printThe “august” NYT EDITORIAL BOARD has finally taken a slightly less reverential, more cynical tone toward its godhead Obama, in light of “the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation.”
Wow. And what next? Will the NYT acknowledge that centralized power everywhere and always leads to tyranny?
Nah. Rest assured, the Grey Lady might have shaken off a flea or two, but the New York Times will continue to lie down with dogs (with apologies to dogs).
By the way, I already told you weeks back that there was absolutely nothing new about state snooping. “From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA”:
A pesky detail has eluded all those invincibly stupid special interests who’re piping up for the privacy of the press, as opposed to fighting for the privacy of all Americans. Have the various tele-lawyers, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and protesting members of the House Judiciary Committee forgotten the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, whose provisions were extended until December 31, 2017, by the people’s representatives?
There is nothing new about warrantless wiretapping—other than that the American people haven’t been particularly exercised about them. They’ve trusted Uncle Sam to go about this activity judiciously. Peeping Sam had promised, after all, that covert surveillance would never be executed against “United States persons.” Were a “United States person” to fall under suspicion, he or she would not be subjected to surveillance without “judicial and congressional oversight,” puled the same perverts.
It’s not as if the National Security Agency (NSA) under George Bush was not accused of bypassing the courts to spy on the 43rd president’s many critics. It was! Sideshow “O,” however, has done Bush one better. Obama is using the FISA provisions against “friendlies.”