Breaking a Promise on Surveillance

It is just a technical matter, the Obama administration says: We just need to make a slight change in a law to make clear that we have the right to see the names of anyone’s e-mail correspondents and their Web browsing history without the messy complication of asking a judge for permission.

It is far more than a technical change. The administration’s request, reported Thursday in The Washington Post, is an unnecessary and disappointing step backward toward more intrusive surveillance from a president who promised something very different during the 2008 campaign.

“the administration is proposing changes to the law that would allow huge numbers of new electronic communications to be examined with no judicial oversight.”

The article is full of allegations that the previous administration abused and harassed innocent American citizens under the Patriot Act, yet I've never seen one name presented in ten years to support that allegation.

The second fallacy is promoting the idea of “judicial oversight”. It's a well known fact that liberal prosecutors and justice department hacks just shop around until they find a liberal judge to sign off on their nonsense. The whole system is corrupt and slanted toward protecting DemonRAT’s and punishing conservatives.

Not only do they want to be able to simply demand records without showing any reasonable reason to a judge... They also want the power to muzzle the party or parties they demand the records from.

So, for example, they could demand FR and/or FR's internet hosting company turn over all records of IPs and user-data without showing reason/need to a judge - and then FR and the ISP would be forbidden from telling anyone that the data seizure had taken place!

This is something right out of a bad movie on East Germany under Soviet rule. Arbitrary powers to perform surveillance and seize property and information, no-one allowed to talk about the informants or actions of the police. Heck, as other threads have pointed out, they don't even want anyone to photograph or take video of police performing their "duties" -- even in public places where the rest of us have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Where it is supposed to be legal to take photographs. Hey, as they are so fond of saying to us: if you're not doing anything illegal, why do you care if the government peeks at your (formerly) private life? Fine, turn it around then, if the police are not doing anything illegal, why do they care if they are captured on stills and/or audio/video while in public?

The hussein obama administration is headed towards, no, galloping towards a socialist, fascist police state. It is happening, for real.

“unnecessary and disappointing step backward toward more intrusive surveillance from a president who promised something very different during the 2008 campaign.”

These bigtime NYT fools really are stung! They really did hope that “the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” was as truthful, idealistic, and honest as his advertising claimed he was.

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