Posted on 05/18/2006 8:23:07 AM PDT by Ed Hudgins
[How President Hillary Clinton will use Bush policing powers. Be very affair!]
by Edward Hudgins
The revelation that the Bush administration has secured records of millions of phone calls from three telecom companies should shock every American who is concerned about freedom. Apparently it has not. A poll the day after the disclosure found that two- thirds of Americans have no apparent problem with this practice. Perhaps those opinions will change as more details are revealed. But in any case, for the sake our freedom, Americans would do well to do what most politicians refuse to do: to think in terms of principles.
The proper purpose of government is to protect the lives, liberty and property of citizens. Preventing terrorist attacks certainly falls under this principle. Administration defenders argue that its open-ended approach to tracking phone calls is simply part of that effort.
Of course, actually listening in on rather than just tracking every call placed -- if it were possible -- might reveal not only terrorist plots but plans for domestic murders and other crimes as well. Yet we also recognize that governments can be as dangerous to our rights as criminals and terrorists. That's why in the Constitution America's Founders created three separate branches of government -- executive, legislative and judicial -- and a system of checks and balances so that none of these could easily limit our liberty.
If the executive branch suspects someone is planning a crime, it must go to a court for permission to wiretap a phone. If current wiretap laws don't cover new technologies, the executive might go to Congress to amend the law. But the Bush administration is ignoring this fundamental principle of checks and balances by strong-arming private companies to turn over phone records without any oversight by the courts or Congress.
The administration already has shown its disregard for this principle by refusing to secure quick permission from a special court set up for such cases to wire tap suspected subversives calling from overseas to the United States. Nor has it gone to Congress to amend current laws to deal with what few cases might arise where there isn't enough time to seek court approval before the fact.
It's one thing for law enforcement officials to seek cooperation from private parties to stop specific crimes; even without a warrant local merchants might work with the police to apprehend mafia thugs who are shaking down neighborhood businesses.
But the cooperation the administration seeks for phone monitoring goes far beyond this. In effect, the administration is deputizing private parties to police their customers.
In recent years there have been government attempts to deputize bank tellers, requiring them to ask customers what large deposits and withdrawals are for -- as if drug pushers are really going to answer, "I'm scoring a trunk full of coke tonight." Responses were to be reported to authorities, including your angry retort that it's none of the teller's #@!&% business.
This principle would make snitches out of those with whom we do business. In a society already rife with suspicion, policies based on this principle create a big red sign reading "Trust No One!"
Some individuals -- especially conservatives -- argue that if Americans have nothing to hide, they shouldn't mind the government monitoring who they call, how much they deposit in the bank or anything else. But conservatives who make such arguments might ask, "What will I think when President Hillary Clinton rules in accordance with this principle, perhaps applying it to other enterprises and issues?"
Perhaps local governments increasing will attempt to collect taxes on internet business transactions; the city of San Antonio currently is suing 16 online travel agencies for not paying some $10 million in various hotel levies. Perhaps the federal government will get involved in this policing or try again to impose its own taxes on a cyberspace currently free from its revenue collectors. Or perhaps there will be calls from the kinds of international regulators of whom the Clintons are so fond to crack down on tax-evading transactions with websites based in other countries.
Perhaps President Hillary will strong-arm AOL and Yahoo to turn over records about your visits to ebay and Amazon or will declare that banks must allow Janet Reno's second attorney generalship to do a full cavity search of your accounts. Hey, they're just looking for patterns of criminal behavior, that is, you greedy scofflaws trying to avoid paying your fair share to government.
What do you think now?
Principles are necessary guides to individual choice and government policies, to take us beyond the range of the moment and to show us the consequences of a course of action. The Bush administration, by ignoring the principles that check government power, might think it's tracking down terrorists today but in fact it is undermining freedom now and in the future.
"Afraid," sorry. Though for a Clinton "affair" is accurate as well. If I can figure out how to edit this thing -- help! -- I'll change that!
Then why silence the good men involved in Able Danger? What did the Clinton's do with the Chi Coms during the '90's besides sell them our missile technology? What other U.S. military secrets did they sell, and to whom?
The democrat base is the dependent base. They couldn't support the democrat party alone, because they can't even support themselves. Who is paying to keep the party alive financially? It's not the American democrat base, and money isn't being sent here by other nations for free.
What if a city is bombed while they're waiting? Would it still be Bush's fault?
