« Tribune Publishing company ... as stupid | Main | Not all silly lawsuits are American UPDATED »
January 05, 2006
Were these people's rights violated?
Jeff Goldstein has endless patience in going over and over the same points about the NSA surveillance program, with care to laying out the program as it is currently known quoting and linking at length to the commentary and answering on point the Left cultists who can only shriek about things that are not even in contention. Jeff's latest here. Of course, Jeff's detailed posts don't go unnoticed by the let's fling feces against the wall types at Atrios, Kos, and other cultist sites were feelings rule over all.
Simply, there are only a few things to consider. Does the Executive branch have a right to use technology to gather intelligence on foreign enemies, even when those enemies make connections with American citizens? If some of the surveillance involves American citizens, deliberately or incidentally, and those citizens never find out about it, have their rights been violated? Think of the latter as a variation on the theme if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it ....
In the 1980's my [then] husband worked at Northrop on the B-2 Stealth bomber ... at a time when the project was black world enough that the facility he worked at -- the old Ford truck assembly plant in Pico Rivera -- had no indication from the outside it WAS a Northrop facility. As his spouse, I was briefed, too, on proper behavior, the limits we could travel and told that our neighbors and family would be "checked out". Indeed, we were obligated to let them know when any of our neighbors changed and they would be subject to a background check. My husband's brother at the time was a First Mate in the Merchant Marines, on oil tankers, and he became subject to periodic surveillance as he traveled overseas into areas the Feds considered "hostile." We were told never to alert anyone to such surveillance and none of our neighbors or family were ever the wiser to these warrantless domestic intelligence reviews.
Were their rights violated? How? And did the Feds have no reason to check them out considering the highly classified work my husband was involved with?
Posted by Darleen at January 5, 2006 12:04 AM
Comments
"If some of the surveillance involves American citizens, deliberately or incidentally, and those citizens never find out about it, have their rights been violated?"
I think it is a good question, but there is one major flaw. *Whether or not you find out about it* has nothing to do with whether or not your rights have been violated.
The true question at hand is simply:
"If some of the surveillance involves American citizens, deliberately or incidentally, have their rights been violated?"
As to the answer...
I believe that the government does have the right to do certain kinds of surveillance, but I don't claim to know specifically if what they've done is legit or not. If I had to guess, judging from the Democrats' track record lately, I would guess that they're just screaming into the wind again.
Posted by: Strider at January 5, 2006 01:28 PM