Saturday, June 22, 2013

NSA Surveillance a Ready-Made Threat ofTyranny

Just got finished reading an interesting piece in National Review Online on the legal basis sor justification for the NSA's wholesale surveillance of communications came into being.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/351748/rewriting-fisa-history-andrew-c-mccarthy

Below is what I left as a comment:

A very interesting read. I have been very interested in what the legal basis is for what the Government is doing.

Bottom line is this is a very dangerous capability that we have given to the Federal Government. The can but doesn't capability to look at the communications of U.S. Persons can easily become 'we just do.' It is a ready made institution that can be used to establish a tyranny, where the faction in power uses the resources of the government to suppress the political opposition. All an administration has to do is put the right people in charge of the right ready made institutions and they can consolidate power for the long-term.

We are getting a small taste of this with respect to the IRS. There is no doubt that the direction for the IRS to target Tea Party groups came from the White House, not necessarily in memos or emails but in the choice of Lois Lerner to head it up. The intimidation of opponents was on her resume (see this piece by George Will from about 10 days ago: http://www.unionleader.com/art...

This thing needs to be ended. When the sunset comes up in two years, this needs to be targeted for destruction. We managed to survive a civil war, two world wars, and a cold war without it and it is ripe for abuse.


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