The Obama administration lifted the veil Tuesday on a highly-secretive set of policies to defend the U.S. from cyber attacks.
It was an open secret that the National Security Agency was bolstering a Homeland Security program to detect and respond to cyber attacks on government systems, but a summary of that program declassified Tuesday provides more details of NSA’s role in a Homeland program known as Einstein.
Remember when The Patriot Act was going to spy on all Americans and that was a bad thing? Remember how Bush wanted wireless wiretaps to listen in on conversations with terrorists overseas and that was a bad thing? Where are the folks who showed such principled opposition to those programs (and rightfully so, I might add)? Surely you don't mean that their opposition stemmed not from the program that spied on Americans but the political party of the leader who sponsored it?
If a program is bad - unconstitutional, unwise, ill-conceived - it shouldn't matter who proposes it. If it limits personal freedom, if it allows unnecessary intrusions into our lives with nebulous benefits, then it doesn't matter if the guy who wants to put it in place is a member of the opposition party or your own party. Conversely, I expect those on the right that spoke out in support of the Patriot Act to support Einstein - if the provisions of The Patriot Act were put in place "to protect America" as you claimed at the time, then support this as well.
I'll wait - I hear they have to import extra crickets for the silence on this one.
That is all.
Link sent by good friend and fellow conspiracy nut SCI-FI.
4 comments:
Let me be the first to beat back the crickets and say...
It was a bad idea then, it's a bad idea now, and it will still be a bad idea 30 years from now when it's commonplace. I don't care who is in office, and I don't care what enemy they tell me we're up against.
The speed at which we're becoming formerly-Great Britain astounds me.
Is it still a good idea if the other side has the power? If not, it isn't a good idea period.
I don't know who made it, but there's a test they use to judge all laws. The 'jews in the attic' test. Can that law be used to find the 'jews in the attic' if it were 1942?
Bear in mind, Jay, that the act to which you refer is a compilation of many provisions. Some of them are bald-faced unconstitutional, some not so bad, some actually functional and beneficial.
It wouldn't have mattered if the President at the time of passage was a yankee carpetbagger from Texas or a clueless peanut farmer from Georgia, the evil elements of the Patriot act remain the same.
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