One good thing that’s coming out of the Obama administration’s surveillance of Trump and his transition team is scrutiny of the laws that allow such surveillance. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers.
From the 2013 post, Martin Luther King: “Everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was Legal”
The fact that most of the debate surrounding the unmasking of Trump personnel revolves around whether it was legal or not highlights just how superficial and ethically deranged our culture has become. If what she did was indeed legal, this is an enormous problem in the first place, one that privacy advocates and opponents of Big Brother surveillance have been warning about constantly since the gulag spying panopticon was put in place following 9/11. For the purposes of this post, let’s assume that what Susan Rice did was legal.
If her actions were indeed totally by the books, we need to use this incident as a rallying call to reform the laws immediately. Likewise, Donald Trump should be pushing such reform tirelessly from his bully pulpit, but given his authoritarian nature I doubt he will. Fortunately, Rand Paul is heeding the call.
As reported by The Hill:
U.S. citizens who are caught up incidentally in foreign intelligence surveillance are typically subject to minimization rules to conceal their identities, though there are some exceptions.
But individuals can be exempt from the minimization rules if their identities are necessary to understand the value of the foreign intelligence.
Paul used Monday’s development to renew his push for reform of a controversial provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that allows the U.S. intelligence community to target non-Americans outside the United States without a warrant. The provision, Section 702, is up for renewal later this year.
Paul also signaled that he sees Nunes — who has long been an advocate for the foreign intelligence law — as a potential ally for reform.
To continue reading: If What Susan Rice Did Wasn’t Illegal, It Should Be
