Saturday, December 17, 2005
I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE, SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME
Americans are being spied on. Again, I reiterate what I've already said about this. I don't care. If they're doing these taps without the court-approved warrant they're doing it for good reason. It's not as if they're randomly tapping my or your phone just to see what we're talking about. If they're monitoring calls from known al-Qaeda members and they call someone in the U.S., I want the government to tap that persons phone when they have to. Not wait three months for the warrant to be approved.
Crossposted @ Hooah Wife

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Has it occured to you Chris, that the fact that they are not being reviewed means that they can abuse this power?

I'll put this simply:
There is no proof that they are doing it for a good reason other than the President's word... and so far, the President's word seems to be worth diddly-squat.

You're talking about the President who says "no, I won't back your anti-torture bill unless it excludes the CIA" for heaven's sake!

Anonymous said...

Second point of contention.

You didn't bother looking up the laws involved in the government wiretapping did you?

3 month wait? Bollocks:

"What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in any way required extra-constitutional action."

But back to how Bush's word is not worth diddly-squat...

George W. Bush, in Buffalo, NY, on April 20, 2004, at 9:49 a.m., talking about the USA Patriot Act:

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."