The Black Widow


Now they make noise about the NSA computers?
I'm not sure which is funnier about this article, the fact that the columnist is threatened or the fact that he feels betrayed by Obama for not opposing this monstrosity.

In July, George W. Bush signed into law the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which gives the NSA even more power to look for patterns that suggest terrorism links in Americans' telephone and Internet communications.

The ACLU immediately filed a lawsuit on free speech and privacy grounds. The new Bush law provides farcical judicial supervision over the NSA and other government trackers and databasers. Although Senator Barack Obama voted for this law, dig this from the ACLU: "The government [is now permitted] to conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling a court who it intends to spy on, what phone lines and e-mail addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, why it's conducting the surveillance or whether it suspects any party to the communication of wrongdoing."

This gives the word "dragnet" an especially chilling new meaning.

The ACLU's Jameel Jaffer, director of its National Security Project, adds that the new statute, warming the cold hearts of the NSA, "implicates all kinds of communications that have nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activity of any kind."

Why did Obama vote for this eye-that-never-blinks? He's a bright, informed guy, but he wasn't yet the President-Elect. The cool pragmatist wanted to indicate he wasn't radically unmindful of national security—and that his previous vow to filibuster such a bill may have been a lapse in judgment. It was.

What particularly outraged civil libertarians across the political divide was that the FISA Amendments Act gave immunity to the telecommunications corporations—which, for seven years, have been a vital part of the Bush administration's secret wiretapping program—thereby dismissing the many court cases brought by citizens suing those companies for violating their individual constitutional liberties. This gives AT&T, Verizon, and the rest a hearty signal to go on pimping for the government.

That's OK with the Obama administration? Please tell us, Mr. President.

Obama lied for pragmatic reasons. That's what politicians do.

Oh, and here's a news flash. Obama is going to do whatever he can to expand government power. He's not going to save you, he's going to imperil you. And the chances are excellent that he will preside over the collapse of centralized government, attacking liberty whenever he can to try to save the Federal Government.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - January 8, 2009 at 07:05 AM  Tag


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