“Within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.â€
- The New York Times, yesterday.
This is clearly nothing to do with the threat from terrorism, and everything to do with moving towards a surveillance state. No sensible person would object to the monitoring of suspects’ phone conversations – mafia, drugs smuggling, terrorism ,etc, subject to due legal safeguards. But this is absolutely different – it means that they are watching you all the time.
Of course, they say – if you have nothing to hide, why are you complaining?
But what I say is - where the potential for abuse exists, it will surely happen.
