BIGGER Brother

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S

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 04:51:17 EST

BIGGER Brother

 

 

 

As most of us know, if you have to trash the Constitution to give

security to people, the terrorists/communists/whomever - have already

won. Sharin

 

* They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little

temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.

Benjamin Franklin

 

# " The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are

filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to

destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might, and the

Republic is in danger. Yes - danger from within and without. We need

law and order! Without it our nation cannot survive. "

†" Adolf Hitler

 

# " We first fought the heathens in the name of religion, then

Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for

global domination always change. "

†" Serj Tankian

 

# " Today the primary threat to the liberties of the American people

comes not from communism, foreign tyrants or dictators. It comes from

the tendency on our own shores to centralize power, to trust

bureaucracies rather than people. "

†" George H. Allen

 

It has been reported in many places that the other day (last week)

bush yelled angrily (he's always angry they say btw) -- IT'S JUST A

G*DDAMNED PIECE OF PAPER when referring to the Constitution.

***

 

 

EDITORIAL

Bigger brother - Los Angeles Times

Bigger brother

 

PRESIDENT BUSH WAS CAVALIER on Friday night when he told Jim Lehrer on

PBS that a report about the National Security Agency eavesdropping on

U.S. citizens was " not the main story of the day. " He is entitled to

his own news judgment, but it reveals a lot about his willingness to

disregard constitutional safeguards and civil liberties while pursuing

the war on terrorism. To the rest of us, the revelation in the New

York Times that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on

people within the United States without judicial warrants was

stunning. In one of the more egregious cases of governmental overreach

in the aftermath of 9/11, Bush secretly authorized the monitoring,

without any judicial oversight, of international phone calls and

e-mail messages from the United States.

 

The news came on the same day that Congress voted not to extend

controversial aspects of the soon-to-expire Patriot Act, and on the

heels of disturbing reports that the Pentagon's shadowy

Counterintelligence Field Activity office has been keeping tabs on

domestic antiwar groups, including monitoring Quaker meetings, under

the guise of protecting military installations. The program is

reminiscent of official efforts to spy on antiwar groups in the 1960s.

 

The scandalous abuse of Americans' civil liberties in that period led

in the 1970s to a new set of laws aimed at curtailing domestic

espionage by intelligence agencies. To balance national security needs

with our constitutional liberties, the Foreign Intelligence

Surveillance Act created secret " FISA " courts in which the Federal

Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies can covertly obtain

warrants to eavesdrop on suspected spies (now terrorists too) in the

United States. These courts are generally efficient and deferential to

the government. Yet the Bush administration still opted to cut them

out of the process in some cases; warrants are still sought to

intercept all communications that took place entirely within the

United States.

 

Some critics say the FISA courts are too slow to issue decisions in an

environment in which every minute counts, and that Cold War laws are

ill-suited for a war on amorphous terrorist cells. If that's the case,

the administration and Congress should have worked together to alter

the courts' procedures or to amend the law. Instead, the White House

unilaterally opted to exempt much of its antiterrorism efforts from

any kind of judicial oversight †" just as it tried doing with its

policies regarding detainees.

 

The Supreme Court has already reined in the executive branch on that

score, and the NSA's eavesdropping, arguably a violation of both the

law and the Constitution, may lead to even greater legal woes for the

president. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate

Judiciary Committee, called reports of the NSA practices clearly

unacceptable and said he would hold hearings early next year. There

will be plenty to ask about.

 

One early defense of the program is a claim by the administration that

it had to be implemented quietly †" the president authorized it in a

classified order †" because otherwise terrorists would be alerted to

its existence and work to evade it. But those same suspected

terrorists would have already known that they might be wiretapped with

the aid of a secret warrant. What is the difference?

 

Last week may come to be seen as a tipping point in the public's

attitude, one that will cause the administration to reverse its

encroachment on rights in the name of security. The report of the

NSA's unsupervised eavesdropping program helped defeat an extension of

certain controversial provisions of the Patriot Act in the Senate on

Friday.

 

Now even sympathetic lawmakers can be expected to view the Patriot Act

more skeptically. The revelations about the NSA raise two fundamental

questions about the administration's rationale for increased powers:

If it's already spying on its own citizens, then why does it need the

Patriot Act? Alternatively, if it's already spying on its own

citizens, how can it be trusted with the Patriot Act? This

administration has yet to fully acknowledge that with greater powers

must come greater accountability.

 

As for the Defense Department's counterterrorism database, the

Pentagon was forced on Thursday to acknowledge that it hadn't followed

its own guidelines requiring the deletion of information on American

citizens who clearly don't pose a security risk. Imagine that: a

domestic military intelligence program that failed to abide by its own

safeguards.

 

Given this administration's history, none of these developments is

especially surprising. But the latest revelations may serve as a

timely reminder of why the American constitutional system requires the

judiciary †" the third branch of government †" to review the actions

of the executive branch when necessary to protect the people's liberty.

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-security18dec18,0,5190326.s\

tory?track=tothtml