I’d like to take a moment to remind everyone the next time they’re on the phone, especially on an overseas call, make sure you speak clearly and succinctly so the FBI voice recognition systems can accurately pick you up. And no fair using code words!
That’s for military use only, after all. Heaven help you if you have a girlfriend or boyfriend overseas and resort to such romantic clichés as “You dropped a bomb on me, baby.”
Us crazy, liberal whiners are apparently bringing up the wiretapping scandal as this season’s hot button.
It’s an even hotter button than that speed dial programmed for barely legal amorous teens you thought the government didn’t know you called on a disturbingly frequent basis.
Bush and the bunch are trying to defend their actions, in which they circumvented the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Security Act) Court to wiretap U.S. citizens, which, yes, counts as a “search” in that whole “search and seizure” clause so many people forget.
Forget, of course, until they’re standing with their fingers narrowly missing their nose, trying to say the ABCs backwards, and letting that eighth grade civics class on the constitution come bubbling back up to the top of their brains like so much frothy beer foam.
Electronic surveillance, which includes wiretapping, was considered a form of searching in Katz vs. the United States in 1967 (389 U.S. 347). To top it off, the Supreme Court decided against Nixon in 1972 (U.S. vs. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S. 297) that only judges had the right to approve wiretapping and surveillance under the fourth amendment, not presidents.
JFK was Clinton’s role-model, right? If Bush is modeling himself after Nixon, then this bodes not well.
Of course, these interesting little factoids came right before Alito’s confirmation beatings… I mean hearings.
Funny that he calls himself a constitutionalist, but seems to have forgotten that little checks and balances idea the founding fathers apparently forgot to take an eraser to.
I’d also like to add that the FISA court, in its 22 years of existence, has not once denied a wire-tapping request.
And, you don’t even have to get a request before the tap takes place. If you’re chatting up your overseas “partner” from somewhere in the U.S., the National Security Agency has 72 hours after sharing the headset with “Ma Bell” to go before the court and get permission.
So, why have the court in the first place? Again, back to that concept of judicial review and the separation of powers. The executive branch has no right to interpret the law or decide if someone is guilty. Only the courts can do that. As a U.S. citizen, you have a right to privacy from the possibility of an oppressive police state poking its nose into your life.
So, there’s no reason not to approach the court, and, in fact, many good reasons for the guys on the “Hill” to swallow their pride and get their surveillance field trip permission slips.
To top it off, Google, the “Information Superhighway’s” equivalent of that creepy bucktooth service station guy with directions to anywhere, last week told the justice department to get bent when asked for an entire week of search histories and links, in an overly broad attempt to justify the White House’s Online Child Protection Act.
Web portals Yahoo, MSN, and AOL handed over at least some of the information requested (although how much is not clear), while issuing a press release to their far-too-trusting customers of a “P” symbol next to a colon in ultra-large font.
Cryptography experts are unsure of the message, but do say it is strikingly similar to a guy sticking his tongue out while saddling up to “Big Government.”
The scariest part of all this is that Bush said in January of 2001, “If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”
Here’s to “George W. Castro’s” brand new, shiny police state.
Originally printed in the Daily O’Collegian, January 31st, 2005.
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