This FISA issue is something that I've been following for a year now closely and for the most part its been my highest concern. Its been the issue I've been advocating personally for with my friends and family and people who I work with. Whenever the house was cooking up another bill with retroactive immunity and reverse targeting, there I was, sending out emails; calling my congress-critters and donating money to the ACLU.
Why?
In my view, its the most important issue of this political cycle. Whoever gains the ability that this president wants in wiretapping would certainly gain power that is quite new to government because of the state of technology today.
After seeing the initial volley of very emotional diaries on the subject, I wanted to give a clear and simple explanations of why a lot of us out here are upset at this latest house capitulation.
Even though I only have newly gained knowledge in politics, I have noticed gamesmanship in the Republican camp going along the following lines:
When we see the Democratic camp give on something like this, it gives them another leg up on the ladder of power, making 10 times harder to stop them the next time they pull something like this.
What I (and most other people) are frustrated about, is that by passing a bill such as the one we saw passed yesterday, a multitude of efforts failed simultaneously:
- Stopping the cycle of the Republican power grab
- Protecting our civil liberties
- Protecting our privacy
- Proving we can stand up to the Republicans
- Feeling that our efforts to elect these house members was a worthwhile effort
- Stopping the Republicans from gaining and overwhelming technological advantage
Number 1 is quite important because you have to realize that the Republicans can't even put a bill up without our say so. Its not that we have to just have the votes to vote it down. That is NOT the case. We never ever had to entertain even bringing it to the floor. That realization in and of itself is just confounding.
The others in between are self explanatory however I'll explain what I mean by number 6. In my line of work (which is software development) there is a term called 'federation' which is known as linking different systems that were formerly of seperate control and bringing them under a unified central control. This is the type of thing that has been going on with the telephone company mergers and gives the government the one-stop shopping they need to literally wiretap anybody from the comfort of their offices knowing that they are using Narus software to literally data mine a 10 gig/second line in real time hunting for any keyword they've put in the system.
Its a far cry from the days of having to break into someone's hotel room and place a physical bug in the telephone handset.
Giving them this ability gives them the power to tap most anybody at any time. Due to the Smash and Grab theory if they wiretap you for an advantage they wish to gain, say if they are your political opponent and they win because they always know your next move, then accountability is nil by virtue of the fact that they will likely have more power to cover that illegal act up if they regained their power by being re-elected.
Yes, yes I know we're not supposed to believe that they would ever game the system. But then you'd have to be saying the better party kept winning through 2000 and 2004 and never ever played any dirty tricks.
You'd have to say you trust them with their new found toy.
I don't.
Hell, I refuse to trust Obama with it. I shouldn't need to.
Update: I've been asked to elaborate a little more about the technology so I'll make this quick and messy ;).
A lot of my friends, when asked whether they are worried about being tapped, would likely say something like "Well they can't possibly have time to listen or go through so many conversations to tap every single one of us". The truth is since these systems are actually now being funneled through few very high speed lines, virtually millions of conversations and electronic communications are available just for tapping at one location. Yes, this is common knowledge to a lot of you. However, there is no real need for individuals to 'listen' on these lines since the software to tap this has become an art. Software such as Narus can actually filter this kind of communication in real time looking for keywords and conversation topics and flag such communications you may want to play back. So, sit on the line, put in the key words "vegetarian quaker protest" and watch the Instant Messages, SMS, and phone conversations be flagged so you can listen to or read those with the specified topics. One could data mine further and get topic parsing from all your communications for a week. And naturally decide from that that you are a terrorist ...or something. Its really a lot more central and concentrated power than people consciously think about.