What Reason Do We Have to Trust the State to Know Best?
3:43pm today Christopher Hitchens
Although I am named in this suit in my own behalf, I am motivated to join it by concerns well beyond my own. I have been frankly appalled by the discrepant and contradictory positions taken by the Administration in this matter. First, the entire existence of the NSA's monitoring was a secret, and its very disclosure denounced as a threat to national security.
Then it was argued that Congress had already implicitly granted the power to conduct warrantless surveillance on the territory of the United States, which seemed to make the reason for the original secrecy more rather than less mysterious. (I think we may take it for granted that our deadly enemies understand that their communications may be intercepted.)
It now appears that Congress may have granted this authority, but without quite knowing that it had, and certainly without knowing the extent of it.
This makes it critically important that we establish an understood line, and test the cases in which it may or may not be crossed.
...........
The better the ostensible justification for an infringement upon domestic liberty, the more suspicious one ought to be of it. We are hardly likely to be told that the government would feel less encumbered if it could dispense with the Bill of Rights. But a power or a right, once relinquished to one administration for one reason, will unfailingly be exploited by successor administrations, for quite other reasons. It is therefore of the first importance that we demarcate, clearly and immediately, the areas in which our government may or may not treat us as potential enemies.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-hitchens/what-reason-do-we-have-to_b_13985.htmlACLU Sues to Stop Illegal Spying on Americans, Saying President Is Not Above the Law (1/17/2006)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org
Prominent Journalists, Nonprofit Groups, Terrorism Experts and Community Advocates Join First Lawsuit to Challenge New NSA Spying Program
Authors and journalists James Bamford, Christopher Hitchens and Tara McKelvey
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/23486prs20060117.html
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