The United States Senate, under control of people who call themselves Democrats, has voted 68 to 29 to put an end to privacy and to elevate the sanctity of corporate profits above the interests of the American People.
As the New York Times limply puts it:
After more than a year of wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory on Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants.
And why would the Senate hand a lame-duck President with the lowest approval rating in history such a massive victory?
Republicans hailed the reworking of the surveillance law as essential to protecting national security, but some Democrats and many liberal advocacy groups saw the outcome as another example of the Democrats’ fears of being branded weak on terrorism.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon, on the other hand, is hardly as reluctant to call it what it is.
The Senate today — led by Jay Rockefeller, enabled by Harry Reid, and with the active support of at least 12 (and probably more) Democrats, in conjunction with an as-always lockstep GOP caucus — will vote to legalize warrantless spying on the telephone calls and emails of Americans, and will also provide full retroactive amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, thus forever putting an end to any efforts to investigate and obtain a judicial ruling regarding the Bush administration’s years-long illegal spying programs aimed at Americans.
Glenn makes the significance clear:
[T]he Senate is about to [this was published before the vote] enact a bill which has two simple purposes: (1) to render retroactively legal the President’s illegal spying program by legalizing its crux: warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, and (2) to stifle forever the sole remaining avenue for finding out what the Government did and obtaining a judicial ruling as to its legality: namely, the lawsuits brought against the co-conspiring telecoms. In other words, the only steps taken by our political class upon exposure by the NYT of this profound lawbreaking is to endorse it all and then suppress any and all efforts to investigate it and subject it to the rule of law.
That’s it. Game over. The slippery slope that started with the FISA court, then got a huge push from the most bizarre series of assaults on basic freedom, the USA Patriot Act, has now hit bottom. Years of illegal wiretaps legalized, and, for the truly cynical amongst us, a free pass to corporate America to join with the government in the subjugation of its People.
The People are now officially the enemy of the government in the rhetorical name of protecting the People. It’s the perfect circle, if you’re inclined to view politics through Orwellian eyes. Some might view this statement as overwrought, and perhaps it is for the moment. But the trend has been clear and overwhelming for a long time now. And Americans have found excuse after excuse to allow it, if not embrace it. I wonder if Jefferson would agree with de Tocqueville that we are unworthy of democracy and freedom.
Consider Olbermann’s perspective:
One of the problems with being a little long in the tooth is that you get to watch things develop. Wiretaps were once viewed as such a shocking intrusion into the privacy of people that they were heavily scrutinized and frequently frowned upon. Eavesdropping was a bad thing, heavily disfavored and a last resort. It’s now the panacea of security, described as if it’s the savior of freedom. And people nod their heads, acceptingly.
Even more cynically, our Senate Democrats have made it clear that corporate America is no longer subject to law as long as it’s acting with the blessing of the government. Not only does the Senate elevate profits over its citizens, but it has ensured that dirty secrets will never be revealed.
History is written by the victor. The victor here is the government in the war against the American people. And victory was handed to the government by the Democrats in the Senate. You can argue about whether to vote for Clinton or Obama, but I fail to see the differences between politicians anymore. Jefferson and Madison are long dead, and the people of America have grown too tired, complacent and ignorant to fill their shoes.
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Perhaps Congress could have compromised? Instead of outright immunity, which would have blocked suits (and therefore blocked investigation of the warrantless wiretap program via the discovery process), perhaps Congress could have capped the damages a plaintiff could recover? This would protect the telecom companies’ bottom lines, while allowing an interested nonprofit like the EFF or the ACLU to fund a lawsuit and use the discovery process to learn more about the program, notwithstanding that there would be little award to recover were the suit victorious.
But I guess there’s a reason such a compromise wasn’t worked out. Perhaps both the telecom companies and the administration have a genuine fear of investigation. If true, then it’s unfortunate – both for the public, who may never know the extent to which their government spies on them, and for the telecom companies and the administration, who have done things that make them fearful that their actions will ever come to light.
Excellent points, OS.
The Good Politician
“An honest politician is one who when he’s bought stays bought.”
Telecoms Get Immunity; The Nation is Safe