It just keeps getting more and more rotten
By Thoreau
Remember how Qwest refused to hand over phone records to the Stasi? And remember how the CEO of Qwest was convicted of insider trading? I don’t claim to have followed the case of the Qwest CEO closely enough to have a firm and informed opinion on the charges against him, but I always found it interesting that the feds went after him. And I was sort of inclined to say “Eh, maybe we can give him a free pass on this one, seeing as how he stood up to the Stasi.”
Well, now things get more interesting. I’m not sure that this article makes him look blameless, if he was selling stock based in part on information regarding secret contracts. (Then again, since those secret contracts didn’t get awarded in the end, maybe that changes things. Whatever.) However, it’s interesting that the wiretap program may have started before 9/11.
Leaving aside issues of motivation and justification, consider the possibility that warrantless wiretapping was already in place, in some form, and yet 9/11 happened anyway. This further calls into question any sort of “anti-terrorist” policy that can be plausibly summarized as “adding more hay to the stack before you search for the needle.”
Yes, I’m aware that the country wasn’t completely blanketed with surveillance if Qwest wasn’t participating, but Qwest isn’t as big as its rivals, and doesn’t cover as much territory. And yes, I admit that I don’t know if the warrantless wiretap program had actually been implemented (rather than merely proposed) by 9/11. Still, it raises a lot of questions.
Comment by kid bitzer —
October 14, 2007 @ 10:28 am
“consider the possibility that warrantless wiretapping was already in place, in some form, and yet 9/11 happened anyway.”
granted. but that may not show flaws in the program per se (other than its being grossly illegal and unconstitutional).
remember the summer of hair on fire? all through early-middle 2001, the intel pros were getting increasingly worried and freaked.
and we know bush’s reaction: “you’ve covered your ass.”
no intel can work miracles if the people in charge ignore it.
so i’d say: the programs must be stopped because they’re illegal and unconstitutional.
and they should probably be stopped because they’re ineffective, for reasons captured by your haystack line (the false positives are always going to drown any useful info).
but 9/11 by itself provides no evidence of their ineffectiveness, because of bush’s role in ignoring the warnings that 9/11 was coming.
what 9/11 really show is that you shouldn’t install a lightweight imbecile via judicial coup and expect him to do a good job of doing the people’s business.
much less seeing that the laws be executed and upholding the constitution.
Comment by KCinDC —
October 14, 2007 @ 11:34 am
Doesn’t Bush’s “you’ve covered your ass” line indicate that whatever reasons the administration had for setting up new surveillance programs before 9/11, it wasn’t to prevent terrorism?
Comment by Thoreau —
October 14, 2007 @ 11:43 am
Stuff like this makes me start to wonder if the “Let it happen on purpose” theorists are on to something.
I may need some clozapine.
Comment by kid bitzer —
October 14, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
i think the most charitable view would be this:
the unconstitutional surveillance is such a blunt instrument that all it could tell them was “increased chatter”, “really increased chatter”, “holy fuck they’re burning up the wires!”
but it couldn’t tell them who, or what, or whether it was the three people who were really guilty, or the three millions others who fit the algorithm.
so it was enough to make people *really* sick with anxiety. but not the kind of cut-and-dried case that dimbulb would have understood.
again, that’s trying to be charitable.
otherwise, yes please, a dose of clozapine for me too.
Comment by Bill Arnold —
October 14, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
QWest has history with the NSA.
(copied from a comment on this site in 2006)
Little known fact; as a young company, QWest built the fiber optic intra-network at NSA headquarters.
Source – Bamford’s â€Body of Secretsâ€, p510. â€The cable contraact was offered to the small start-up fiber network company Qwest, said one person, ’because it was the only bidder that offered the agency its own fiber path that would not have to be shared with commercial users.â€
Comment by Leo Strauss —
October 14, 2007 @ 10:20 pm
It does indeed raise all sorts of questions, one of which is what really would have been the difference between a Dick Clarke carry-over run National Security State and what emerged? recall that the Patriot Act is largely the combined wish list of the permanent national security state that they didnt get in the 1990s during Clipper Chip, Ames-FISA reform, CALEA and other debates.
Comment by Numb —
October 16, 2007 @ 10:45 am
Our sworn enemies laugh at us as we remove every tool we have to fight the islamo-fascist threat to our very lives.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact!
Thomas Jefferson wrote: “[a] strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means.”
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 17, 2007 @ 9:55 am
“Numb” is a pretty good description of your thinking processes.
Comment by Numb —
October 17, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
Typical of Moonbats Eric responds with personal attacks rather than reasonable arguments and facts.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 17, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
Hee!
Comment by Thoreau —
October 17, 2007 @ 6:02 pm
Those dumb moonbats only know how to attack the messenger, not the message. Reasonable people, on the other hand, are so much smarter than moonbats. Moonbats are idiots. You can’t trust anything they say, because they are dumb. And they have cooties.