Thursday, July 8, 2010

NSA Still Seeks to Spy on All Americans

The National Security Agency, under the rubric of "cyber security" is going forward with a plan to monitor all traffic on the Internet. They call it "Perfect Citizen", as in "we'll make sure that you are perfect citizens, because we are watching your every move."

This is surveillance fuckery that I would have expected from the last administration, not from this one. You can bet your ass that the conservative heartless libertarian bloggers will be all over this like a cheap suit and they will be fully justified in doing so.

Companies and ISPs will have to put NSA black boxes on their systems in order to allow the NSA to tap their computer systems. I have no doubt that the government will provide a very strong incentive for them to do so (like denial of qualifying for government contracts).

I don't know why I am so disappointed in the Obama Administration for going along with this shit, other than the fact that Barry was a fucking professor of constitutional law and should have a pretty clear grasp of the concept that the main intent of the Bill of Rights was to protect citizens from government intrusion. The NSA once was prohibited from collecting any communications on American soil, I guess that has gone the way of steaming open letters and buggy-whips. Cheney, at least, had a long track record of being an advocate of having a police state, so I expected shit like this from him and Chimpy.

The Republicans had the Patriot Act and the various plans to massively engage in datamining and dossier-building on all Americans, as well as seeking to form a Stasi-like national network of neighborhood spies. Bill Clinton started the Nightwatch, er InfraGard, which is sort of a combination of the Junior G-Men and the Brownshirts.

Spying on American citizens has become a bipartisan endeavor. This shit needs to be vigorously opposed regardless of which party is in power or who the president happens to be.

9 comments:

  1. Barry loves him some wiretapping. For some reason. It was my first inkling that something was NOT RIGHT with this administration.

    ReplyDelete
  2. O is authoritarian.

    This fellow called it:
    http://www.dark-wraith.com/

    D

    ReplyDelete
  3. I spent much of the Clinton administration fighting attempts by the Clinton administration to implant spy devices into all consumer electronics, so I already knew this imperial police state over-reach was bipartisan. So color me disappointed, but unsurprised.

    - Badtux the Unsurprised Penguin

    ReplyDelete
  4. BadTux, I had forgotten all about the Clipper chip.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Huh. I'm a "conservative" now.

    My parents will be so happy that I've become all anti-choice and anti-drug and started fretting about gay cooties.

    You've made them so proud!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sorry, Tam.

    Would you prefer "libertarian"?

    ReplyDelete
  7. "Heartless libertarian" will do finr. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. So it is written, so it shall be. :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I prefer the term "glibertarian" myself, because it so accurately describes the glib "that's not a problem" hand-waving dismissal you get when you discuss problems that libertarian philosophy doesn't solve due to the freeloader problem or simple inefficiency of the proposed libertarian "solution". The fact that Libertarian philosophy has never, ever, in the history of the planet, worked ("no government" inevitably leads to a Somalia situation -- rule of the most vicious and venal, those most willing to use their guns) just gets a glib handwave, "true libertarianism has never been tried!" Shades of the Marxists! Fellow travellers, indeed :).

    - Badtux the Snarkily Pragmatic Penguin

    ReplyDelete

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