Every time the government claims that the only reason they need the FISA Court, then the USA Patriot Act, then liability protection for Telecoms, is to protect us from terrorism, it makes me cringe.  I know a slippery slope when I see one.  Worse yet, when the pickings are too easy, the government can’t control itself from taking advantage.

And so,  the story in the New York Times comes as no surprise.  But it is a huge story.  It is the story of how the government has reached the bottom of that slippery slope and, as predicted, has found itself incapable of exercising its professed self-control to limit its flagrantly illegal and unconstitutional conduct to terrorists, the external threat whose very mention strikes fear in the heart of people who need no constitutional protections.


Remember those quaint days when government needed to get warrants for wiretaps and pen registers?  Ah, the litigation we used to enjoy over those creatures of statute.  But no need no more.  The electronic and technology revolutions, coupled with the joy of fighting terrorism, has left the government with a mere flip of the switch to convert its terrorism-fighting apparatus into your basic crime-fighting apparatus.  No muss.  No fuss.  No warrants.

To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers’ records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed.

We long ago expressed our concerns and fears that the war on terrorism would encompass the war on drugs (and every other war, except the one on poverty).  Never, swore the government.  We would only apply these critically necessary ways to circumvent the Constitution to fighting terrorism.  Trust us.

And trust them we did.  As a nation, we trusted and supported the enactment of a law so horribly disastrous to the fabric of our constitutional democracy that it led the laws of this nation down the slippery slope to perdition.  This law, with all-time best marketing acronym ever, the USA Patriot Act (which stands for “Unoting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-56), was enacted without debate 45 days after September 11, 2001.  No one in Congress had actually read through the law, but its stated purpose was to fight terrorism.  And nobody, after 9/11, was coming out against fighting terrorism. 

While a handful of crazies decried the way the law impaired civil rights and constitutional protections, the majority hailed it as a way to fight “domestic terrorism.”  Their government promised that they would never, NEVER, use the law for an improper purpose.  And a complacent, compliant, afraid population believed. 

Well, the New York Times has quietly informed us that we have, and have had for a number of years, a full-blown domestic spying operation going on, that is busy spying on anything that could benefit from being a little spied on.  That may be you, or your friend, or you teacher.  Or maybe not, but you won’t know, because there will be no warrants, no oversight, no approvals.  They are openly conceding that they are, and have been, doing exactly what they swore they weren’t going to do.

I’m sure that some pro-government scholar will be happy to explain the nexus between drug dealing and funding terrorism, such that they can justify reaching beyond the practical boundaries of Terrorism to address the rampant garden variety crime that is used to fund it.  These are the types of arguments and positions that really cause a great swell of pride in me, that we have been able to educate American’s to the point where they can fabricate a rationale that will allow the government to do anything it wants to any person at any time without constraint. 

What does not shock me is that it’s happening.  I always thought it would.  In fact, I was certain that the government couldn’t control itself the second the door was open to secret domestic spying.  What does shock me as how casually it appears in the New York Times.  And how this isn’t the lead story in every newscast across the nation. 

It’s such a seasonal story too.  But is the government’s biggest concern that this story leaked out and they are about to make it into a major motion picture?  Nope.  It’s that  they desperately want Telecom immunity so they can get and keep the phone companies complicit.

“The intelligence community cannot go it alone,” Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed article Monday urging Congress to pass the immunity provision. “Those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits.”

What else can we do to support our government.  We exist to serve it.

Update:  Lest we demonstrate concern that our beloved United States Government is using its anti-terrorism excuse to ignore the Constitution and use it to gather general crime information domestically,  Overlawyered has concocted this to be a scheme by trial lawyers to line their pockets instead of protecting our constitutional rights from the government using telecoms as unlawful enablers.  Must some good stuff they’re smoking over at the American Enterprise Institute holiday party.