Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not

[lmmadic]

Re: Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not

osama want to take away your freedom, and Bush helped him do it.
osama wants to recruit more people, bush helped him do it by invading Iraq.
who's side is he on anyway?

[Yao]

Re: Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not

I agree that personal freedom and privacy are really important and respect your opinion. It simply makes sense to me that the government should perform surveillance on suspected terrorists that may be planning attacks. And there may be situations where obtaining a warrant could prohibit the government from doing its job. In those situations, I agree the government should take all necessary actions when necessary as given the rights by Congress to the Executive branch in 2001 after 9/11. However, the government should attempt to use FISA and respect indivduals rights when its able to do so.

I agree on that dude.

I do have a couple of issues regarding the surveillance without warants. First, if the spying has been going on since 2002 then proper legislation should've been passed in the past 3 years to give the NSA proper authority to conduct such searches. Second, what type of oversight is being done independently of the NSA to insure that the NSA isn't abusing its authority to spy on non-terrorist suspects?

Good question, and though I do not live in the states, I've gotten an image of the NSA as pretty much uncontrolled. I don't know if this is true, but I'm pretty sure those guys have a lot of power, and are willing to go against democratic values or legislation if they think it is necessary to do so.

Finally, I'd like to mention what's happening with the New York Times, the Bush administration and leaks? First, we have this Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson, Scooter Libby CIA outage incident which is really confusing. And now we have the revelation the NY Times sat on the NSA spying story since 2002 at request of the administration. Something doesn't seem right with the Bush Administration or the NY Times regarding these leaks.

Man, that totally suprised me: a newspaper actually withholding such info on the administration's request. They must've known it was a timebomb, for sure. Usually it's the papers making scoops with news like that, so what the hell is going on?