C'mon man...he was doing warrantless wire tapping and insisted on keeping that capability, he fought tooth and nail against FISA court AND congressional oversight...and eventually he had to give these up and agree to the amendment act that was passed in 2007.... If bush had had his way there'd be no controls on these activities...a little objectivity please...
Controls? The FISA court? Be serious. In the last three years they've never denied a request. And as we've seen, some of them were way, way, way the hell out there -- including ALL phone call CDR data from at least one major carrier (presumably from all of them).
This is really beyond what is necessary.
Your entire argument is "Bush was worse", yet you're telling me to be "objective". The whole idea of objectivity is to look at things without political bias. So why not look at this issue reasonably?
The reality is that no one, 20 years ago, would have said they think it is okay for the government to have a copy of every phone bill in the country. I cannot believe you would have supported that, as a liberal. And I wouldn't have as a conservative. Yet, these data are far more descriptive than phone bills.
>> Where did you get that one?
Lack of transparency? On a classified program?
No, I'm saying generally. But whether any president -- Bush or Obama -- ought to be getting a list of every phone call made in US, for whatever reason, just raises some serious questions related to the 4th Amendment. It isn't something we should discount willy-nilly. As to it being a classified program, I'm not sure what the point of that is.
When the Court ruled on pen registers, they were talking about uncorrelated phone numbers. Today, the situation is entirely different. It is certainly a debate that needs to be had. In the open. |
