Do you really care if CIA & the DoD have been pulling the banking and credit records of suspected terrorists?

Question

And why Nancy Pelosi/Samoa hypocrisy not on the front page of any news papers?.. You need more proof that news papers are libs?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/washington/14spy.html?em&ex=1169010000&en=3d8dfffda761e9ef&ei=5087

1. Mr. "The Infamous Vinnie G" :- Who said anything about muslims?

2. If you are a law abiding citizen , why the heck do you care if CIA & DoD is looking at terrrorist records? What do you have to hid ?

Answer 1

Yawn. People didn't care about it when the feds were wiretapping suspected terrorists' telephones and they aren't going to care about it now.

Dick Cheney points out that if a financial institution receives a letter from the government requesting information, they are free to go to court and try and stop it. He also points out that this kind of surveillance has been going on for several decades. He also mentions that it is permitted in the Patriot Act. Never mind those facts, however. The media outrage machine doesn't care.

Somebody else that doesn't care, though is the American people. The press just hasn't been able to get people worked up over the idea of terrorist surveillance. Because if you aren't a suspected terrorist, nobody cares. That's just the way it is.

By the way .. this really is nothing all-that-new. Under the provisions of a little gem called The Bank Secrecy Act, the government can get into your bank account pretty much any time it wants ... even without going to court to get a warrant. All the IRS has to do is send a letter to the bank and your records are on the way. Just remember this when you hear the left screaming bloody murder over this.

Answer 2

No offence bud but you are missing the whole point . You probably are not old enough to remember the McCarthy years where peoples lives and careers were ruined due to innuendo without proper facts. This is the same principle. On the surface, a law abiding citizen has no worries about the government pulling banking records but what if they are wrong. Police cannot arrest you because they "suspect" you of something, they need proof, then get a warrant. If you allow unfettered access to a persons personal records, abuses, mistakes can happen. It is a matter of due process . This is not a party issue.

Answer 3

I care when the government is conducting warantless searches. If they really think those folks are terrorists, then they should have enough evidence to go to a court and apply for a subpoena for their banking records. If they don't hae enough evidence (or their "evidence" came from "confessions" extracted through torture or from illegal breakins) then they don't really deserve to see those banking records.

Also, if our country and specifically our oil companies hadn't been meddling in Middle Eastern internal affairs for the last 60 years and if we didn't bankroll the Israeli Army to the tune of $ 5 billion a year we wouldn't have a problem with the Muslims in the first place!

Answer 4

I have no problem with the banking or credit records of any suspected criminal being pulled, as long as it is done legally, i.e., with a warrant. The basis of our legal system is that one is innocent until PROVEN guilty. The people you are talking about are only SUSPECTED terrorists. If we start exempting certain classes of criminals from Constitutional protections, where does it end? And considering the rather loose definition that has been used in recent years to designate as a terrorist anyone from a person suspected of plotting to blow up a building to a person merely exercising his legal right to protest peacefully, we all need to be wary.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 allows legitimate law inforcement agencies, which includes neither the CIA nor the DoD, to engage in surveillance of suspected terrorists, as long as they get a warrant. And contrary to what some people assert, the agencies to not have to wait until they get the warrant to start their surveillance. They can start immediately, but they are required to provide sufficient cause within 72 hours so that a warrant may be issued. Considering that since the passage of the Act there have been some 14,000 requests for warrants, of which only four, FOUR, were rejected, it is not at all difficult for warrants to be obtained.

What it all boils down to is this: this country is based on the concept of the rule of law, laws that apply to everybody all the time. In a landmark ruling in 1866, the Supreme Court, in the case of ex parte Milligan, ruled that "the Constitution . . . is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances."

If we surrender those very freedoms that some claim the terrorists hate us for, and want to deprive us of, in order to prosecute the "war on terror," then we have already lost.

And as for that old canard about the "biased liberal media," it was the New York Times, the very paper you cite in your link, that was one of the leading standard bearers for the Iraq war back in 2002. Granted, they have since apologized for their lack of objectivity, implying that they were biased in favor of the war, but that is beside the point. The point, and it is a major point, considering the stakes involved (going to war), is that their bias in that case was against the liberal viewpoint.

Answer 5

Don't care at all if they access the records of suspected terrorists as long as the laws are followed and the rights of uninvolved citizens are protected. If you want to surrender your rights to the government (a blatantly, extreme liberal and un-American concept), go ahead. Just leave the rest of us out of it.

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Answer 6

What you are missing is the crucial understanding that absolute power corrupts absolutely. No part of our government can ever be granted this kind of power, no matter the threat - our democracy is committing suicide when it goes so far against our principals and what we are purporting to export to the middle east.