For a decade, members of Washington’s political establishment have derided civil libertarians, mocking their warnings about the slow but dangerous creep of the Surveillance State. Sen. John McCain, one of Big Brother’s most vocal cheerleaders on Capitol Hill, recently referred to his colleagues who expressed concern about the Obama administration’s use of drones as “wacko birds.”
Yet with last week’s revelations of the National Security Agency’s widespread programs of virtually unlimited surveillance of American citizens, the birds have come home to roost. As I warned a decade ago when it was becoming clear that the government had no intention of relinquishing the power entrusted to it after Sept. 11, 2001, the day would come when routine, warrantless surveillance would be institutionalized. Welcome to yesterday.
In the years since I and some conservative colleagues, among them Grover Norquist and David Keene, first warned about the ramifications of Uncle Sam’s unquenchable thirst for data on American citizens, things have only worsened as technology has advanced. Rather than heed the warnings from privacy activists and a few members of Congress, President Obama and his Cabinet cohorts have expanded executive authority beyond all reasonable bounds, to surreptitiously and unlawfully spy on all citizens in order to “keep us safe.”
Not surprisingly, the Obama administration employs the same, boilerplate “national security” justification as its predecessor. This, of course, reflects the axiom that government, no matter the political party in charge, inexorably will seek more power and never relinquish that power unless it is reined in by the people, the courts or the Congress.
Like George W. Bush, Mr. Obama firmly believes he can don the “commander in chief” hat anytime he likes, so long as it can be justified as necessary to “get the bad guys,” as retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said last week in defending the NSA’s massive eavesdropping programs. Thus adorned, neither the president nor his Cabinet officers think they have to admit to any limitations whatsoever on their power to “do whatever is necessary” to carry out their self-defined notion of “protecting us.”
via Learning to love the Surveillance State – Washington Times.
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