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• Thursday, July 24, 2008 12:10 PM

  @fbair1

  You got to be Kidding

  I could give a rats if Bush is spying on supposedly tainted individuals. As long as he keeps me and my family safe all I can say is keep up the good work....

  In other words, "go ahead and take my civil liberties...I wasn't using them anyway."

  "Supposedly tainted individuals"...that's a strange choice of words. Would you care to be more specific? Because there really isn't a lot of difference between "supposedly tainted individuals" and "no n-----s on the streets after sundown."

  (But- if an actual investigator could be more specific, all these new high-tech surveillance powers wouldn't be required. They'd get a warrant instead.)

  Data mining doesn't target "tainted individuals"- or "supposedly tainted individuals"...it targets everyone. It can tell someone when your home can be burglarized or vandalized without fear of discovery. It can tell someone where you can be assaulted, kidnapped, or killed without discovery. It can make it easy to frame you for a crime.

  My personal guess is that one of the top targets of such surveillance techniques would be some of the investigators themselves- particularly those who are looking into "sensitive areas" like government misconduct, corruption, collusion with drug traffickers, unauthorized weapons transfers, etc. The ones whose conscience and honesty might outweigh their "loyalty." Whistleblowing types.

  In the hierarchy of a bureaucracy, nothing stops the people at the top from using such wide-ranging powers in ways that ordinary decent citizens find difficult to even imagine.

  I realize that naifs like "bernbart" find it easy to reassure themselves that there's no danger, because government employees are so inherently incompetent. Bernbart needs to read some more history, and see how data collation worked for the Argentine junta, and the East German Stasi, and modern-day Communocapitalist China. It works all too well.

  fbair1, there's no difference- NONE- between your position, and that of someone who supports the repeal of the Second Amendment or gun confiscation- because they don't own a firearm, don't know anyone who does, and the only time they ever hears about them being used, it's by criminals. And they sing the same lullabye to themselves- "As long as the all-powerful government keeps me and my family safe..."

  Yes, I corrected your quote, which makes you sound like a little child talking about their Daddy- "As long as he keeps me and my family safe..." like Bush is Superman, or something...

  While I'm on this topic, I'm sick and tired of so-called "patriots" who keep demanding evidence of how these newly granted powers have been abused. The point after the abuses start happening is no time to demand your rights back.

  "Imagine a boot stamping on the human face- forever..." George Orwell

  —cabdriver Read cabdriver's other letters
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