Obama and Bush's illegal Eavesdropping

[Ilusan]

I find myself wondering about this quite a bit:

Obama and Bush's illegal Eavesdropping

I understand people's paranoia at having big brother looking over their shoulder unchecked. I also get the outrage to the perception of our government's invasion of privacy. What I don't get is the unwillingness to accept that maybe -just maybe- this is necessary. Just the fact that Obama, who has pretty much tried to pull us out of every policy Bush conceived, is pushing to keep this one tells me that maybe there is much more to this than meets the eye. Maybe that's because this policy actually works. Maybe this policy has saved lives. My question is: If you aren't doing anything wrong...why the fuck do you really care? "Sacrifice" has become a noble buzzword in this age of buzzwords, but nobody is willing to actually make any sacrifices. The thing is, in talking with other people, I haven't met anybody that doesn't feel the same way i do. Even my commie tree-hugging hippie friends don't seem bothered with having their emails scanned if it saves lives so where is all this opposition to the policy stemming from?

[Kerrin]

If there's reasonable suspicion I'm doing something illegal, then the executive branch can go before the judicial branch to get a warrant and have their work documented with oversight. Otherwise, they can leave me alone.

[Tartun]

The potential of the eaves dropping is scary, but so far none of the eavesdropping has resulted in a drugbust or the stop of a conspiracy to commit murder. The eavesdropping (so far) is only being used to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States. Unfortunately our Armed Forces is stuck gathering intel from domestic sources because so many of those fuckers are living next door to us in typical suburban neighborhoods.

It would be a lot worse of an outrage if we did the old WWII and threw all the muslims in camps to make sure they weren't organizing.

[Graeblyn]

The American form of government relies on effective checks and balances between the three branches of government. If the Executive branch establishes a precedent of bypassing the other two branches in this way it is a rather worrying development for the US Constitution.

And, moreover, this sort of behavior is the very thing the US criticises in developing countries. Even if the Executive Branch IS only using this for the so-called WAR ON TERROR, it still, ironically, makes the world generally a less safe place, by providing moral cover for axis-of-evil sorts, including islamist regimes, and makes it less likely that the US government will get support from governments and organisations that might otherwise listen to the US when it calls for condemnation or action against anti-democratic nations.