On being an at&t customer, weighing wiretaps, etc.
I am an at&t customer, and apparently, there could be something in it for me. Hmmm.
And now that I’ve peripherally referenced the debate on warrantless wireta… er, domestic spy… er, “terrorist surveillance” program (yeah, that does sound better), I’ll just wade in a bit further here.
Maybe it’s okay for the government to be spying on domestic-based phone calls and such—I’m not against security, though I’m far from convinced that (a) the program is as legally sound as the President makes it out to be, and (b) equally effective results couldn’t be had with fewer cut corners. But if we are going to have our government snooping around domestically, can we at least have oversight?
For me, this is a big assumption, but assuming the President does have Constitutional authority to carry out these warrantless procedures, we can certainly afford to have a clearly enumerated oversight body (similar to, say, the FISA panel), right? I just want a decent level of assurance that the scope of these searches is focused on the proper targets, and not abused in any way. I realize a number of U.S. lawmakers were aware of the covert program when it still was covert, but I’m not calling for the President to give a general report on what he’s doing. I’m asking that there be a qualified entity to keep an eye on every detail of how the program is applied.
At this point you may wonder, “don’t you trust the President, Howard?” The answer to which is: Not really. And in that vein, I’d like to know how many people who support the White House position currently would still support it if the President’s name were Hilary Rodham Clinton instead of George Walker Bush. And how many who are bashing the President’s program would be much quieter about it if we were dealing with a President Gore, or Kerry?
The fact is, and this applies to both major parties equally, we’re a nation full of people who will support almost anything with which our native ideology is associated. And conversely, we’ll generally jump on someone from the opposing ideology for things we’d just excuse if were someone from our side running the show. There are, quite disgustingly, bountiful examples of both patterns.
I just want to know that while the all the President’s men are scouring the communication lines for threats to democracy, a separate, independent apparatus is scouring their actions for breaches of the trust that unchecked power has been known to spawn throughout history.
In frail human hands, absolute power does corrupt. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when. I’d rather not let it come to that.
Which almost makes me asking myself what was so bad about the government gridlock of the 1990’s anyway…
