| Thursday, May 11, 2006 |
| Live free or dial |
The kind of fierce independence normally associated with the United States comes in large part from the story of the American frontier -- "the wild West," where, in folklore and theory if not always in practice, a man could become anything his horse, his rifle, a good map or guide and his personal will could help him become.
Today, if you live in the West, you're not only heir to that spirit of American independence, you have a concrete way that you can express the desire to keep Americans free from the overreach of a Chinese-style Big Brother government the Bush administration and their dwindling cadre of cult-like supporters (including pathetically supine members of Congress like Jeff Sessions and Pat Roberts) are constructing. If you believe that illegally "data mining" the phone records of Americans without a warrant, as requried by the Fourth Amendment, and in direct contravention to the National Security Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in order to "stop the next terror attack" is a bridge too far, and that the possibilities for using such a program to, say, monitor reporters, political dissenters, members of Congress and others who threaten the administration politically are just too great (particularly given the track record of the present administration,) you can do something today: you can switch your local and long distance phone service to Qwest.
Why? Because Qwest is the only company to resist the Bush administration's call to participate in the monitoring of Americans' phone calls. Unfortunately, Qwest doesn't offer local service here in Florida. I know because after reading the USA Today bombshell, and the president's lame response, I jumped online to try and make the switch from government collaborator AT&T (which apparently is to domestic spying what Google is to Net freedom in China), only to find out that Qwest only offers its local phone services in the following states:
- Arizona
- Colorado
- Idaho
- Iowa
- Minnesota
- Montana
- Nebraska
- New Mexico
- North Dakota
- Oregon
- South Dakota
- Utah
- Washington
- Wyoming
If you live in one of those states (I used to live in one, Colorado, years ago) then congratulations. You have a shot at calling your mom on Mother's Day without having ma's number recorded by the NSA. I got rid of my AT&T provided VOIP service last week, and have gone to local-only. Unfortunately, my provider choices are limited to AT&T, BellSouth, and other companies who have chosen to cooperate with the NSA's thoroughly un-American phone surveillance program.
That's too bad. I'd love to support Qwest by making the switch. And the second they expand to my neck of the woods, I plan to do just that. Until then, to whomever is recording the phone numbers I'm calling from my home or cell phone, I wish you were actually listening in. If I knew you were, I'd be sure to give you a good old fashioned Colorado f*** you before hanging up.
So what is the increasingly sparse Bush cult saying? I'll paraphrase:
The Dear Leader must protect us by monitoring whom we call, just as he must watch us when we gather, to ensure that we are not supporting al-Qaida, either by talking to Terrorists, or by protesting the Dear Leader's Great and Beneficial policies, which are Designed for Our Good. We trust the Dear Leader because he is Fighting the Terrorists, and besides, we know that we are not talking to al Qaida, so we have nothing to fear from the Dear Leader's patriotic Electronic and Military Monitors. Those who are not terrorist sympathizers (terrorists sympathizers to include reporters who criticize and expose the Dear Leader, those who oppose the Great and Successful War in Iraq with unpatriotic protests, rogues within the CIA who flinch at carrying out the Dear Leader's edicts and who commune with the enemy Press and all Democrats) should not fear the monitoring of our phone calls. We must be monitored in order to be safe. God help us if these people ever truly become a majority. At that point, there will be no difference between us and the Chinese (except that the Chinese are the lenders, and we're the ones in debt.)
On a more serious note, I simply have to deconstruct one of the Bush loyalists' pet arguments for a sec. AJ Strata (whom I'm now, sadly, convinced would accept a pair of sunglass and black suit wearing government monitors placed in his home 24 hours a day if George W. Bush were the one to order it), says the following in defense of Bush's program "to monitor contacts with suspected terrorists":
Why else monitor the calls? In fact, the reason to note contacts as innocent or suspicious is to whittle down who targets of surveillance are talking to who may be accomplices. These records are actually a record that these people are INNOCENT of any relationship with a possible crime.
That assumes that there are potentially millions of Americans who are either part of some al-Qaida plot or some degrees of separation from one. Meanwhile, even the Bush administration doesn't believe there are more than a handful of al-Qaida operatives and cells inside the United States. It would seem that what's called for here is good police work -- starting with better performance by the FBI, which was the agency that failed to track the 9/11 terrorists even with the help of an informant who lived with one. It makes no sense to data mine nearly every U.S. phone call and sift through millions and millions of "pattern analyses" that could just as easily catch Christiane Amanpour researching a story with her contacts in Pakistan as it could nab some idiot placing a landline phone call to Bin Laden. AJ and others seem to be operating from the old McCarthyits playbook, that assumes there are literally al-Qaida sympathisers in every neighborhood, around every corner, and serriptitiously placed within the ranks of journalists and "liberal" academics and peace protesters, and that some total societal rummage needs to be conducted in order to ferret out the vast conspiracy. Just that idea is the beginning of tyranny, because it requires such broad suspicion and paranoia as to make COINTELPRO-like surveillance "necessary".
Bottom line: I don't want to live in a country where the monitoring of the citizenry is deemed to be the government's right, or one in which the president can exempt himself from the rule of law. It's time for Congress to step the hell up. Oversight or bust, fellas. Do your damned jobs.
Tags: News and politics, NSA, domestic spying, Bush, USA Today, civil liberties, Constitution |
posted by JReid @ 4:01 PM   |
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