NSA domestic surveillance -

Big Brother in the digital age

At least my Twitter feed is secure.....

RS: Welcome to the American Orwell state

I've always been a staunch supporter of national security, so I've been torn on this issue of the NSA monitoring domestic electronic media. From a purely homeland security standpoint I can see the benefits of such a program, I can only surmise that this program has paid great dividends in keeping us safe from terrorism. How could it not? The ability to go back and forensically reconstruct any chain of contact that has used electronic media or phones is incredibly powerful. Add to that the ability to go back and then examine the contents of such communications and you have what is essentially a time machine. That is a tremendously powerful tool against terrorism. Unfortunately, it is also a tremendously powerful tool that can be used against any individual or groups that the regime in power declares to be a threat. That is a dangerous amount of power. Now I would not have been as concerned with George Bush or Ronald Reagan in office, but I guess that is just being naive. Just because one administration is driven by respect for the Constitution and our rights doesn't mean that all administrations will be. We need to limit the power of our government to the lowest common denominator; and Barrack Hussein Obama is definitely the lowest common denominator. We cannot give our government powers that are so easily abused. We cannot expect our government to always have our best interest at heart. The founding fathers knew that, which is why they included the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights. They knew that with any system of government, regardless of how many protections are in place, can turn tyrannical. They fully understood that evil can rise from the best of intentions. That is why they gave us the right to defend ourselves and our rights from a government that cares for neither.

"We need to spy on you to keep you safe from terrorism"

Mark Steyn - The All-Seeing State

Somehow I think that even with access to all the information in the world our government will still continue to miss vital and sometimes even obvious signs of terrorism. It's not like the Boston bombers were masters in the art of field craft and special operations. Our government couldn't put two and two together even with all the surveillance tools at its disposal and with hints from the Russians. So why should I believe idiots like Obama or Lindsey Graham when they tell us that we need to sacrifice our privacy for the government to protect us? And why should I expect that an administration that willfully violates federal immigration law and punishes states that dare to try and enforce those laws is even interested in our national security? Every year hundreds of thousands of people illegally enter the United States because both parties are more interested in trying to recruit voters than protect our borders. And they want us to trust government to not abuse this power it has. No f*cking way.


Red State - Trust and Taps

This is the most even-handed assessment of the NSA Prism program that I've read to date. I am still torn by this issue. While I know that we need to be constantly vigilant to prevent terror attacks on the United States, I also know that the means to keep us safe can just as easily be used to target Americans. Twenty years ago I might not have worried as much about this level of surveillance, but that has all changed. What we are seeing now with the federal government is no different from the sordid, dirty style of Chicago politics; a one party system where the party in power has a deep and incestuous relationship with the entrenched bureaucracy that runs the machine of government. We have seen over the last several years that bureaucrats have been more than willing to use the power of the government for partisan purposes. The Obama administration has never been directly linked to any of this behavior but it always seems to benefit from it and nobody ever gets punished. Obama might never have been elected senator from Illinois had it not been for the public release of sealed court files on his opponent. Once again, no investigation, no link, but he directly benefited from some anonymous bureaucrat breaking the law to attack his opponent. This has happened over and over with this administration; enemies are attacked and supporters are rewarded by the institutions of government.

Aside from the obvious political corruption in our government, we also have ideological corruption. We have the TSA that won't target the primary terror demographic for fear of offending that demographic. Both the Army and the FBI knew that Major Nidal Hassan was communicating with known radical jihadi cleric Anwar al Awlaki, yet did nothing. And then after Hassan killed 16 Army and DoD personnel in an act of jihad, the Army and the Obama administration still calls it an act of workplace violence. The Russians provided specific, actionable intelligence on the Tsarnaev brothers and the FBI evidently didn't see them as much of a threat. The Obama administration has defied congress to send aid to the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Egypt. They have given weapons and support to rebels in Libya and Syria in spite of knowledge that they were al Queda affiliates. This administration and the bureaucracy it controls doesn't seem to have good understanding of who we are fighting. While the DHS has labeled veterans and conservatives as potential terrorist threats it tries mightily to avoid ever applying that term to the Islamist terrorists who actually attack our country and our interests and allies abroad. Whether for political correctness, political gain or a blind obedience to a failed ideology, this government cannot be trusted to do the right thing even when presented with all the intelligence that our security agencies can generate.


Despite massive domestic surveillance program millions of illegal aliens are unaccounted for

This is why I am disinclined to believe the government when they tell us it's OK that they are monitoring all electronic communications because it is protecting us from terrorism. The government has shown that they will ignore the very real threat of having millions of people in the country illegally. The government has shown that even when provided with warnings about terrorists they will ignore the warnings out of fear of offending the terrorists. The government has repeatedly shown that, for a variety of reasons, it is incapable of protecting us from terrorism. At the same time the government has shown its willingness to use its enormous powers to attack law-abiding citizens who just want to exercise their constitutional rights. The government is currently doing a piss poor job of protecting the rights of its citizens, but is going out of its way to ignore our enemies and assist those in the country unlawfully.
No amnesty. Not now. Not later. We need to fix our government right now; not add to our problems.