Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Bush: Founding Fathers were Just Kidding About Fourth Amendment
.President Bush apparently thinks that the fourth amendment of the US Constitution (i.e. the US Constitution) doesn't have to be taken seriously, because he is invoking "national security."
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/12/2006 12:14:00 AM
|Tip Jar for IC
|Cole @ Macmillan Speakers|
|Global Affairs Blog|
 Facebook | | |  | | |  |
|---|
 | | |  | | | |
|---|
Muslim Denunciations of al-Qaeda and Terrorism
Suggested Books about the Middle East
Michigan War Studies Review. Many excellent resources.
Individual items can be linked to through the permalink in the time of posting at the end.
Write your political representatives via Congress.org.
ARCHIVES
The feed address is http://www.juancole.com/ rss.xml
Awards
Winner, October 5, 2007, Scott Nearing Award for Courageous Scholarship (Awarded by the Graduate Students of the Political Science Department, University of Pennsylvania).
Winner, 2005 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Hunter College.
Winner, 2004 Koufax Award for Best Expert Blog
Winner, 2004 Koufax Award for Best Posting
Issues
the War on Terror
7 Comments:
The outrage should be directed at the private enterprises who voluntarily turned over the information requested by the government. This latest development is not only not news -- it has been reported in several places for several months -- but it has nothing to do with the Fourth Amendment. There was no search. There was no seizure. The government is allowed to ask questions. Citizens, corporate or otherwise, are allowed to answer them, or to choose to protect the privacy of their customers.
President Bush has every right to abuse the Constitution, American laws, and the international community. He rules over 300 million wimps who let him walk all over them.
Laws mean nothing if people do not enforce them. Checks and balances indeed!
The Motto of this Government is "We had to destroy it to save it" and now they are appllying it to themselves. Has there ever been a US government with such a lust for self destruction? Historians and Psycologists will have material for centuries after this is over...If we survive.
Bush's defense of the secret NSA taps is that all the numbers being tracked are for people linked to Al Qaida - That makes for a helluva lot of Al Qaeda operatives!
My main problem with this NSA database is that it is a permanent database - this record is going to be available to any person with the right security clearance for as long as it exits EVEN after NSA officials find it irrelevant...
When the international-to-domestic phone tapping program was first exposed, Gen. Hayden was interviewed by George Stephonopoulos of ABC News and Hayden said that while phone calls made by George S. to shady people in Pakistan may have led to the tappping of his phones and the recording of all his conversations, the material would be ignored by NSA staffers when they discovered that the person was a journalist.
What Hauden did not mention is that the material would NOT be deleted but saved, and anyone with the right security clearance could go into the database and look into the recordings of every call George S. made... So if George S. ever said anything unethical or immoral (NOT illegal) during these conversations it can be exploited in a gossip campaign by Rove-led character assassins...
In Nixon's time one would have to break into a doctor's offices and steal such secret compromising information, under Bush it is freely available through phone taps - in the name of SECURITY from Al Qaida...
Also, it is already known that the FBI is surveying anti-Bush groups... With the new interagency cooperation, the FBI could very well solicit the phone records collected by the NSA to pursue investigations of non-Al Qaida people who are deemed dangerous only because they protest this presidency.
poll (washington post) say 66% americans do not mind nsa having their phone records. am i missing something? are they that scared AND stupid? are they not knowing who they really need to be afraid of? but why should i be surprised seeing how meekly, without any feeling of loss, people teach children not to talk to "strangers". i can hear people say if u don't want the government to know, u don't have to make calls. i began to fear our americans aren't any freeer in our mind than anyone else.
The practical problem with the NSA data mining operation is that it can be and will be used to determine the network of journalists who expose Bush administration crimes.
Wrong. Bush would never allow the IRS to monitor or tax all wire transactions with offshore tax havens. Ditto for verification of payroll Social Security numbers. The 4th Amendment does protect against unreasonable search or seizure. A presumption of innocence covers all manner of tax and labor law avoidance.
Post a Comment
<< Home