On Mon, 2007-01-15 at 09:43 -0500, Temlakos wrote: > Bear the date in mind. This happened during the administration of > William J. Clinton, not George W. Bush. At the time, President Clinton > had no reason (at least none that he personally would believe) to > suppose that anyone would succeed him except his Vice President, Albert > A. Gore. Clinton had a penchant for monitoring people, too--his domestic > opponents. If George W. Bush is monitoring anyone, then it would be > those whom the government suspects of planning to blow something up with > people in or on it, sicken an entire city or two with anthrax (or West > Nile encephalitis), /et cetera/. > > So when you think of "who the present administration is," do not imagine > it to be any worse than would be an administration belonging to the > other party. ---- As an American, I actually agree with this to a point - and that point is I am not so convinced that any single person elected president in the US is strong enough or knowledgeable enough or will ever know enough to stop or prevent this. While I believe that the present administration is all too eager to trounce on our rights in the name of security, I believe it is only to a greater degree than others who have occupied the position before and perhaps to a lesser degree than others who heaven forbid, could occupy the position in the future. A discussion of how this relates to the current political leadership though is hardly meaningful to this list. The constitutional intent is to provide for a series of checks and balances to protect us and thus, it is not just the president but the judicial and legislative branches are constitutionally charged with preventing this from getting out out of hand. http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2007/01/09/nsa-provided-security-help-for-windows-mac-os-x/ And it sure appears that the NSA is dipping their toes in all of the waters, hopefully for the right reasons because if it were to be revealed that they were putting back doors in software, the blowback[1] would be devastating to the NSA and the US Government. Craig [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowback_%28intelligence%29
