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President Obama institutionalizes Catch-22

Warrantless surveillance are unconstitutional.

But President Obama's Justice Department has taken the position that you lack the standing to challenge the law unless you know for sure you are under surveillance.

And you cannot know if you are under surveillance because that's a matter of national security.

So if you, as a presidential administration that hates civil liberties as much as the last two (and presumably the next one) have, then all you have to do to insulate yourself from constitutional challenge is to prevent anyone from being able to bring a lawsuit.

Where is Yossarian when we need him?

Comments

___j___ said…
Yossarian? No, we don't have much use for the guy from the novel, who was never successful in his attempt to escape.

We need somebody more like an Assange, the guy primarily behind the whistleblowing on diplomatic cables. The catch-22 disappears, as soon as somebody who is an employee of the NSA or DEA or FBI or DHS or some other alphabet soup agency leaks rock-solid evidence to some victim of warrantless surveillance (ongoing or not!).

It would especially help if the victim was wealthy, famous, and politically powerful. Peter Thiel or Meg Whitman both come to mind.

Any folks in the espionage community reading this, who happen to be patriots, and wish their essential function of spying on our foreign enemies wasn't being perverted into a police-state used for spying on our own citizens? Well, speak up then. Because we need a codename-deep-throat before we can have a modern watergate.

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