Reply to: Invasion of Privacy or Right of the Government?

Invasion of Privacy or Right of the Government?

I strongly agree with your resentment to the Government for the warrantless wiretapping... but I have to say I somewhat disagree with the statement that "the government does not have the right to monitor private text messages..." because I believe they do have that right (unfortunately, thanks to the Bush Administration), especially when our country has been and is still in danger. I do totally agree that they SHOULDN'T be reading them, and I do feel completely invaded and hate the fact that we have to watch what we say, but even if they do monitor us they'll realize most of us are not a threat. So I say let them monitor us, let them laugh over our embarrassing messages and let them realize we're just students, just people having a little fun.

Like I said in my previous post, it seems pretty easy to obtain a warrant, and I wish that was the way it had to be done. But unfortunately our country was in great danger years ago, I feel that danger has lessened a bit now, but who I am to predict such a thing? No matter how much I am against this warrantless wiretapping, I think the Bush Administration did the right thing by "okay-ing" it. The government is not doing it to solely invade our privacy, they're doing it for our safety... We just need to try to keep that in mind.

Warrantless Wiretapping

The NSA’s (National Security Association) warrantless wiretapping controversy became a major issue when the war on terror started back in 2001. The Bush administration was in control and Bush had given consent to authorize warrantless wiretapping on phone calls, text messages, internet activity, e-mails, etc. in 2006. Congress passed the “Protect America Act of 2007" which is the act that legalized warrantless wiretapping.
Legalized? Really? I find that hard to believe (even though it’s a reality) that they can legalize an act of that stature. That is a complete invasion of our privacy, and is even stated that way in the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment of The Bill of Rights states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause supported by Oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
According to a few different reputable sources I read, the government has only admitted to eavesdropping on calls and e-mails where "one end was overseas and one person was suspected to be a terrorist." It has never officially confirmed that it sucked in the records of millions of Americans, despite repeated reports and confirmations from Congress. But there have been reports that make it clear that there were more intelligence programs that the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” that the administration acknowledged after the New York Times revealed in December 2005. Also from what I’ve read, it’s apparently not that hard to get a warrant… It seems as if they (the government/police) wanted to put someone or some group under surveillance they would have some sort of probable cause that caught their attention, so why not use it and make this a legal process? All a warrant takes is probable cause! Why can’t the government or police just obtain a warrant first? In my opinion they should not be able to invade our privacy without a court ordered warrant which was collected from probable cause. I understand that the war on terror was a very serious issue, and that the Bush administration wanted to go to every length possible to catch the terrorists causing all the troubles and heartbreaks, but can’t they get a warrant first? What I want to know is, how much did this help in the search for terrorists? Also, how much has this invaded non-terrorists privacy and gotten them in trouble?
My only problem is that they are invading innocent people’s privacy, and that is illegal (or should be illegal). I guess it’s kind of one of those things where “one person can ruin it for everyone”. So until this becomes illegal again, looks like we all need to watch what we say wherever we are, and especially watch our jokes… Sad it had to come to this.

Cornyn's Stand for Government Transparency

National Security is an issue I’ve never really looked into until now. I found an editorial from our own Austin American Statesman entitled Cornyn’s Stand for government transparency. Personally, I thought it was very interesting, I never knew the dangers reporters and journalists put themselves in when reporting anonymous information. Apparently the government is known to use threats of subpoenas and jail time in order to find out who initially leaked the information. That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? I guess it gets the point across, they want to know who “betrayed” them and they will do just about anything in their power to find out. Quite a scare-tactic if you ask me.


The author’s intended audience looks to be the general public, but more specifically voters and people who actually have a say in what goes on in our government. He’s looking for support of what he calls a “shield” to reporters, and he’s got mine. I think he did a great job explaining in simple terms what is going on and arguing his point. I agree that the public should know what’s really happening in our government, whether it’s “classified” or not. That’s what builds trust, and with no trust where do we even begin with relying on and believing in our government? We have a right to know what goes on in our country, and reporters should have the right, along with this shield the author speaks of, to disclose any valuable information without having to state their sources as long as they are positive it is credible. Although it does bring up the question of credibility to the public, again comes the issue of trust. Most policies will not allow a story to be leaked without being 100% credible, and I believe that if a story was leaked and later found to be untrue, they would correct themselves right away. They can’t afford to be giving the public false information. I’m really interested to see what affect Cornyn has on this policy, only time will tell!

Government's Role in Web Security

The article I chose involves the government’s role in securing the internet. “There is no kill switch for the internet, no secret on-off button in an Oval Office drawer.” The author, Lolita C. Baldor of the article, “What‘s government‘s role in making the Web secure?” makes points such as hackers taking over the internet is somewhat similar to terrorists taking over. So far at least 18 bills have been introduced to Congress to protect the country in the event of a “massive cyber attack.” Now, this is something interesting to me, mainly because I have never thought of a terrorist attack being online. But why not? We do just about everything online these days, we depend on so many things to work, function properly, help us on a daily basis, all because of the internet. I have never stopped to think where we would be without the internet, without email, without being able to research, etc. Our world would definitely come to a halt. So many people are dependent upon the internet today, and there are tons of hackers out there that I’m sure have the intelligence to do such a thing. They may just be simply waiting for the right moment or too scared because of the repercussions of their actions, either way, I believe there are people out there that could ruin the internet. We could potentially lose all of our stored information, whether it be personal emails, pictures, important business documents such as finances, inventory, history, etc. Anything with out a paper trail would be lost forever! Think of what that could do to our country… Most companies would be ruined! We would probably end up in an even worse recession than we’re already in, actually scratch that, we would end up in a major depression. We would have to start over from square one, or for the less fortunate, they would have to give up and move on. Maybe they don’t take over the entire internet, but they find a way to hack into our bank accounts, our financial records, they could rob us with out anyone knowing! Our funds would be depleted, and I’m sure we would eventually find where the money was transferred, but in the mean time it would really screw with a lot of people. Businesses would die, our cars would be repossessed, houses would go into foreclosure… Plain disaster! I think the government should have at least some control (which I am 99.9% sure they have more than we think, and probably more than we would like to know). If they did not, we could have a major crisis! I am glad I came across this article, it really makes you see how dependent we can be at times. Most of my school work, my connections, and sometimes just my boredom or fun come from the internet. Maybe I should be more responsible and start keeping paper trails of things such as my invoices, no more online banking, no more online purchases. But then I ask myself, is that really necessary? My dad always tells me not to do such things, but I catch myself telling him he just doesn’t understand, “It’s 2009 Dad, everyone does online banking/purchases/bill pay” So I ask myself, is he right?

US National Government

I have heard quite a bit about business owners taking their businesses overseas in order to evade the United States taxes, and I found an article on Chron.com, Houston’s National Newspaper. In this article, titled “Congress leery about Obama’s plan on tax loopholes,” Stephen Ohlemacher talks about President Barack Obama and his promise to “crack down on companies that ship jobs overseas and duck U.S. taxes with offshore havens.” In my opinion, sure these guys who are doing this are smart, but at the same time, they are not helping our deficit at all. “Obama said his plan would raise $210 BILLION over the next 10 years, though no tax increases would go into effect until 2010.” That’s $21 billion a year, less than a 2% nick in the federal budget deficit that is projected to hit $1.2 trillion in 2010. WOW, is all I can say. How will he do this you ask? He’s planning to employ at least 800 new IRS agents to enforce the tax code. Let’s hope this works!

Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6407907.html

By: Stephen Ohlemacher