Spying & Incompetence
Someone recently pointed out to me that I had given out the wrong address for finding this blog. You may make your own decision about how seriously to take a blogger who gets his own blog address wrong.
The big dust up about survelliance of our own citizens in search of terrorist plots has so far shed more heat than light. My side, liberals, shout about civil liberties, while the other side - Cheney - stare us down as pathetic wimps unable or unwilling to defend ourselves.
My guess is that this is not a new issue. For instance, I assume anything I put into cyberspace is in the public domain, whether a personal email or not. If I were assigned the duty of trying to figure out the actions and motives of potential terrorists, I would set my computers to pick up certain words, phrases, and patterns, as well as correspondence with known terrorists in other countries. I hope we do that.
But unless we are to become just like our terrorist enemies, we had better sober up about ignoring our own laws about how to go about this. While it is easy to make the case for acting percipitously when the danger is imminent - and we are still hysterical, as the Bush administration seems to want to keep us - we have provision in our laws for how to behave under those cicumstances. In fact the law seems a little silly, since the survelliance can take place before asking for a court order. But the important thing, in this nation of laws - not people - is that there is a law and everyone has to obey it or face the consequences.
During the civil rights struggles, we were advised that when we broke the law - even if it was an unjust or unconstitutional law - we should expect to face arrest, trial and jail.
The argument is being made that we musn't tip off our enemies by passing laws in public that tell them how we function. I say the opposite. Let's show them how we function right out there in the open. If the law is inadequate to the situation, change the law.
My suspicion is that this is more of the two term effort this administration is making to focus as much power in the presidency as possible. A bad idea that will come back to haunt them as well as the rest of us.
Richard Nixon believed he was acting in the bst interests of the nation when he authorized spying on the Democrats, because he believed his reelection was critical to the well being of the country. That's why we have these laws; they curb the skewed judgment the best of us have when our own power is on the line.
The big dust up about survelliance of our own citizens in search of terrorist plots has so far shed more heat than light. My side, liberals, shout about civil liberties, while the other side - Cheney - stare us down as pathetic wimps unable or unwilling to defend ourselves.
My guess is that this is not a new issue. For instance, I assume anything I put into cyberspace is in the public domain, whether a personal email or not. If I were assigned the duty of trying to figure out the actions and motives of potential terrorists, I would set my computers to pick up certain words, phrases, and patterns, as well as correspondence with known terrorists in other countries. I hope we do that.
But unless we are to become just like our terrorist enemies, we had better sober up about ignoring our own laws about how to go about this. While it is easy to make the case for acting percipitously when the danger is imminent - and we are still hysterical, as the Bush administration seems to want to keep us - we have provision in our laws for how to behave under those cicumstances. In fact the law seems a little silly, since the survelliance can take place before asking for a court order. But the important thing, in this nation of laws - not people - is that there is a law and everyone has to obey it or face the consequences.
During the civil rights struggles, we were advised that when we broke the law - even if it was an unjust or unconstitutional law - we should expect to face arrest, trial and jail.
The argument is being made that we musn't tip off our enemies by passing laws in public that tell them how we function. I say the opposite. Let's show them how we function right out there in the open. If the law is inadequate to the situation, change the law.
My suspicion is that this is more of the two term effort this administration is making to focus as much power in the presidency as possible. A bad idea that will come back to haunt them as well as the rest of us.
Richard Nixon believed he was acting in the bst interests of the nation when he authorized spying on the Democrats, because he believed his reelection was critical to the well being of the country. That's why we have these laws; they curb the skewed judgment the best of us have when our own power is on the line.
posted by Blayney at 9:15 AM
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