|
stevo,
I read the vast majority of the article / paper. In some places I skipped a few words, but I read the whole thing. I'll have to think about it a little bit - but the question I keep coming back to is why not use the methods that are in place to monitor these communications? I've wondered that a few times - the only logical reason I can come up with is a desire to limit a paper trail. I'm not saying that's automatically bad, although it seems it could obviously be abused. The other thought is a curiousity if our government is concerned over infiltration of its intelligence ranks by Al-Queda operatives, etc. Regardless, from what I understand much of the older cases the article points to are most likely moot, as they would be settled using out-of-date legislation. For the Plame reference, it seems that the contention woudl be that the NSA program involves revealing an illegal surveillance program, the Plame leak itself was illegal.
So basically, I think it hinges around the legality of the monitoring program. I don't think the president's interpretation of the FISA statute really means shit; its the actual law that matters. This whole nonsense with signing his interpretation of the laws for torture and so forth is pretty weak. I wish I could say that I interpret stealing other's people's shit as not being illegal, so theft doesn't apply to me. That would be great.
Hmmm... as far as it being a partisan piece, well it's obviously fairly biased towards the position of the administration, but an interesting read.
__________________
You don't love me, you just love my piggy style
|