Domestic Spying Is Old News

From AlterNet:

The big puzzle is why anyone is shocked that President Bush eavesdropped on Americans. The National Security Agency for decades has routinely monitored the phone calls and telegrams of thousands of Americans. The rationale has always been the same, and Bush said it again in defending his spying, that it was done to protect Americans from foreign threat or attack.

The named targets in the past have been Muslim extremists, Communists, peace activists, black radicals, civil rights leaders, and drug peddlers. Even before President Harry Truman established the NSA in a Cold War era directive in 1952, government cryptologists jumped in the domestic spy hunt with Operation Shamrock. That was a super-secret operation that forced private telegraph companies to turn over the telegraphic correspondence of Americans to the government.

Click here for the rest.

And that's partially the reason I didn't understand the significance of the NSA wiretapping scandal from the get-go: I'm well aware that this Soviet styled domestic surveillance on US citizens by their own government has been happening for decades. Indeed, my shock came when I learned at some point in the mid 90s that the FBI had wiretapped Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. because J. Edgar Hoover thought he was a communist. Consequently, when this current scandal broke, I had no idea that it was going to cause such a ruckus. Actually, it's quite a good thing that so many people are in high freak out mode on this. The reason these kinds of operations absolutely must be overseen by the courts is because the lure of abuse is irresistible to government bodies--they're trying to get their jobs done, and cherished American freedoms get in the way of that. Of course, those freedoms are a large part of what this country is all about. We simply cannot allow expediency to be a blanket excuse for national self-immolation. If that were to actually happen, if we were to become a police state, the terrorists, by forcing drastic change upon our collective identity as Americans, would have definitely won. And we can't have that now, can we?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$