The White House is defending a massive intrusion by the government on civil liberties for political reasons. Whatever the ethics, now that the cat is out of the bag I think that this tactic is of limited use, capable of ensnaring only the careless. Perhaps most criminals and terrorists are careless. Perhaps that is why they resort to criminality and terrorism. I think any intelligent individual could devise a way to disguise the source, destination, content, duration, and frequency of telephone calls. But how intelligent are terrorists, anyway? Not very, one would think.
At any rate, I don't think avoiding terrorism is worth giving the government a blank check on civil liberties, because once such liberty is sacrificed, when is it ever recovered? The government is inclined to take more and more. Where do all these seizures of privileged information end? I don't see any end, and I see rather increasing reliance on eavesdropping. Information makes those in power even more powerful, so it is always tempting to seize more and more information. Power is a drug.
I find the Obama administration just as bone-headed as the Bush administration was on civil liberty. Where is the difference? All of this fear and paranoia to justify the loss of liberty is unbecoming. I find that Obama is too right-wing and too willing to sacrifice individual liberties for what he deems "the good of that state." Perhaps Republicans would fault him for it if he were not so. Perhaps this is another case of Obama playing the politician rather than the great statesman he could have been.
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