The NYT reported that the secret court received 1800 requests for warrants last year -- and issued 1800 warrants, some very sweeping dragnets not focused on a particular event or suspect. Let's see: a year might be 50 weeks, a work-week five days, so 250 days; 1800 warrants, that's 7.2 per day, or nearly one per hour. Quite a pace for careful jurisprudence by this secret court of eleven secret jurists. Feel safer?
McClatchy has brought a second item to light. After young Spc. Manning dumped docs to WikiLeaks, Obama, in October of 2011, signed an Executive Order making it an offense for government employees not to inform on co-workers who display suspicious attitudes or behavior, employees who later come under investigation. Called "Early Warning" or some such innocuous, positive name -- remind one of Stasi by chance? No, perish the thought; our elected officials are so much more trustworthy than that, and it's for our own good, all in pursuit of security, right, right, right-oh, on we go!
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My friend Dennis Ortblad, a former Foreign Service officer well-familiar with Europe, commented via e-mail. Dennis allowed me to post this on his behalf, saying "use the e-mail as you wish -- the NSA has it already."
ReplyDeleteFletch, A retired German teacher in Cologne, a long-time friend, told me in May that he was severely disappointed in the U.S. and feared for its decline. And that was before the Snowden disclosures! The Germans now see our security structures as downright ominous -- shades of the Stasi. Anybody who thinks it's business as usual with the EU is fooling himself.
Dennis