AT&T Whistleblower: Spy Bill Creates 'Infrastructure for a Police State'

"The Judicial Logic of a Dictatorship"

From WIRED: Mark Klein is the engineer who blew the whistle on AT&T's involvement in the Bu$hCo™ ILLEGAL warrantless wiretapping program. He told everybody about the secret room in Los Angeles where the telecom giant allowed NSA to tap into the trunk carrying pretty much all domestic communication on the west coast. This led to a lawsuit against AT&T, a lawsuit that will probably be pining for the fjords if the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 gets passed. In an interview with WIRED's Ryan Singel, Klein sounds off against this latest instance of obstruction of justice by the US Government (a wholly-pwned subsidiary of Bu$hCo™)

...It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.

The Democratic leadership is touting the deal as a "compromise," but in fact they have endorsed the infamous Nuremberg defense: "Just following orders." The judge can only check their paperwork. This cynical deal is a Democratic exercise in deceit and cowardice.
[...]
Congress has made the FISA law a dead letter--such a law is useless if the president can break it with impunity. Thus the Democrats have surreptitiously repudiated the main reform of the post-Watergate era and adopted Nixon’s line: "When the president does it that means that it is not illegal." This is the judicial logic of a dictatorship.

The surveillance system now approved by Congress provides the physical apparatus for the government to collect and store a huge database on virtually the entire population, available for data mining whenever the government wants to target its political opponents at any given moment—all in the hands of an unrestrained executive power. It is the infrastructure for a police state.

...which for the Ruling Crime Syndicate is a much higher priority than other infrastructure projects like highways, bridges, flood control, air traffic control, hospitals, etc. Because somehow in their way of thinking the government giving you medical treatment when you need it infringes on your freedom, whereas spying on you doesn't.

TAGS: Warrantless Wiretapping, Police State, FISA Amendment Act of 2008
"When the president does it that means that it is not illegal."