I wrote earlier about the NSA phone record system, and didn't make much of it. Now I want to explain why even though I think it is not bad in and of itself, it is a system that could be used for some very bad things if we (and when) we get a president like Hillary Clinton in office.
The first problem with the system is that the public knows nothing about its capabilities, and the NSA is sure as hell not going to turn over that information for public scrutiny. We can only make conjecturs about its capabilities, but knowing how technically gifted a lot of the guys that work at the NSA are, it is unlikely that it is a rinky dink failure of a system like the FBI's last attempt to move out of the IT stone age.
The problem that is important for the public is the way that the system could be abused by a political president like a Clinton. Remember those FBI files? Well, this system has the theoretical ability to piece together social networks. It could easily be used by a very political president to piece together profiles of who are prominent local figures in "out-of-favor" local groups and allow such a president to launch targetted personal attacks through agencies like the IRS. Again, remember those FBI files that were supposed to be secret, but mysteriously appeared in the White House?
None of this would be an issue if there were still a clear cut legal barrier between law enforcement and the military/intelligence system. Bush did away with a lot of that, and the consequence is that we are now in a position where a political president could bring the NSA into some of these things. As an intelligence agency, their people cannot easily just "blow the whistle" on such corruption because they work with classified materials and would probably lose their clearances no matter what.
Others:
You can't be serious. You hit on the problem exactly, but fear a CLINTON presidency? The current administration is NOT political? You mean the same administration that has repeatedly used the FBI and the military to spy on political opponents and opponents of the war? The same one that spied on our allies at the U.N. to see how they'd vote on the resolutions? The same one that uses national security orange alerts as a campaign tool?
It's actually breathtaking how myopic you folks on the right can be.
I should also add that I am a voting libertarian, not a conservative or Republican.
I think you misunderstand what I mean by a "political presidency." I am referring to the Clinton Administration's remarkable tendency to have its opponents subjected to IRS audits and other forms of harassment. Like it or not, but there are some very "subversive" elements within the anti-war groups such as Islamists and former communist factions.
You will find, if you browse through my blog posts, though, that I am not exactly very kind to this administration. In fact, I consider it worse on balance than the Clinton one except in the area of harassing personal enemies of the administration. In fact, I have been banned several times from FreeRepublic for being vehemently anti-Bush.
I agree. I'm no fan of Bush, either. While I believe we are doing a good job in Iraq, it would be appropriate to revisit our strategy with respect to "exporting democracy to the world". Fact is, that is not a Constitutional role of government, and furthermore we don't have enough people or money to do it anyway.
On top of that, the Bush spending record has been abysmal. While some of that is out of his control, it's not like he has shown the desire to bring such spending under control.
After 9/11, he could have ordered emergency cuts in spending in non-essential agencies, downsizing non-critical areas of government. No one would have lifted a finger to stop him with his approval numbers as high as they were.
Instead, every time he has had an opportunity to cut the size of government versus increase the size of government, he has been a liberal on steroids.
That said, Hillary would be a complete disaster. Every gun owner in America would have reason to be concerned.
Yep. After 9-11, Bush had a nearly a blank check to be a conservative on financial and regulatory issues. The fact that he went the exact opposite direction speaks of what kind of man he is. I've seen his supporters get hot about this saying that the medicare package was necessary for the War on Terror because otherwise he'd never have gotten defense spending up.