The reports have surfaced first saying that Verizon phone records have been monitored by our government for almost a year now. Then it came out that a lot more phone companies than just Verizon were watched. On Friday we learned that the government is monitoring what web sites we are visiting. Of course, various members of Congress, the department of justice, and the administration have said over and over that this was "legal" and "lawful." It was all done for our safety. It thwarted terrorist attacks. Don't worry, they didn't listen in like a wire tap on your phone call. They just wanted to know who was calling whom.
Well, there was a terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon, and that wasn't thwarted. Did the Tsarnaev brothers visit any radical websites? Did they visit any bomb making websites? Did they call any Islamic radicals? Even after the Russian government warned the FBI to watch these guys and with mass monitoring of telephone and Internet patterns, they still weren't stopped. Maybe the problem is information overload.
Could it be that paying more attention to this family after a tip would have been more productive than watching little old ladies with a Verizon phone? With our law enforcement officials so afraid of offending some group, they can't really look at a radical without wasting their time on the whole cross-section of our population. The result is having our law enforcement people spread too thin monitoring a lot of people that are obviously not dangerous, when they could be doing a very comprehensive review of people that are much more likely to cause a problem. That's how a MessAPolitico works. That's just stupid.
I'm a little worried about all of this monitoring. Am I going to be audited by the IRS now? Did the monitoring of website visitors turn up that my IP address has visited conservative blogs? Did they notice that I write a conservative blog? Does the Department of Justice figure I'm a dangerous radical now? Am I a threat to the conversion of America to a Fascist, Marxist, police state? Is it possible that I might hurt the liberal cause of transforming America into the president's vision of government control? What if my phone records show that I called a Tea Party member? What if I visited the local Tea Party website? Am I public enemy #1?
When a known terrorist sympathizer is investigated, law enforcement is supposed to go to a judge for a warrant or a court order. If law enforcement can show probable cause, the judge will allow more intrusive investigation of this person. Checking their phone records and Internet habits would likely provide good intelligence that could lead to other associates that are involved in a potential plot to kill and injure Americans. The "shotgun" approach of monitoring half the people in the country from high school cheerleaders to ministers to your grandmother yields mountains of information that take many, many hours of analysis to sort through. Is it any wonder that law enforcement doesn't have time to investigate the real threats because they're so busy sorting through billions of telephone and Internet usage records?
Will we ever replace this MessAPolitico with common sense? I doubt it. (Don't forget that these are the same people that are tightening their grip on our healthcare system.) Am I a thoroughly dangerous conservative, right-wing radical? I didn't know that I was dangerous, but maybe I am. The MessAPolitico knows best.
No comments:
Post a Comment