My thoughts on…the NSA wiretap program
January 24th 2006 -
I’ve heard a lot of talk about this NSA eavesdropping thing, and I’ve decided to add my two cents to the issue. Now most of the people talking about it are pissed-off liberals using this to criticize and demonize the Bush administration yet again. Talk about sore losers. Am I the only one tired of hearing them yammer on? They say it violates the Constitution and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and that Bush is acting “above the law.” The remainder are people who are truly concerned about the issue.
Allow me to defend the embattled president. Firstly, its targeted towards Al-Qaeda associates, not US citizens (or so they say). I mean honestly, why would the US government use their high tech equipment to spy on regular folk? Joe Nobody, why would they bother to sort through your inbox, filled with chain letters and spam, or spy on your calls to other average Joes and telephone personals in a desperate effort to combat the overwhelming loneliness in your life? What, will they send a sniper to execute you if you you’re found out to be a liberal? Say it with me, YOU’RE…NOT…IMPORTANT. Good. Now you can sleep at night.
Secondly, this isn’t the first time it has been used. FDR and Churchill spied on all Trans-Atlantic calls before Pearl Harbour and through 1945. Thirdly, it’s not illegal. Check Article II of the Constitution, which gives the president the responsibility and authority to deal with an enemy that threatens the U.S. This isn’t the first time Americans freaked out about privacy. Remember the cookie controversy? But I’m not 100% in agreement with the president’s actions, such as the attempted seizure of Google’s private user data.
Anonymous Says:
January 24th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Bush isn’t just spying on terrorists here, he’s spying on peace groups and stuff. That is outrageous.
And I’m English, so please don’t ever compare Chrchill with Bush again, ok?
Speak for yourself, but you don’t live in the US, and I do, so you probably have not as much news on it as we do here.
Jon Says:
January 25th, 2006 at 4:46 am
Anonymous,
The news you are talking about is all bogus and this person is a heck of a lot more truthfully informed than you are. You need to stop listening to the liberal biased MSM and Democrats that are filling your head with nonsense.
It is pretty funny that this person is much more informed than you are.Until it is determined by any legitimate inquiry or by a court of law to be illegal, the act of warrantless wiretaps authorized by President Bush and conducted by the NSA are perfectly legal.
Leon Says:
January 25th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Anonymous,
It’s true. I don’t live in the States. But remember that this is the age of information. I’ve got CNN and other news networks. I’ve got the Internet, and I’ve got the newspapers. So I’ve got all this information I need, and then some.
Jeffrey Says:
January 25th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
This came up while Clinton was President, too. It was revealed that the NSA monitors all email traffic in the US. Items that meet their search perameters are flagged for human inspection. Predictably, the Left was okay with it, while the Right had apoplexy. Now that the tables are turned, the Left is freaked out.
Plus C’est la Même Chose
Abeni Says:
January 25th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Well,am yet to see where Leon showed he was not informed.It may not be the “nice” thing to do but it is not illegal
Jumper Bailey Says:
February 1st, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Not sure about the legality of the snooping…why not just get a warrant? The warrant process is pretty much like a rubber-stamp for the NSA anyway, and it have could be sped up with the cooperation of Congress if the timing was really a problem to begin with.
But I agree that there is a certain fig-leaf aspect to the fuss. It ignores the fact that the U.S. intelligence services can (and have, and for quite some time) get around the no-spying-on-Americans rule by simply working with the British intelligence services. There’s a long-standing tacit “gentlemen’s agreement” between those services which works like this: If the US finds something about the Brits that might interest the British services, they share it with them. The British return the favor. Presto! No more problems with not being allowed (legally speaking) to spy on Americans. They’ve ben doing this for years. (Although of late, the volume of tips the American intelligence services would like to receive probably outstrips the volume being produced by the British.)
The larger question is, can we trust this administration to behave responsibly with unchecked and unsupervised activities? And given the history of our secret overseas prisons, videotaped evidence of prisoner abuse in Iraq, and the snowstorm of deception and spin that led up to the Iraq War in the first place, I’m not entirely sure that we can.
Jumper Bailey Says:
February 1st, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Anonymous’s point about “spying on peace groups and stuff” should not be tossed aside as a ravings of a lunatic.
I say this as someone who has experienced a bit of this surveillance. In my case I found it more flattering than terrifying (Who me? They’re interested in little old me? Cool!), but it’s not paranoia to say that this sort of thing can rapidly take turns for the worst. J. Edgar Hoover’s biography, which I read several years ago, still gives me the creeps.
Jumper Bailey Says:
February 3rd, 2006 at 12:07 am
I saw this article in the New York Times, and I had to drop a link to it here.
It doesn’t relate to the NSA (it’s about local police surveillance, not federal surveillance), but I found it very ironic nonetheless.
Police Officers Sue Over Police Surveillance of Their Protests
When even the police are complaining about police surveillance, things have gotten a little out of hand, I believe.
Leon Says:
February 3rd, 2006 at 10:04 am
You’re right jumper. It is ironic.