If you don't think it's time for a major push-back at the government on your rights, specifically the fight against the telcom immunity in the FISA law, consider what would happen to you if you are charged with the same behavior, in a bizarre twist of terminology, which the silver-haired eminences in the US Senate are now considering giving Bush a free pass for.
Remember this is not about punishing the telcoms. This is about making them cough up evidence of illegal spying on law-abiding Americans, so that the targets and extent the NSA's illegal spying, which even John Ashcroft found reprehensible, can come to light.
Now in some states, and their number will probably increase, if you whip out your cellphone camera to record cops beating on anti-war protesters, or if you use a sound recorder to capture a cop being verbally abusive to you during a traffic stop, you can be arrested..
and charged with "illegal wiretapping." In Boston last year, according to the Boston Phoenix:
Simon Glik used his cell phone to record Boston police officers making what he thought was an overly forceful arrest on Tremont Street...cops saw Glik using his cell phone’s camera with its sound-recording feature, so they arrested him for breaking the Massachusetts law that prohibits secret electronic recording, deemed "wiretapping."
Glik's case was dismissed, but his only saving grace was that the court deemed he was acting out in the open. In other words, the court set a standard by which the man who captured the Rodney King beating on video would have been guilty of a crime. The same crime that the Senate's actions, if it passes telcom immunity, will absolve the telcoms and the Bush administration of.
In New Hampshire (Live free or die!) a man was arrested and charged with illegal wiretapping when his security cameras caught a cop being abusive, jamming his foot in the door, and refusing to leave his property in the absence of a search warrant. And in western Massachusetts a woman was arrested and charged under the illegal wiretapping laws for filming police actions during an anti-war protest.
Yes, the missing part of the logic here is that police and Feds acting in their official capacity is the public's business, as long as you don't follow them after they have taken off the badge and record them in a bar. But who's paying attention? Certainly not the US Senate, the way it's paying attention to the wishes of the administration.
Does anyone still not see where all this is heading, in a big picture sort of way? A fundamental reversal in the relationship between the people and the government is taking place, and granting telcom immunity is the line in the sand. The time for us to put our foot down, hard, on telcom immunity in the new FISA bill is right now. Senators Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold are leading the good fight and asking for our help, at this link. Also here is a handy way to pull up your senators' phone numbers etc. in a jiffy. NO on telcom immunity.
Yes, Obama and the rest are pushing this as a "compromise" which would not necessarily preclude other investigations, outside the court system, into this massive breach of our constitutional rights by the administration. Just like all those investigations that were supposed to happen when the Democrats took power. Just like the war they were supposed to stop when they gained a majority. Uh-huh.