Tapping into privacy

[babylonsister]

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/03/25/Opinion/Tapping_into_privacy.shtml

Tapping into privacy

We're being snooped on without proper oversight, and it is time to start caring about the law and our right to privacy again.

By ROBYN BLUMNER
Published March 25, 2007

It just goes to show you what six years of this administration has done to our national psyche. After the torture memos, "state-secrets" defenses, the demise of habeas corpus and secret overseas prisons, what's a little invasion of privacy?

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales doesn't lose his job due to the bombshell report from Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, finding that the FBI flagrantly disregarded express limits on its snooping abilities, then we have become completely inured to the Bush administration's outrages.

Part of me feels sorry for the schmoes that President Bush has surrounded himself with, people like hapless Harriet Miers, his former White House counsel and the lapdog Gonzales. The attorney general has had some of the top legal jobs in the nation, including a stint on the Texas Supreme Court, because his pal George kept pulling him along. But Gonzales is not a sophisticated legal thinker. He is a loyal, partisan, sycophantic hack.

On the Charlie Rose Show in June 2005, Gonzales was promoting the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act. Some of its provisions were set to expire at the end of that year and there were plenty of critics, including myself, saying that the act had gone too far in trenching on civil liberties.

Gonzales told viewers "if you look honestly at the facts, one must conclude ... that the act has not been used to infringe upon civil liberties."

Now, thanks to Inspector General Fine's findings, we know the honest facts.

From 2003 to 2005, the act was used as cover to violate the privacy of potentially thousands of people in this country. Gonzales' assurances were as empty as were his confirmation hearing claims that he would act independently of the White House.

more...

New NYT article on IG Fine here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3181424&mesg_id=3181424

[yourout]

1. And if anyone thinks there was no politically motivated snooping...

I have some prime real-estate they might be interested in.