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Let's say the government
hired a burglar to break into your house one night and steal your laptop.
No warrant, no subpoena, nothing. Nobody even knows it
happens... until, some fink within the government leaks a document to the
New York Times: word is out. The government hired a burglar to steal
your laptop. You demand that the police arrest the burglar. The
police say, by golly, burglary is illegal, and we will immediately arrest
this burglar.
The government says, wait.
We will pass legislation making it legal for burglars to break into houses
when we ask them to. We needed to break into this house because we
thought-- for reasons we can't tell you-- that you were going to make a bomb
and blow it up in a subway station. It would be unfair to charge this
man with burglary because we told him that what he was doing was legal.
We want to be able to do this frequently, whenever we feel like it, without
any tedious oversight from courts or judges.
You say, if you want to
break into someone's house and seize their property-- that's allowed.
All you have to do is show a judge that you have strong evidence of a crime
being committed and the judge will easily and quickly grant you a warrant.
And knowing our judges-- they won't even wait for you to finish your
sentence before giving you the warrant.
Oh, you say. That's
too much work, and too hard to do-- we want to be able to break in without
having the slightest evidence of any crime being committed. Like they
do in the movies.
So the government
introduces legislation to make it legal for burglars to burgle if the
government asks them too. Well... not exactly. It tries to pass
legislation that makes it legal, retroactively, for burglars to have burgled
for the government. The government makes speeches: You
must pass this legislation or America will not be safe.
Would any sensible person
support this idea? Are Americans so stupid that they would buy this?
This is, however, exactly what Bush is trying to do, and he is half-way
there. The Senate-- usually the body of "sober second thought" has
already passed the measure. Democrats are terrified of being accused
of being soft on terror, in an election year.
Okay, so it's not burglary.
It is tapping your phone and listening in on your private conversations.
One phone company (Qwest) refused the request. The fact that they were
not subject to any legal action as a result shows that the Bush
Administration knew what it was doing was illegal, and that the other phone
companies should also have known it was illegal.
Infuriatingly, the Bush
Administration appears to be getting away with the act of legalizing actions
it had already taken-- and for which it had not been charged! If there
is any need-- as Bush claims there is-- for this legislation-- then the
government officials responsible for the actions for which this legislation
absolves them should be charged with various crimes related to spying, abuse
of authority, illegal possession of private information, obstruction of
justice, and whatever the hell else applies to their actions.
What is even more
infuriating: the Bush Administration asked for extraordinary powers under
FISA to conduct special searches for information related to terrorism.
They created extra-constitutional shortcuts that already alarmed most civil
libertarians-- and then they went ahead and ignored even those compromised
rules in demanding access to phone records from these phone companies.
And just to put icing on
the cake.... why shouldn't any American have a right to sue the phone
companies for turning over these records? If Bush is right, they will
lose in the court: the government had the right to force the company to turn
over the phone records. These law suits could only be worrisome to
Bush if he knows (damn well) that the courts will find his actions illegal,
and will, in turn, find the phone companies at fault for complying with
illegal demands from the government.
The rest of the world
should sit up and take notice. The one thing you used be able to count
on from Bubba and Bobby Sue was their fanatical devotion to their
constitutional freedoms and liberties, even if it meant they could be
awfully stupid about health insurance and foreign policy. Now, alas,
I'm afraid you can't even count on them to stand up for their own rights.
Go back to sleep, Bubba. Resume your Big Mac, Bobby Sue.
Scranton Pennsylvania is safe from terrorism tonight.
All contents copyright © 2008 Bill Van Dyk
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