"Domestic" "spying": In 1999 my loopy libertarian friends, who for sure had things to hide, were as disturbed as today's salivating, hyperventilating, hyperbolic Democrats about spying on "private" e-mail & phone calls, but they were disturbed by Clinton's NSA. Mining domestic SIGINT from outer space, Clinton's Project Echelon could apparently tap any electronic communication anywhere. In early Y2K, one full year before the Bush Crime Family's reconquista & return to absolute power, 60 Minutes or something similar did a few minutes on Echelon. The ACLU (& you) nodded politely, if you noticed at all, before going on to important things.

Perhaps your indifference then to the assault on your alleged privacy had something to do with the source of the assault, Democrats, or on the United States Supreme Court which, in 1997, determined that no citizen has a reasonable expectation of privacy in electronic communication.

There certainly is no expectation of privacy for the source, duration, & destination of phone calls because phone companies keep all those records, just as the hip capitalists at Google keep records of all your searches.

Today's bombshell, in other words, is the longest fizzle in history. If it wasn't a big story in 1999, why now? (Rhetorical question; obvious answer.)

This is ridiculous. Eli supports Baghdad Jim's illicit use of wiretapping, you know, the one that was used against his political opponents.

But when it comes to keeping America safe by gathering intelligence on possible terrorist activities--oh hell, no, that there's illegal, man!

Get a clue Eli, this isn't going to stick because it's BS.

Hey brownshirts - take that shit back to (un)SoundPolishits where it belongs (and you at the NSA reading this - go fuck yourself and the Chimperor too!)

I know the truth hurts, and you don't want to hear it Mr. X, but that's the way it is.

ummm, libraries are public space. just as we don't have a reasonable expectation for privacy on the city streets (e.g. street cameras and surveillance cameras in stores), we wouldn't inside a library.

your personal telephone calls, however, are private. this is clearly, clearly, clearly against the constitution. it isn't ever close to the same thing.

"keeping America safe"

coffee spewed out out across keyboard in laughter.

yeah right. got any other good ones? I'm in dire need of laughs.

You guys sold your souls and your country down the river a long time ago, and it is unsurprising you keep towing the Cheney/Rumsfeld line, but it is sickening and pathetic nonetheless.

Mr. X is flipping his brownshi(r)t again. No surprise, aside from the surprisingly suffocating stink.

Waiting for you knee-jerk jerks to ponder & answer the implied question: How is NSA's collating of phone-bill data a greater threat to America than Echelon? In fact, how is/was either a threat to America, aside from giving otherwise unemployable whiners at The Stranger more exercise in the weird alchemy of turning trees into shit, & electrons into smut?

More on the 60 Minutes Echelon report: Google Steve Croft (womb raider), Echelon, February 2000. Note the date.

Also note the words of geostrategist Dan Savage: We're at war, ya dopes.

"we're at war"

ummm, not with terrorist. you can't have a war with a group of people. especially since there isn't a conceivable ending date. it's a silly as saying there is a war against drugs or a war against poverty.

Sandalista - please blow it out your ass. While I'm sure that there are some Democratic partisans who are guilty of the ethical compartmentalizing you describe, there were a good many of us who were just as outraged at Clinton's actions as you describe them (and please don't forget key escrow, the witch-hunt against Phil Zimmerman, etc.) and wholeheartedly agreed with William Greider when he said that, reproductive freedom issues aside, the Clinton administration was the most hostile to civil liberties since the Nixon administration. Or, as one friend of mine put it, "Clinton's the only Republican I ever voted for."

But - and this is important - the stakes have been raised immeasurably since then. Your libertarian friends (not you, of course - you've got to keep this objective, after all) were right to bemoan the threats against civil liberties that arose during the Clinton years, but what we've seen in the last five years are an order of magnitude worse. If you don't see that, you're either (a)disingenuous, or (b) incredibly stupid. Protesters are now traitors, journalists are criminals, and anyone who dares speak out against the administration's crimes are advised by the President's press secretary to "watch what they say." Meanwhile, the treasury is being raided by Bush's corporate cronies (both Katrina funding and Iraq reconstruction dollars have been taken out of the jurisdiction of the relevant inspectors general), and it is somehow disloyal to mention that fact. Please. Whatever Clinton's failings (and, chubby interns aside, they were legion), at least he bothered to keep an eye on our al Qaeda enemies, and he managed to do so with only a handful of egregious constitutional violations. This crowd, on the other hand, can't go 48 hours without pissing on one of the enumerated Bill of Rights.

So, again I say, please blow it out your ass.