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Bank Record Surveillance As Bad As Phone Taps?
Sean Aqui doesn’t think so, but he has the same concerns I do…
This program, created as a temporary, emergency measure right after 9/11, is becoming entrenched as a permanent tool. If this is going to be a long-term effort, then the program needs to ensure that it takes careful care of individual rights.
And passages like these from the Wash Post give me little comfort…
Together with a hundredfold expansion of the FBI’s use of “national security letters” to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators.
At the end of the day, I simply don’t trust this administration to protect our rights if even a whiff of a hint comes down that some link to terrorism could possibly be in the mix. Because this “One Percent Doctrine” Cheney and company adopted post 9/11 has consistently proven to injure and imprison completely innocent people, and so…this stuff makes me nervous.
So that’s where I am. Where are you?
12 Responses to “Bank Record Surveillance As Bad As Phone Taps?”
Joe, I have the same questions about this.
typo: i meant Justin.
Just more Big Brother
But remember to vote Republican as they are in unified lockstep and ready to march over any cliff.
No discussion allowed!
Had enough?
Just keep on reiterating the fact that no one is against monitoring: just do it legally with checks and balances with opportunity to rebut and to clear misconceptions and inaccurate data.
Well sit back and watch as the republicans in congress roll over as they allow themselves to be bypassed by Bushco. The no oversight congress is in full effect, lets retroactively enact some laws to protect Bush from any lawbreaking regarding this intrusion.
I have no idea whether or not what they are currently doing is good or bad, legal or illegal. But let’s say I did trust the current administration so that such gathering is both legal and good currently. That would be nice, but in the end that would miss the point. The current admin might be perfect on this or horrible. But what about the next one? Or the one after that? To keep these programs safe and legal (or to correct it if it isn’t already), there needs to be both congressional and judicial oversight. I think that’s what we need to be fighting for. Institutional protections so that as admins come and go, the people stay protected.
9/11 could have prevented by paying attention to what we already had. The idea the Bush needs cart blanch to dig into any aspect of out lives is rediculous, and affront to every person who has died gaining us our hard won freedoms in the first place.
I’m tired of the war on a ‘tactic’ being used as an excuse for a slow march to totaleterism. Get rid of the Rubber Stamp Congress now.
Accuse me of reciting talking points but I found them persuasive: The administration said it was following financial transactions much more closely after 9/11 – they just didn’t say exactly how. The NYT piece seemed little better than Geraldo drawing a map of the exact location of troops in Iraq on air.
I’m ‘lockstep’ with Pacatrue on this one. I would feel a whole lot better about the logic loop of “we can’t tell you because it would be telling them”, if I felt that someone was watching them while they were watching me.
Who’s watching the watchers?
Thanks for the new logic loop snarky. All right, I wouldn’t feel “a whole lot better” but a little better.
Has it occured to anyone here that there already is a government program that demands to know every aspect of you financial life? The IRS anyone? How in gods name is bush the problem here.
And the program that the NYT is talking about, SWIFT, is a consortium located in Belgium. Besides, the government uses administrative subpoenas when it seeks SWIFT information.
PING:
TITLE: International banking records – some facts
BLOG NAME: Stubborn Facts
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BSphere Buzz
Powerline
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Kevin Drum
The blogosphere is buzzing over today’s New York Times report about the “secret” program to access bank transaction data on