Bill Keller Is Not My President
Professor Bainbridge nails it. If these criminals inside and outside the government are not prosecuted, we might as well just come out and admit we are a government by the New York Times, of the New York Times and for the New York Times. Patterico has much much much much more.
June 24th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
For the past 5 years, bureaucrats have been snooping around looking at people’s bank transactions. Especially considering the fact that many of the Bush administration appointees come from the private sector, and shall return there, I’d say this is damn well in the public interest.
The only thing that makes true competition possible is privacy. Privacy and property are the same thing.. without them, here would be no competitive edge whatsoever to innovation and invention. As soon as you develop an edge, someone can walk in and take it from you.
Bank account and transaction records are private for important reasons that go far beyond the funds themselves. How much money an entity spends, where money is spent, who transactions take place between, all are ways for others to figure out what you innovations/inventions/plans are.
People working for the Bush adminstration will have a massive competitive edge if they’ve observed these international transactions. Even if they never tell a soul what they’ve seen, they’ll know who is doing business with who; how much business was done; the value of said business in dollar terms. These are trade secrets, and they’re spread wide open by the Bush administration in the name of “fighting terrorism.”
I think it’s very much in the public interest to know how much actual terrorism is being fought. Because the costs of this fight are extremely high. Is it worth it? Only time will tell.
At the most basic level, we each have our private thoughts and motivations. Learning those would be the greatest “terrorism fighting” tool of all, of course. You could catch a terrorist before they ever did ANYTHING!!!
If the Bush adminstration was snooping into our thoughts and motivations — just to “catch terrorists” of course — would that also be a terrible thing for the New York Times to report?
June 24th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Yes, Phil, it is a terrible thing to report.
Did it escape your attention that we are at war? This is an effective program which let to the arrests of the Bali bombers (you probably don’t remember them with that short term memory problem you have). It only affects international transactions, and financial information is not protected btw.
There is zero evidence of abuse and significant evidence that the NYT is engaging in treason.
Hope the next terrorist event funded by money we cannot trace is in YOUR neighborhood Phil.
June 24th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
“We are at war” is not a justification for doing everything we’d never permit if we weren’t at war. We are at war with a primitive culture of religious fanatics. The government has decided to “fight” these primitive fanatics by snooping through the private dealings of everyone who does business internationally. And they’d rather we didn’t know they were doing it. That stinks to high heaven of abuse of power.
The Bush administration has been obsessed with secrecy in this war. This is extremely suspicious. It’s the terrorists who should be secretive, not America. The terrorists the ones who should be hiding in the shadows, ashamed of their plots to kill innocents. We should be discovering secret terrorist plots, not secret American programs to invade privacy and take away rights.
What’s the value of keeping this transaction-monitoring a secret? Is it really that high in the war on terror? If the Bush administration has its way, we’ll never know.
That’s the most maddening part about all of these secret tactics — we never know if they work or not. It’s like getting daily prostate exams, and the doctor is telling you “you’ll just have to trust me; you need these, or you’re gonna get cancer.” And you wonder — does this violation of my privacy really help, or is he just doing it for his own benefit?
June 24th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Bullshit. We do know that this particular program caught the mastermind of the Bali attacks, which killed more innocent people than Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma City. You might just as well claim we don’t really know if police tactics worked on McVeigh.
Indeed it is just like that, except in the sense that it’s nothing like that, since we do know that this particular program worked, and prostate cancer can’t read the New York Times to learn how to escape your doctor’s diagnosis. This has got to be the dumbest analogy I’ve read in years – and that’s saying a lot.
June 25th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
“we do know that this particular program worked”
It worked how? In that they say it worked? They say everything works (see, e.g., their torture policies, finding WMDs, catching bin laden, “mission accomplished”) until it comes to light, through the media, that it doesn’t. There is no way in hell I’m letting the Bush administration tell me which of their policies work.
I am grateful that organizations like the NYT exist to bring such polices to light — even if doing so does cause conservative bloggers to have silly coniption fits for a couple days every time they do so.
So the right has now added freedom of the press to the list of constitutional freedoms they’ll gladly give up to be “protected” from terrorists. In that, this is very much like my daily prostate example. You’re bending over and enjoying it.
June 25th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
“We do know that this particular program caught the mastermind of the Bali attacks”
Who told us that?
June 25th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
Phil, something tells me no person on the planet would consider giving you a rectal exam a possible benefit to themselves irrespective of the bill. It is a given they are doing it for your benefit – although it’s anyone’s guess as to why they bother.
Yes the Bali terrorists were caught under this program – this was reported in the original articles. Try to keep up.
June 26th, 2006 at 1:35 am
Phil,
The press is free to print “Bush is a horrible human being and should be beheaded in the name of Chthulu” all day long if it wants. What it is not free to do is to subborn, or conspire with, government officials to reveal classified information. Get it? My car dealer is not free to decide that he should not report my $10,000 cash down payment “because the CTR law is wrong”. If he does not do it, he is guilty of illegality — money laundering and possibly tax evasion. If I conspire with him, I am likewise guilty. How far do you want to take freedom of the press? If the editors of NYT had shot Jayson Blair could they have used freedom of the press as a defense? After all, through his lies and plagiarism, he had been acting against the public interest for a long time.
June 26th, 2006 at 11:14 am
NK, good point, but why stop with the MSM? I don’t see any reason why they should enjoy any special protections not available to radio talk show hosts, bloggers, or any other new media. Do I now get to flout whatever law I want, whenever I want, as long as I deem my crime to be in The Public Interest and promise to blog about it?
June 26th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Don’t do it, Xrlq, we cannot count on having Phil on the jury. (Smile)
June 26th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Seriously, I think the MSM is living in 1971. They think they can get away with now what they got away with in Pentagon Papers case. Unfortunately, we seem to also have some people in the Justice Department who think the same away. I think that the minute the Administration found out about it, they should have arrested every writer and editor involved and bound them over for the grand jury. Just as a trial tactic, arresting them before publication would have dimmed the First Amendment color. I have never been a big fan of Rudi Giulianni but I give him credit for knowing how to try a case. I wish he were still U.S. attorney in New York.