Protecting Civil Liberties -- Bush Style

Here's a good summation of the latest revelations about the NSA wiretapping program:

NSA officials have intentionally intercepted, listened to and passed around the phone calls of hundreds of innocent U.S. citizens working overseas, including journalists and international aid workers including the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, even when it was definite the calls were not related to anything to do with national security, while the government misled the American public about the scope of its surveillance activities. But rather than listening for possible connections to suspected terrorists, it seems what really interests those NSA guys with headphones down in the basement is… sex.

What bothers me is not the content of the calls being recorded, but the fact that a) they were listening at all, and b) the fact that they were listening at all.

The big sticking point for me (and I will admit that, under certain circumstances, secret wiretaps might be justified, but those circumstances are pretty few) is that any government activity is prone to abuse, especially under this administration. This just proves it.

And this wasn't a "few bad apples":

The two intercept operators have independently come forward to blow the whistle, feeling what they were doing was illegal, improper, immoral, and shouldn't be done. Both intercept operators said their military commanders rejected questions about listening in to these private conversations. ‘It was just always, that , you know, your job is not to question. Your job is to collect and pass on the information.’ Kinne also resented the waste of time spent listening to innocent Americans instead of looking for the terrorist needle in the haystack, underscoring the failure of the program.

‘By casting the net so wide and continuing to collect on Americans and aid organizations, it's almost like they're making the haystack bigger and it's harder to find that piece of information that might actually be useful to somebody,’ she said.‘You're actually hurting our ability to effectively protect our national security.’

Read the whole thing. And watch the video -- the story following the NSA story is about my sheriff. He's got my vote. And Rachel Maddow is great.