Bob Barr goes for the privacy vote

CNet calls it a long-shot bid for the geek vote:

Speaking [in Las Vegas] at a political conference on Friday, Barr focused almost exclusively on privacy and eavesdropping–and argued that both major parties are far too surveillance-happy. “Both of them will continue down the same track,” Barr said, noting that both McCain and Obama supported last week’s bill to immunize telecommunications companies that illegally opened their networks to government snoops.

Congress’ legislative rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is “not about surveilling Al Qaeda,” Barr said. “It’s about surveilling U.S. citizens in America.” He added, for good measure: “This administration is the most anti-privacy, the most anti-individual freedom, in our nation’s history, certainly in my lifetime.”

This is hardly a Bush-McCain species of Republican speaking. It underlines Barr’s appeal: If you’re a traditional conservative who disagrees with the big-government policies, the surveillance, the inflation, the deficit spending, and the unnecessary wars of the Bush administration, vote for me. I was one of you, once.

It might work. More precisely, it might work well enough–think a Republican equivalent of Ralph Nader–to make a difference in states that would have tilted toward McCain otherwise. It’s certainly a more attractive message than the Libertarians’ 2004 candidate, a telemarketer-turned-programmer, had to offer.

Barr has an arch-conservative voting record, but claims he’s an honest-to-goodness convert to the cause:

He said a long time ago that he regrets voting for the Patriot Act; he wants an Iraq withdrawal “without undue delay”; the head of the Marijuana Policy Project formally nominated Barr at the Libertarian convention; Barr even endorsed a Libertarian presidential candidate in 2004. He founded a group called the American Freedom Agenda that opposes the White House’s policies in the so-called war on terror, and his supporters note he embraced a wealth of privacy measures while in Congress (see our coverage from 2002). [...]

Barr also likes to swipe at the Real ID Act, a law creating a federalized identity card that’s effectively on hold until December 31. “It was passed by the Congress not as a national ID, which it is in every way except a name,” he said. “It is a national ID for the first time in our nation’s history…If certain people were elected president it would not go into effect.”

During the Libertarian Party’s presidential debate in Denver, the candidates were asked what they’d do about Real ID and the Patriot Act. Barr’s reply was captured on video by C-SPAN: “Fear has become the driving force behind all public policy in our country…(For the Patriot Act), I’d drive a stake through its heart, shoot it, burn it, cut off its head, burn it again, and scatter its ashes to the four corners of the world.”

RELATED: Posted on Barr’s website, his appearance on CNN’s Newsroom addressing the spoiler question.

Er, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…