It's not enough that the Veterans Administration may have lost my SocSec info, putting me at risk of identity theft. Now the Bushies have decided to sift through millions of bank transactions with no warrants?
Throwing out its catch-all excuse for every bit of bad behavior,
Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials said the program, whose existence was revealed today in an article in The New York Times, was both legal and necessary to deter terrorism.Treasury Secretary John Snow, in his first public remarks about the program, called it "government at its best." He told reporters that the operation, first disclosed today in The New York Times, was carefully controlled to trace only those transactions with an identifiable link to possible terrorist activity.
If you believe "carefully controlled" is a phrase that describes any part of this Administration, except possibly with regard to information it would prefer the people it's supposed to be governing shouldn't know, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
Posted by Linkmeister at June 23, 2006 11:53 AM | TrackBackTalk About War on Americans -- A satirical essay entitled "I found god in cyberspace" and about my first novel "Rarity from the Hollow" will be in Wingspan Quarterly by the end of the month. The essay is about free speech on the internet, so I thought you might find it amusing.
A percentage of any proceeds from the sale of the novel will prevent child abuse in West Virginia where I work as a Therapist in a children's mental health program. Anything you can do to help promote it would be appreciated, especially by the kids.
Robert Eggleton
Posted by: robert eggleton at June 23, 2006 03:05 PMGeorge Bush told us on a number of occasions that the United States would track these transactions around the world to find terrorists and their enablers. The project itself has never been a secret; only the methods used remained clandestine.
The New York Times and its two reporters have sold out our national security to sell a few papers, and in this case told us absolutely nothing we haven't known for five years except the specific methods used.
That information only helps one set of people: the terrorists we want to catch and stop before they can kill more people, Americans or otherwise.
from http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/
Posted by: pixelshim at June 24, 2006 01:30 AMIt's the scope and the lack of warrants that's at issue, not the action itself. Just as in the NSA wiretapping, the Administration shows that it thinks it's above the law.
It's not.
The other thing that concerns me is that any database of this nature has the potential to be misused, and we've already seen the vindictive nature of this Administration towards its perceived enemies in the Plame case. I don't trust these guys an inch.
Posted by: Linkmeister at June 24, 2006 08:11 AMThe New York Times and its two reporters have sold out our national security to sell a few papers,
That is just a canard, just like the same accusations from way back when we found out the NSA is spying on Americans. It doesn't matter if the enemy knows - they can't stop communicating, they won't suddenly stop banking either. Everything we know and they know will not stop them from moving teh money around - do you really think they're just going to abandon all teh money they have in banks? And why the hell shouldn't the government do this legaly, with warrents?
Posted by: DuWayne at June 24, 2006 03:30 PM