"Wiretap" is not the same nor under the same legal provisos as the NSA's "pen register" program.
Any commentator calling this "wiretap" is incompetent and unfit to be writing columns about the subject.
[How President Hillary Clinton will use presidential powers. Be very afraid!]
It's good to be concerned on the use of third-party information. It belongs to the owners and thus the person the information is about doesn't have the Fourth Amendment protections he might wish for since he doesn't possess it. But using false assumptions of the Constitution doesn't seem very useful to me.
Apparently, all the "spying" allegations are of constitutionally or statutorially authorized exercises of presidential powers.
Democrats were okay with Eschelon and Carnivore which captured every phone call, every e-mail, every baby monitor (!), every ATM transaction and more, and that program is okay, pre war on terror, but this program isn't okay.
Eschelon and Carnivore information:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543118/posts?page=1#1
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1542838/posts
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543318/posts
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21387
Oops - Clinton's NSA spying program accidentally (ahem) captured a Republican's phone calls.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1553101/posts?page=1
And just for kicks, the Commies insisted on FISA:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21453
Flashback: Gore planned to bug America:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1559386/posts
NYT called domestic surveillance a necessity when Clinton was president:
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1556815/posts
This is the December 2005 NYT article which says what today's USA Today article says regarding NSA collecting phone numbers.
Clearly, Democrats (and some RINOs) have manufactured their outrage over this already reported on program. LOL
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?ei=5090&en=016edb46b79bde83&ex=1293080400&pagewanted=print
14 posted on 05/13/2006 11:47:28 PM EDT by Peach [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
I didn't say Bush was wiretapping. In fact, I even speculated about a situation in which an administration were "actually listening in on rather than just tracking every call placed" meaning that Bush is NOT wiretapping now. "Tracking" is a shorthand for a long description of the practice in question at this time. Read more carefully; don't be an incompetent and unfit reader!
The state of the technology is such that the government can get whatever phone records it wants, with or without the phone companies' permission or perhaps even without their knowledge. What the government can do it will do, whoever is in charge, whether there is a law or not, whether Congress screams or not. Assuredly the government is collecting a lot more information than phone records and there is nothing the people can do about it other than put a different set of people in charge of it all. Republicans mostly use such information in the pursuit of military and policy goals. Democrats have shown that they eagerly use such capabilities for immediate political ends and for protection and revenge. The worst of that attitude on the Republican side was evinced by Nixon who apparently only discussed the possibility of such things without actually accomplishing them. The only way to reduce these uses of the technology is to reduce the size and scope of government and how is that project going these days?
Considering the denials by the telecom companies, the phrase "apparently it has not" should apply to "the Bush administration has secured records of millions of phone calls from three telecom companies". But the MSM will willfully ignore those denials in a race to attack the President.
It is the same as claiming that we are anti-(legal)immigration when we oppose letting illegals flood across the border. The public doesn't sê anything wrong with pen register stuff or with most legal immigration but the public is averse to wiretapping and to border jumping.
"The administration already has shown its disregard for this principle by refusing to secure quick permission from a special court set up for such cases to wire tap suspected subversives calling from overseas to the United States."
Oh. Ummmm... sorry then.
They already have and will again. The government has been doing it since at least 1980. The higher the technology, the more they collect. It doesn't matter who's in charge. Even the UK does it. China does it. It's here to stay.
The digital angel, where the soul of man merges with machine, will give every government all the info they need at a moments notice.
The genie is already out of the bottle. All the posturing right now is political posturing. The governments will never shut it down. Notice now no one is calling for the technology to end. The democrats just don't want Republicans to use it.
You shouldn't even use the word "wiretap" in the context of the NSA program. It is not relevant.
And of course you don't know (nor does anyone else) whether NSA has some sort of allocated power to conduct pen register programs under specified conditions (e.g., war), or indeed whether DoJ obtained a blanket pen register order from FISA some time ago. Such orders are renewable every 60 days and DO NOT require probable cause, only part of "an ongoing criminal investigation."
In fact, no one knows under what authority the program is conducted. Because it is CLASSIFIED.
IMO that's exactly as it should be.
When Congress gets the ability to scrutinize intelligence programs on a case-by-case basis, you might as well close the doors at NSA. It's all over.
They may be Objectivists but they aren't very accurate as the telcom companies deny that this happened.
Mr. Hudgens, do you shred your home telephone bills or just throw them out in the trash for anyone to examine?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.