Showing posts with label illegal surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illegal surveillance. Show all posts

3/2/09

Civil Liberties under the Obama administration

punditman says...
I think it is safe to say that there was not only the hope—but also the assumption—that Obama would go about overturning eight years of Bush administration illegality.

Yet as Glen Greenwald, American Constitutional and civil rights litigator and Salon.com columnist says, the Obama Department of Justice is:
...not merely trying desperately to keep the Bush administration's spying activities secret, and not merely devoting itself with full force to preventing disclosure of relevant documents concerning this illegal program, but far worse, doing everything in its power even to prevent any judicial adjudication as to whether the Bush administration broke the law by spying on Americans without warrants.
Indeed, it is starting to very much to look like business as usual in Washington on the Constitutional front.

Greenwald spoke recently at the annual conference of the ACLU of Massachusetts regarding impediments to the restoration of civil liberties under the Obama administration. When you have half an hour, take the time to listen. It may change some of your assumptions:

MP3 here

11/11/08

Intelligence Policy to Stay Largely Intact

WASHINGTON -- President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party.

Civil-liberties groups were among those outraged that the White House sanctioned the use of harsh intelligence techniques -- which some consider torture -- by the Central Intelligence Agency, and expanded domestic spy powers. These groups are demanding quick action to reverse these policies.

If this article is accurate, Peacenik will not be happy. The article is from the wingnut Wall Street Journal and may just be some wingnuttery. Obama has to make a break with illegal, immoral, corrupt policies of Bush. Peacenik washed his Obama t-shirt on the weekend and is ready to wear it again....or burn it.