TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: The Balance Between National Security and Privacy?

Re: The Balance Between National Security and Privacy?

Joshua Putnam (josh@phred.org)
Fri, 12 May 2006 22:08:17 -0700

If there is a legitimate need to curtail human rights to fight
terrorists, then the authority to do so should be narrowly tailored,
debated by the full Congress, codified in law, and subject to judicial
review.

I have little doubt that the NSA could have obtained the authority to
review phone records if the issue had been brought to Congress after
9/11, considering what other authority was granted to various
executive departments in the so-called Patriot Act.

What offends me is not that particular surveillance technique, but
rather this Administration's habit of engaging in any number of
activities without any legal authority, any meaningful Congressional
oversight, or any chance for judicial review.

We're supposed to have a President, not a King, one of three
*co-equal* branches of government.

A generation from now, people will look back on the excesses of the
Bush Administration with as much shame and disbelief as we do today
looking back on the Japanese concentration camps of WW II or the
imposition of jail sentences for people who spoke German in public
during WW I.

josh@phred.org is Joshua Putnam
http://www.phred.org/~josh
"My other bike is a car."

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