NSA Spying

In recent weeks President Bush has made several speeches proudly touting his NSA Domestic Spying Program as if he’s within the parameters of the Law. He speaks as if he is truly protecting US Citizens by spying on them. So once again I will clearly walk all who are willing to go with me through the rhetoric.

To reiterate, the National Security Agency (NSA) was given the ok by President Bush to spy on US Citizens that have been in contact with known al-Qaeda operatives. The only phone calls that can be tapped are ones that are to or from overseas. Only 8 members in Congress were ever notified about these wiretaps and they were sworn to secrecy concerning them. The Courts were completely disregarded. And the wiretaps are ongoing. That’s all we know about the wiretaps at this point.

If these wiretaps are legitimate because they are only occurring on lines of people who have KNOWN connections to al-Qaeda, then the administration needs to answer these questions:

• How do they know these people are connected to al-Qaeda without having previously tapped their lines (ie “fishing” through citizens phone calls in an attempt to connect citizens to terrorists or vice versa)?
• Why not get the warrant from the courts to legally wiretap these people (such provisions do exist and have been used in the past)?
• Why not arrest these people and/or interrogate them for information since there is a certainty of their al-Qaeda connection?
• Where is the proof that these wiretaps (or the Patriot Act for that matter) have been effective (and I mean specifics, not inference)?
• Where is the proof that innocent people have not been unknowingly spied on (because I know they got records)?

If they Bush Administration is going to bold-facedly defend this policy, then they have the obligation to answer these questions and they have the burden of proof to show that the wiretapping is worth keeping. And hiding behind the shadow of potential 9/11-type terrorists attacks is not legitimate at all.

See make no mistake about it, these wiretaps do not help us in the War on Terror (and if they do, the administration has provided no evidence or instances of how it helps. I say that emphatically because I do not want anyone to forget the 9/11 Commission Report. The Report clearly indicated that there was ample information to halt the 9/11 attacks prior to them occurring. That means that neither ILLEGAL wiretaps nor the Patriot Act were necessary to stop the attacks. All that needed to happen was coordination between the nation’s intelligence agencies.

On that point, I submit this clear stream of logic:

How do you find a needle in a haystack?

You get rid of the hay!

It is my opinion that all this extra information that the government is compiling from both the ILLEGAL wiretaps and the Patriot Act are only adding more hay to the stack, thus making it harder to detect potential terrorist.

Finally, how can we know if the government is not spying on us all? How can we know? For these people who get in front of the microphone and say that “if you’re in California and calling your daughter in college in Kentucky, this program is not tapping that call,” I just want to know this one simple thing: How do you know???

There was no public knowledge of these wiretaps until someone that knew about them had the balls to actually leak the info to the public. There has been no indication that the ILLEGAL wiretaps have ceased since the news was first reported. And if Bush can bypass the Court, then what ever happened to the Constitutionally ordained notion of checks and balances. Where is the Rule of Law?

Do you realize that Bill Clinton was impeached because of a personal matter that had nothing to do with national security or mismanagement of the government. And the girl that he participated in his immoral act with was a willing adult. But he was impeached and made an embarrassment over it. And do you know what the hypocritical (cause after Clinton was caught, they all confessed to the same thing he did) Republican reasoning was: The Rule of Law.

So where is the Rule of Law now?

And what amazes me is that this President (Bush) has no qualms about admitting that he has ordered wiretaps without Court ordered warrants (which are easily attainable, and have been given thousands of times with respect to terror).

AND PEOPLE HAVE THE NERVE TO DEFEND HIM.

This isn’t about terrorism anymore, this is about freedom and civil rights. To borrow a cliché, this is indeed the height of hypocrisy. We say that we are fighting for Iraqi freedom, but “we the people” don’t even have the freedom to know who’s being spied on or why (Patriot Act included). We say that we rid Iraq of Saddam because he was a tyrant, but isn’t one man (and his cronies) violating the privacy of 300 million people for some unknown reason at least mildly tyrannical to some degree.

Are we not Americans? Are we not still citizens? Where are our rights? How can we trust this government?

-Maelstrom