Text 20157, 93 rader
Skriven 2006-05-17 15:28:48 av Alan Hess
Ärende: Chapman on NSA
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Are we all being considered suspects?  Steve Chapman thinks so.

Ben Franklin is turning over in his grave, along with the rest of the Founding
Fathers.  
************

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.chapman17may17,0,5018960. 
story?coll=bal-pe-opinion

From the Baltimore Sun
Nation of suspects in land of the free


By Steve Chapman

May 17, 2006

CHICAGO -- The Bush administration has managed to cross George Orwell with
Sting. Every step you take, every move you make, Big Brother will be watching
you.

No one is exempt from the National Security Agency's program to amass a record
of every phone call, with the help of major telecommunications providers. As
one insider told USA Today, "It's the largest database ever assembled in the
world."

And have no doubt: You're in it.

President Bush insisted, "We're not mining or trolling through the personal
lives of millions of innocent Americans." In fact, that's exactly what his
administration is doing - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is no longer
possible (unless you're a customer of Qwest, which has refused to cooperate) to
make a telephone call without the government knowing about it and keeping a
record of it. We are all suspects now.

Why should law-abiding citizens care about this surveillance? To begin with,
even the best of us sometimes make calls we wouldn't want everyone to know
about. Another reason is that we could be implicated in terrorism through no
fault of our own. Suppose you call your friend Bob, who later calls his friend
Rashid, who later calls his cousin in Kabul. The government may conclude you're
consorting with associates of al-Qaida.

It's not just the NSA that will know whom you call. According to USA Today, the
NSA told Qwest that "other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA,
also might have access to the database." What's next? The IRS? The Office of
Child Support Enforcement? Your local police?

But privacy is valuable even if you have nothing to hide. Each of us benefits
from having a zone in which we can do as we please without fear of exposure.
Thanks to this program, there is no longer an impermeable barrier around your
personal zone. It's more like a screen door on a submarine.

Investigative powers often have been used by unscrupulous people in government
to intimidate, coerce or embarrass their enemies. Even if the administration
has the noblest intentions, this database is vulnerable to abuse.

Law enforcement officers have ample experience with gadgets that monitor who's
calling whom. But those require police to convince a judge they will yield
information relevant to an investigation. In this program, here's what the
government has to show: nothing.

His latest extralegal initiative furnishes more evidence that George W. Bush
regards himself as an elected dictator, free to do anything he wants in the
name of national security.

In December, it emerged that the NSA was eavesdropping on the contents of phone
calls and e-mail messages between Americans on U.S. soil and people abroad.
That program was of doubtful legality, and so is this one. As a rule, federal
law forbids phone companies from turning over calling records to anyone, and it
forbids the government from getting call records without a court order or a
national security letter.

So it's cold comfort to hear Mr. Bush say that "the intelligence activities I
authorized are lawful." He said the same thing about the other NSA program. But
when the Justice Department undertook an investigation, the White House refused
to grant its attorneys the security clearances they needed to proceed. The Bush
administration doesn't trust even Bush administration lawyers to agree the
program is kosher.

Even if you don't care about the privacy of your phone records, you might care
that we have a president who feels no obligation to obey the law. You might
care that if the government was secretly doing this, it may be doing other
things that are even more worrisome. And you might care that one day, we may
find that the free society we claim to cherish has become a police state.

Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. His column appears
Mondays and Wednesdays. His e-mail is schapman@tribune.com.

Copyright + 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery
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