Here’s my 2006 review of the James Risen book that ignited the first uproar about the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping. I noted: James Risen’s revelations on pervasive National Security Agency warrantless spying on Americans shred the final pretenses to legality of the Bush administration. Now the debate is simply whether, as Bush and his supporters […]
Tag Archives | Surveillance
My 2006 FFF Articles on Surveillance Insanity
From the Future of Freedom Foundation website – BUSH’S WIRETAP CRIMES AND THE FISA FARCE by James Bovard March 1, 2006 President Bush proudly announced last December that he is violating federal law. He declared that in 2002 he had ordered the National Security Agency to begin conducting warrantless wiretaps and email intercepts on Americans. […]
My 2003 piece: Surveillance State – from American Conservative
Here’s a 2003 piece from the American Conservative on out-of-control government surveillance. This was the first piece I wrote for them (the magazine was launched the previous Fall). The editing process went more smoothly with subsequent pieces I wrote for them. 🙂 My original final paragraph: Three months after 9/11, Ashcroft announced: “To those who […]
My 2000 Article: The Rise of the Surveillance State
The American Spectator reposted online this morning a piece I wrote for them 13 years ago on the proliferation of government surveillance. I included some of this in my 2000 book, Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years. If memory serves, reviewers denounced my paranoia on surveillance issue […]
Latest Wiretap Scandal Part of Long Pattern
So Verizon has been ordered to deliver to the feds the calling records of all its customers. Appalling but not surprising. Here’s a 2006 piece I wrote on the burgeoning wiretapping scandals for American Conservative. Here’s a few highlights: * The latest revelations are simply one in a series of revelations of the feds […]
Obama Muffes Title of Born-Again Privacy Champion
Reuters reports that the Obama folks will soon permit far more exploitation of the financial data the feds have vacuumed up: – The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, […]
Dilbert Solves the Patriot Act Mystery?
We learned in the last few weeks that a secret ruling exists which permits the federal agencies to violate far more Americans’ rights under a twisted interpretation of the Patriot Act. Are the feds using smart phones to track millions of Americans?