Spy on Americans, but Don't Monitor Hotels in China!
According to Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), wholesale government spying on Americans? A-ok. But surveillance of Internet use in foreign-owned hotels in China? Not if he can help it!
ThinkProgress reports that Sen. Brownback, who voted for the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program twice—once last year for the Protect America Act and just last month for the FISA Amendments Act—is just outraged over this.
When asked about the difference between the Chinese and American spying practices, Brownback said, "We don’t put the hardware and software on hotels." He added that the Chinese program can be used "on journalists," "on athletes," "on their families," "democracy advocates," and "human rights advocates" — seemingly oblivious that all these groups could be spied on here as well.Threat Level also sagely points out that the government, via the FBI, was already spying on advocates, as our Freedom of Information Act request revealed.
Now, we actually agree with Sen. Brownback that this is outrageous; we don't believe in that kind of surveillance, period. But where are your priorities, Senator? Is protecting the privacy of Olympic tourists more important that protecting Americans' right to privacy? It's in the Constitution, for chrissake!
Jul 30th, 2008 at 5:32pm
It is this type of hypocrisy which makes me sick. Our leaders disdain other countries doing the very thing we do here.
When we gave up the mantle of freedom, we gave up the right to criticize the lack of freedom elsewhere.
Jul 30th, 2008 at 7:48pm
Oh please, there is absolutely no correlation. The US was listening in on KNOWN terrorists calling INTO our country.
Not spying on legitimate reporters and athletes. Talk about rehashing old tripe.
It was Dem administrations that left us unable to "connect the dots" prior to 9-11
and you would leave us wide open again for another attack with your ignorant stances on security and sucking up to despots.
Grow up
Jul 31st, 2008 at 10:37pm
Mr. Duyas, do you have any evidence for your claim about them only spying on actual terrorists? Methinks you have forgoten that we actually don't know, no thanks to the Bush administration hiding everything. There are a number of cases where people are spied on for their political views or on lists by mistake.
For example, there are estimated to be over one million people on the No-Fly list and the government doesn't have to inform anyone that their on the list. It took Sen. Kennedy, using all his staff, ONE MONTH to get off the list! What chance would normal people have for getting of it when there's a mistake?
Recently, in my home state of Maryland, it was revealed that, using counterterrorism funds, police had been spying on peace groups and death-penalty opponents for over a year, even putting at least one person on a terrorism suspect list, despite uncovering nothing remotely nefarious. So please, don't give me this nonsense that there's only spying of terrorists going on.
Aug 3rd, 2008 at 6:35pm
When asked about the difference between the Chinese and American spying practices, Brownback said, "We don’t put the hardware and software on hotels."
Sure you do and you even encourage it. The use off deep packet inspection has been in practice for while in the USA. That, to put it bluntly, is called wiretapping/eavesdropping and is sanctioned by your government to use by the telecoms against their subscribers to place ads.
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