I’ve got the feeling, somebody’s watching me

Or at least, listening in on my phone. Technically, it’s just collecting meta-data—what numbers you and I call, and how long the call lasts—collected under a secret intelligence court ruling.
The White House is, unsurprisingly, arguing that this is essential to let the government fight the terrorists. Which is, of course, what they always argue—there’s no time to go through with all those warrants! If we don’t surveille everything, then some terrorist, somewhere, might slip a call through! Like I said recently, the security state is the real nanny state.
Apparently as it’s not actual eavesdropping, it doesn’t require individual court orders, at least under Obama’s broad interpretation of the business records laws in the Patriot Act. As LGM points out though, it’s still a search without any suspicion behind it, which hardly fits with the Fourth Amendment.
Even if it did, I think it’s a bad, and unjustifiable action. Government shouldn’t be snooping where it has no cause to snoop.
More from the New York Times. And as The Atlantic says, whoever released the memo confirming the program took a hell of a risk and deserves out thanks.
Criticism of Obama’s program, which he certainly deserves, does not, however, make charges about his loyalty to America any less batshit. (“”Is Obama a Manchurian candidate to normal Americans who love their country?… is he somebody who’s sort of a sleeper agent who really doesn’t believe in our system … I just don’t know whose side he’s on.” Some of this is undoubtedly politics—after all, the same people don’t suggest that Bush’s spying or authoritarian programs were objectionable or unAmerican or part of a Secret Takeover.
Judging from some of my friends’ rants on FB (briefly alluded to here), it’s also the same far-right delusions I’ve literally been hearing since I was a tween—a vast UN socialist/communist conspiracy that’s going to take over America and force us into a one-world state. I heard the same kind of bilge about how unAmerican Clinton was, and then about how by 2012, an Obama victory would lead to punishment for soldiers who opposed gays in the military, taxpayer funding for late-term abortions, porn on broadcast TV, churches forced to marry gays. widespread gun bans, bans on Bible study in school (to give the predictor credit, most righties insist that’s already happened) etc. (the claim the Boy Scouts will be forced to have gay scoutmasters sleeping in tents with kids is particularly striking as the Scouts knew about pedophiles and covered them up).
And guess what? None of it happened (though the Supreme Court may yet rule against gay marriage bans), just like the UN takeover didn’t happen under Clinton, or back in the 1960s? Bible studies are still around in schools. Yet that never stops them from predicting that the next election, oh, yes, that will bring on the apocalypse! That’s when it will happen! It’s much the same thing as doomsday cults: Members who don’t leave the cult refuse to accept that the apocalypse or whatever isn’t coming so they cling to new predictions as if they old ones had never been made.
Slacktivist makes the excellent point that the 2008 predictions are also incredibly parochial. No genocide, no concentration camps, it’s all about homosexuality and porn and sex. It’s all directed at them. It’s part of the delusion that Christians are a persecuted minority, just like the civil-rights marchers in the sixties.
I’m still concerned about Obama’s surveillance policies, wiretapping of journalists and other Fourth Amendment violations. But the conspiracy to sell out America to the UN? Somehow I can live with it.