Let the Clock Run Out on the NSA

Regarding the feverish effort either to reauthorize, “reform,” or abolish the National Security Agency’s collection of our phone and email data, two things need to be said:

First, thank you, Edward Snowden.

Second, isn’t it great to see the ruling elite panicking?

TGIF: The Phony Trade-Off between Privacy and Security

When we're told that we must trade some privacy to gain security, don't believe it. Read about it here.

Do as We Say, Not as We Do

How eerie it was to see Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano talk about nonviolence and civility last night. Aren't they the same Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano who are running a super surveillance state at home and a homicidal empire abroad?

Is It Time to Get Mad Yet?

From the Associated Press (free registration):

Without notifying the public, federal agents for the past four years have assigned millions of international travelers, including Americans, computer-generated scores rating the risk they pose of being terrorists or criminals.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.

See Glenn Greenwald's extended comment here. A sample:

There is more than ample ground for believing that this administration has engaged in all sorts of wrongdoing and lawbreaking. Even if that were not the case, there are all sorts of questions that ought to be publicly debated, not decided by Dick Cheney in the dark. There is no good or even decent argument -- none -- for believing that those matters ought to be simply left unexplored and undisturbed by Congressional Democrats due to some unseemly eagerness to show how "moderate" they are in order to maximize their prospects in the 2008 elections.

Take it from a Real Authority

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales contended Saturday that some critics of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program were defining freedom in a way that poses a "grave threat" to U.S. security....

Gonzales told about 400 cadets from the Air Force Academy's political science and law classes that some see the program as on the verge of stifling freedom rather that protecting the country.

"But this view is shortsighted," he said. "Its definition of freedom one utterly divorced from civic responsibility is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

From the Associated Press.