More on wiretaps

When the wiretap story broke, the Chicago Tribune invited readers to send letters to the editor. I was pleased to see that a large majority of the letters they printed were critical of the warrantless surveillance policy, although I don't know if this is a representative sample of public opinion. My question is: What is wrong with that other small minority?

The justifications given seem to be (a) it is necessary to keep us safe, and (b) he who has nothing to hide has nothing to fear. Wrong and wrong. My previous entry on this subject rebuts the former argument. As for the latter, why do the same people who always complain that government is by nature inept and inefficient suddenly trust that unchecked executive powers will be used with infinite wisdom? We do need an effective government, but we do not need a government that treats its citizens as a strict, protective parent would.

It's been in the media this week that President Bush, in his 2004 campaign, frequently reassured voters that their civil liberties were being respected by saying that warrants were required for wiretaps. A recent MSNBC Hardball segment played a clip from July 14, 2004 in which Bush said:

Any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps, or roving wiretaps, without getting a court order.

Now that we see he's been circumventing the FISA court, he's singing a different tune.

Lastly, today's New York Times ran a story on how the surveillance is part of a much larger data mining operation in which large telecommunications companies are complicit. The Chicago Tribune got the story from the Times' wire service and ran it with this headline: "Nation's phones tapped: Government analyzing massive amount of calls, e-mail traffic." Paranoid yet?