December 19, 2005

In Case You Weren't Scared/Angry Yet

Ok, so before anything else I should say that there's a lot of speculation going on about this wire tapping business and everyone should know that that's what it is, speculation.

That said, John in DC over on AMERICAblog has a really interesting theory about the taps: they were spying on American journalists. He makes his case over there and rather than take time that I should be using to study to recap it here, just go read it there. It's convincing enough for me to take it seriously as a possibility.

Ezra hits on the most troubling aspect of this scandel: FISA, the statute that controls this sort of activity, is really really lenient in letting the government do whatever it wants. The only reasons I've been able to find/think of for why the Administration would skirt around it is some kind of power grab for the executive branch or because they were pretty sure that this increadibly defferential system would still deny their wire tap applications.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm more inclined toward the theory that the NSA is pursuing broad-based information collection, such that there are no specific targets, so obtaining a warrant would not be possible. Either way, we need to find out what's happening.