Warrantless Wiretaps

By now the droning populace has had the opportunity to read about one of the most egregious, unforgiveable errors of the current government: warrantless surveillance. In America, this country once so apparently pristine in its appreciation of the individual, so willing to fight and die to spread something as simple as the freedom of speech, you and I and anyone with a conscience and a pulse is merely a piece of data in a list. We can be moused over at any time to find out if further action is warranted. Have you spoken out against the war? Have you made a phone call to a foreign country? Have you looked up the word Al-Qaeda on the internet out of curiousity? This may make you a suspect and potentially a "terrorist"; a word bandied about with such gall that it has lost meaning. I predict an eventual nonviolent subculture self-labeling themselves "terrorists" in the most metaphoric sense.

These are fantastic times for historians, eschatologists and the literati. Never have we seen such historic events which simultaenously symbolize the end of something great (if not the world) and have been predicted in literature for the past 100 years.

George Bush adamantly broke a law established to grant him the ability to do the things he claims it restricts him from. I'm not going to cite a bunch of federal laws or even any news stories, point Firefox to Dailykos or even the New York Times and search "Fisa", "Wiretaps" or "Feingold Censure". The facts laid bare are that Bush and his league of assholes broke the law under the pretense that they intended to "protect the Amerikun Peep-ul from Terruh" (and yes I will make fun of someone's accent when it's demonstrably fake), when in fact they could have operated within the umbrella of the FISA ruling. This ruling allows Them (and I use this term because it applies to all agencies of government) to conduct surveillance for up to 72 hours while a warrant application is pending. This ruling has established a court program that has denied less than 1% of applications. This ruling establishes a serious crime for any violation of it. That being said there can only be a handful of reasons the Administration would be brazen enough to track your movements anyway: 1) They thought they were going to get away with it 2) They're incapable of appreciating that the law applies to them 3) They knew goddamn well their applications would not be approved (and thus they were attempting to conduct surveillance on people that posed no threat to you or I).

What's the big deal with all of this? What do we have to worry about if we aren't colluding with terrorists? Isn't this going to make us safer? All three would be relevant questions if we were dealing with a government that had any remaining credibility. In light of the Port Deal and other events (Katrina Relief, 9/11 discrepancies) it strikes me as fairly obvious that this administration doesn't really care about individuals.

Also at issue is the very nature of our 3 branch government. If you will recall High School civics, a free and democratic government must operate under a complex of checks and balances. Virtually every action by the government is pushed through this system and comes out on the opposite end as (hopefully) a benefit to the American people. Warrantless wiretapping by the Executive Branch takes out the check of the legislature (they designed and passed the FISA law that guided/restricted government surviellance activities) and the judiciary (no longer signing off on warrant applications, they have no say in how the program is administered). Do we see what is wrong with it now? This activity is not something that a truly free country would engage in. This is a step toward fascism, plain and simple.

Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin (and someone we should all hope is running for prez in '08), initiated legislation for a censure on Bush for this program. Without getting into the technicalities of this action, suffice it to say that Feingold was exhausted by the GOP-run legislatures refusal to take real action on something virtually everyone agreed was a crime. Feingold has been shunned by other Democrats because they are too scared to fight the GOP, even with Bush at an abysmal 34% approval.

I try to make some overall point, what this means in a larger sense. Going beyond the political arm of our national religion (that is the cult of celebrity) what all of these events lead up to is this: You are not a free individual. You do not live in a free country, nor or you safe from outside threats. While terrorism may not be your primary concern, your entire lifestyle is being compromised to facilitate programs that are only ostensibly directed at its eradication. This is no longer partisan politics, this is freedom or slavery.