Report: Too few officials knew of surveillance - Yahoo! News



Not enough relevant officials were aware of the size and depth of an unprecedented surveillance program started under President George W. Bush, let alone signed off on it, a team of federal inspectors general found.

The Bush White House pulled in a great quantity of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, the IGs reported. They questioned the legal basis for the effort but shielded almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.


Hey, listen, guys. I know you, like most Americans, were terrified about another terrorist attack. What you did not get then, and apparently, no one gets even now, is that our best defense against successful terrorism is to strictly adhere to the dictates of the Constitution.



I would call 9/11 the most successful terrorist attack in history, not because they took 3,000 lives, but because of the way our government reacted to it. Every person who has to remove shoes at the airport, every person who finds a "love note" from the TSA in his luggage, everyone who drives through an intersection where DHS has funded cameras is a witness to just how effective those attacks were at changing our society in deep, structural ways.



Those who ignored or intentionally violated our Constitution in reaction to the acts of violence and fanaticism are unwitting allies of the bad guys. The extremists hate, for example, freedom to believe and to express what you choose. And thanks to pervasive surveilance, we have lost that.



But for anyone to say that the problem was that "not enough relevant officials" knew enough is fantasy. Congress was writing blank checks to the give-up-your-freedoms-for-safety crowd. The administration was filled to the rafters with members of that crowd, and it seemed like the Supreme Court was studiously avoiding involvement in related cases. If you want to accurately describe it, no one in positions of power stood up and fought for the Constitution they were sworn to preserve, protect, and defend. It was this lack of guts that allowed our government to gather information that they should not have gathered.



As you know, we talk a lot about politics here, but our focus is on smaller businesses, not politics. Therefore, I want to add a comment that a smaller, less-centralized government would have been much less able to spy on us. As in business, smaller and less centralized is probably better in the long run. Remember that the Constitution says that all powers that are not expressly granted to the federal government are reserved to the states and to the people. It is a pity that our government leaders (including judges) cannot read.




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