiretapping every phone in America. Is that okay?"
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Don't hold your breath
Nobody can predict how the Supreme Court would rule in this case (esp. with Stevens, 86 this April, replaced by Pres. Bush), but one thing is reasonably certain: lower courts decisions in favor of the ACLU would not stop the program. Stays of injunctions pending the Government appeal to the Supreme Court would be granted. So we're looking at possibly two years (or longer?) before the Sup Ct rules. By then, maybe the Dems will be ready to take over Jan. 2009. What do you think they'll do -- shut down intelligence gathering, illegal or not? Surely you jest.
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Right on
<<There are only two logical reasons for circumventing the quite efficient FISA court. They are:
1. There is simply so much wiretapping going on that it would be impossible to approve case by case, and,
2. Some of that wiretapping is happening domestically.>>
I agree wholeheartedly. We know that the NSA's SOP is not to employ thousands of g-men to sit at desks with headphones and notepads, but to electronically monitor, flag and record billions of "interesting" communications. Since the FISA courts are virtual rubber-stamps for warrant requests, there had to be something about this tapping which the Administration knew would not pass muster even with the FISA court. And a blanket wiretap of the United States would fit that bill.
Orwell was only off by 20 years.