Yet another gov't abuse: wiretapping

I had hoped to keep my blog at least somewhat free of simple, plain-ol' opinion pieces, but hey, isn't that to some extent what blogs are all about? Well anyway, here are my thoughts on this issue.

Here it is early 2006, and one of the top news stories is Emperor Bush's authorization of wiretaps without a court order. The big question many are asking is, was it legal for him to do so? His defenders and apologists say yes, he can do whatever the hell he wants.

Those concerned about civil liberties, like the ACLU, say he overstepped his authority, and question why he didn't bother to get court orders for the wiretapping. The law provides, after all, that such court orders can be applied for up to 72 hours after the fact, to allow for time-critical wiretaps.

Still others, say that maybe he didn't have the authority, but hey, it's OK because this is all for the sake of fighting terrorism. Terrorists are dangerous, scary people and if we need to bend the Constitution every once in a while, or even drive a Mack truck through it, then hey, we gotta do what we gotta do. After all, the Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper.

But in questioning the legality of the Emperor's actions, they have missed the bigger picture. The proper question to ask isn't whether Bush had the legal right to authorize wiretaps without court approval, but the moral right. Do the ends justify the means?

Republicans have often touted the importance of the concept of the Rule of Law--that laws are made to be followed, even if you may personally disagree with them, since no one should be above the law. And yet, time and time again, they have shown a willingness, and even eagerness, to trample on the highest law of the land whenever it gets in their way. The Constitution to them is a pretty little showpiece, but something that shouldn't be used in practice because it only gets in the way of law enforcement. This attitude has reared its ugly head repeatedly in the War on Some Drugs, in efforts to ban or regulate the content of expressions (online sites, "porno" magazines, "offensive" books & artwork, etc.), and now, in the hunt for hidden communists--er, terrorists among us.

(In all fairness, yes I realize that Democrats like Clinton, Janet Reno, and many others in the past and present are also guilty of such attitudes and actions. Many have voted eagerly for the War on Some Drugs, the Patriot Act, and on countless other infringements upon our liberties. The erosion of our civil liberties, though, sure seems much more prevalent and forceful on the Repub side.)

Those who think that the gov't can be trusted with warrantless wiretaps, need to study their history a bit more. For decades the gov't has snooped on people and groups for dubious reasons that have nothing to do with national security or public safety, though both are often offered up as excuses. Civil rights groups in particular are favorite targets, as are vocal dissenters. And beyond mere wiretapping and other intelligence-gathering abilities, the gov't has routinely taken an active role in disrupting these grassroots groups. With no real accountability, gov't agencies often embark on missions of politicking, attempts at social engineering, and personal or ideological vendettas. Such activities are often claimed to be in the national interest and/or as legitimate law enforcement functions, when in reality they are neither.

Now, to get a warrant for a wiretap is not all that hard. The gov't has even set aside a special rubber-stamp court for just that purpose. This court has only turned down a tiny handful of warrant requests out of more than 18,000 made, and even those were later granted after resubmission.

When even this rubber-stamp court protests, that should be a good indicator that you're going too far with the surveillance. That's just what the FISA court did, meekly at first, asking for a few of the wiretap requests to be "modified" starting in 2003. (Roughly 5% of the requests.) With the public revelation of Bush's screw-the-courts surveillance of American citizens, one of the court judges finally resigned in protest in late Dec. 2005.

Still, the apologists would argue, these wiretaps aren't for ordinary, law-abiding citizens, just the terrorists. But from the sheer number of requests, the gov't must actually believe there's a terrorist around every corner. Even the FBI itself agrees that these wiretaps have little to do with protecting America from dangerous terrorists. From an article in the N.Y. Times:

"We'd chase a number, find it's a school teacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former FBI official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

And those are just the "useless" leads. The FBI is much less revealing when it comes to wiretaps for political organizations, dissenters, and civil liberties groups. Bush himself did not personally conduct warrantless wiretaps. But there are those who carried out his orders, who did not see enough of a problem with bypassing the courts to raise an issue about it or refuse to carry out what they may well have known to be an illegal activity. Those people are the true "spooks," the inspiration for an entire sub-culture of crackpot conspiracy theorists and genuine freedom fighters alike. Those "spooks" are the same class of people who train Central American death squads, carry out kidnappings for the CIA, hold American citizens without charge and without access to counsel, and who think torture is an acceptable interrogation technique. They are, in short, the American version of the KGB (only much better funded than their Soviet counterparts).

And yet, again, what about the morality of all this? What justification can there be for such Orwellian mass invasions of privacy when public safety is at most an excuse, and often unrelated to it at all?

Nobody in a free society should feel comfortable with the idea that gov't might be monitoring their communications. That so many apparently do, just goes to show how big a carte blanche this country has given its rulers to erode our freedoms for the self-interest of that same gov't. And, it is an indicator that America is not nearly as free as many would like to imagine it to be.

Needless to say, the fact that your letters, emails, phone calls, blogs, and instant messages may be being monitored and recorded for no good reason (or no reason at all), is a pretty good reason why you and everyone else should be using cryptography whenever possible, even for your trivial everyday communications.

Terrorists may scare us and harm us, but only gov't has the power to take away our liberties. Is it rational to argue that lives lost to terrorism could destroy our nation, but loss of privacy and liberties won't? Buildings destroyed can be rebuilt; can we say the same about liberties destroyed?

Addendum: Here's another article dealing with Bush's assumption of dictatorial powers (by his own definition).

Addendum #2: The founder & publisher of Capitol Hill Blue, Doug Thompson's response to an FBI National Security letter demanding personal information about himself, including traffic data & payment records: "Fuck you. Strong letter to follow."