Comments on: Bush broke the law http://rjz.verminbrewing.com/2006/01/24/76/ Ideas about travel and everything else, collected while traveling the world Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:53:13 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Tim Rohrer http://rjz.verminbrewing.com/2006/01/24/76/comment-page-1/#comment-179 Tim Rohrer Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:56:13 +0000 http://rjz.verminbrewing.com/2006/01/24/76/#comment-179 My sister and brother and law lived in Austrailia over the last couple of years. As I understand what Bush did, he had NSA software randomly sample phone conversations for words like terrorist, jihad, and who know what all else. So if I or my wife talked about current events, we might have been eavesdropped on, and Bush et al might have targeted our phone conversations for eavesdropping, perhaps even without bothereing to get a warrant (FISA or otherwise)--simply because one end of the conversation was overseas. I know lots of people who said--oh, it would never happen to me. I don't talk to foreigners, I don't make overseas calls, I don't care. Well, it might well have happened to my family. And if your cousin or brother gets posted overseas, your family could be next. This random eavesdropping is simply wrong, regardless of legal wrangling over whether Bush broke the law. And instead of apologizing to the American people and saying it won't happen again, he just says "Trust us. it's a war. We had and still have good intentions." Yes, and so did we when we locked up the Japanese Americans in internment (concentration) camps in the 40s. Violating our rights without first showing just cause is wrong. My sister and brother and law lived in Austrailia over the last couple of years. As I understand what Bush did, he had NSA software randomly sample phone conversations for words like terrorist, jihad, and who know what all else. So if I or my wife talked about current events, we might have been eavesdropped on, and Bush et al might have targeted our phone conversations for eavesdropping, perhaps even without bothereing to get a warrant (FISA or otherwise)–simply because one end of the conversation was overseas.

I know lots of people who said–oh, it would never happen to me. I don’t talk to foreigners, I don’t make overseas calls, I don’t care. Well, it might well have happened to my family. And if your cousin or brother gets posted overseas, your family could be next.

This random eavesdropping is simply wrong, regardless of legal wrangling over whether Bush broke the law. And instead of apologizing to the American people and saying it won’t happen again, he just says “Trust us. it’s a war. We had and still have good intentions.” Yes, and so did we when we locked up the Japanese Americans in internment (concentration) camps in the 40s. Violating our rights without first showing just cause is wrong.

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