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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNSA Cheerleaders Discover Value of Privacy Only When Their Own Is Violated
Spying on Congress and Israel:
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34356-focus-spying-on-congress-and-israel-nsa-cheerleaders-discover-value-of-privacy-only-when-their-own-is-violated
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the NSA under President Obama targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top aides for surveillance. In the process, the agency ended up eavesdropping on the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups about how to sabotage the Iran Deal. All sorts of people who spent many years cheering for and defending the NSA and its programs of mass surveillance are suddenly indignant now that they know the eavesdropping included them and their American and Israeli friends rather than just ordinary people.
The long-time GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and unyielding NSA defender Pete Hoekstra last night was truly indignant to learn of this surveillance:
In January 2014, I debated Rep. Hoekstra about NSA spying and he could not have been more mocking and dismissive of the privacy concerns I was invoking. Spying is a matter of fact, he scoffed. As Andrew Krietz, the journalist who covered that debate, reported, Hoekstra laughs at foreign governments who are shocked theyve been spied on because they, too, gather information referring to anger from German and Brazilian leaders. As TechDirt noted, Hoekstra attacked a bill called the RESTORE Act, that would have granted a tiny bit more oversight over situations where (you guessed it) the NSA was collecting information on Americans.
But all that, of course, was before Hoekstra knew that he and his Israeli friends were swept up in the spying of which he was so fond. Now that he knows that it is his privacy and those of his comrades that has been invaded, he is no longer cavalier about it. In fact, hes so furious that this long-time NSA cheerleader is actually calling for the criminal prosecution of the NSA and Obama officials for the crime of spying on him and his friends.
This pattern whereby political officials who are vehement supporters of the Surveillance State transform overnight into crusading privacy advocates once they learn that they themselves have been spied on is one that has repeated itself over and over. It has been seen many times as part of the Snowden revelations, but also well before that.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)What a different country this could be, were secret government ended.
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)they read about it on a right wing bumper sticker.
Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)And should be. Israel is not an ally. Israel's government acts to undermine US diplomacy, engages in the most extensive programme of military and industrial espionage targeting the USA of any US "ally", has sold US defence secrets obtained through espionage to China, and all while engaging in the sort of violations of international law that'd result in sanctions if any other country were doing it.