Rossputin.com: Rational Thinking About Our World

Ross, do you seriously believe in this info/computer age we really have privacy in this country?

Sue

I don't believe we have as much privacy as we used to, but that's not an argument for saying it's OK for the government to invade every aspect of our lives.

I'm with you (and Franklin). It will be a sad day when we fear death more than loss of liberty.

I think the real issue is the 'permanence' of any sort of surveillance plan.
We are at war and in time of war many things become permissible and palatable to insure safety and enhance intelligence that would otherwise be unacceptable.
I understand the complexity of the problem however. There is a difficult line to tread here with an open ended free form war that goes beyond the traditional concepts of boundaries and sovereignty.
How are policy makers and executors of the future to be assured the tools to provide security and meet threat contingencies when the hysterical, emotional and dangerously naive forces of the far left can prevail at any moment and strip those tools from those charged with protecting our security and interdicting threats before they take their, potentially, very heavy toll?
I am sure that the administration's calculus here is that the Democrats are going to sweep in, having now actually read and realized the scope of the bill they signed, and dismantle the program.
While I definitely prefer a sunset provision for such powers, requiring a review and reauthorization, I also see a need to make the provision more robust and difficult to dismantle over hysterical and unfounded concerns that do not account for the true nature of the threat we face.

I am not quite sure where these powers currently can be seen as impinging on our freedoms or reasonable expectations of privacy. It is always good to question and remain vigilant but here I just do not see the threat.
If incidental information were being used to prosecute people for crimes not intended to be discovered through this process I would be far more concerned, but that is not happening.
Misuse and creeping expansion of the powers granted must be watched for closely. After the fact judicial review of all uses of these powers should serve the oversight requirement for the time being. If some individual's rights are violated or some other abuse is discovered through that review it can be addressed after the fact through the rule of law.
If a plot to detonate a nuclear weapon in an American city is missed because of anachronistic laws that do not take into account modern communication and the pace at which a threat can develop it is too late for debates about personal privacy or impinged liberties.
Extending American notions of privacy and due process to non-citizens in foreign countries while some FISA judge pulls at his beard over the adequacy of hastily compiled causative evidence of a threat potential seems foolish.

If this makes me guilty according to Franklin's rhetorical tautology I guess I am willing to accept it for now with an eye to the larger threat to liberty.
Death and social annihilation would seem to render the concept of liberty mute.

Mike,

I don't think we're far apart. After, Franklin would certainly have agreed with Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson's noting that "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."

I certainly would not extend the rights of US citizens to non-citizens in foreign countries, just as I would not extend the Geneva Conventions to ununiformed terrorists.

What I am trying to point out, while making it clear that I also struggle with this issue, is that the government has repeatedly demonstrated just in the past year that it has exceeded even its expanded authority and spied on US citizens impermissibly and in ways which strike me as reminiscent of the Soviet Union or J. Edgar Hoover, or other such groups or people we would not want to emulate. Not only are their actions illegal, but I believe they have also not brought any benefit.

Overall, I am very concerned with the massive increase in executive power which has happened under the administration while also realizing that we are at war. The balance is not to be found in letting the FBI or NSA spy on anyone at any time, nor is it to be found in handcuffing them beyond usefulness.

I do not claim to have the answer...unusual for me!

We are indeed more in agreement than not and I too am concerned and struggle with the potential for domestic abuses under the expansion.

Balance would seem to be a very elusive quality in the times we live in.

We are a bit more apart, I think, on the question of presidential authority. Another topic for another time, but I will say, in my opinion, that much of it is reestablishing the true authority of the office that had been seriously degraded since Nixon and the attendant backlash to those abuses of power.