July 20, 2011
The Cop-Media Connection
The Rupert Murdock media eavesdropping controversy in England illustrates the general risk of giving an organization broad access to information and spy technology... even if that organization is the saintly Big Government:
Scotland Yard's assistant commissioner resigned Monday, a day after his boss also quit, and fresh investigations of possible police wrongdoing were launched in the phone hacking scandal that has spread from Rupert Murdoch's media empire to the British prime minister's office. ...The crisis has roiled the upper ranks of Britain's police, with Monday's resignation of Assistant Commissioner John Yates - Scotland Yard's top anti-terrorist officer - following that on Sunday of police chief Paul Stephenson over their links to Neil Wallis, an arrested former executive from Murdoch's shuttered News of the World tabloid whom police had employed as a media consultant.
It's one thing if a private company offers a service that collects information. Misuse of that information could result in complete collapse of the business and its stocks. When government's involved, a few folks lose their jobs, but for the most part, the bureaucracy keeps on rolling.
But Sept. 11th changed everthing, no? Didn't this blog defend this type of police state power under the Bush administration, not to mention torture, detention without trial, extrajudicial killings, etc?
www.anchorrising.com/barnacles/003295.html
www.anchorrising.com/barnacles/004405.html
Just curious. By my recollection the self-proclaimed Constitutionalists over here snoozed or worse cheerleaded through two terms of steady erosion of civil liberities in this country, awakening only when a Democrat got in office and started talking about healthcare of all things.
Posted by: Russ at July 20, 2011 3:16 PMRuss,
You do understand that even though its name is "Scotland Yard", it is a bureau of the enitre United Kingdom, so that its spying on British subjects or within the UK is a domestic activity, right?
Russ writes: "Didn't this blog defend this type of police state power"
If this were a legitimate exercise of power, I don't think we would see heads rolling. On the theory that a "fish rots from the head", we should fear that "other ranks" will only see them as "stupid enough to get caught". Assuming that money was involved, it is sad to see that Scotland Yard is also "on the take".
If Russ means that the police should never have been granted the power/technology to commit malfeasance, that is another question. When such powers are granted, it must be assumed that "anything which can be done, will be done".
Posted by: Warrington Faust at July 21, 2011 7:20 AMAndrew, you do realize the Bush administration also spied inside the country without court approval?
"Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts"
www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html
Just curious why you "libertarians" don't act very libertarian.
Posted by: Russ at July 21, 2011 10:26 AM"If Russ means that the police should never have been granted the power/technology to commit malfeasance, that is another question."
That seemed to me to be closer to Justin's point above ("...illustrates the general risk of giving an organization broad access to information and spy technology... even if that organization is the saintly Big Government.")
My point was that the courts have an appropriate oversight role.
Posted by: Russ at July 21, 2011 2:17 PMRuss, try reading your own links. The subject of the NYT article is international calls, i.e. calls where one party is outside of the United States. It makes no more sense to say the communications that cross borders must be subject to the same rules as purely domestic communications, as it does to say that inspections by border or customs agents must follow all of the same rules as domestic police searches. The law was ambiguous on what the rules were when one party was outside of the US, no one took the subject lightly, and COngress, the President and the Courts worked out new laws clarifying things, which we covered in detail at this site. Sorry the democratic deliberative process didn't deliver the outcome you wanted (not really).
Posted by: Andrew at July 21, 2011 3:32 PMRuss-searches at the border or a port of entry as well as interrogation aren't subject to constitutional restrictions in the same way searches and interrogations are within the country.It's a matter of law,not opinion.
Posted by: joe bernstein at July 22, 2011 9:38 AMHow about the searches of our library books checked out and our credit card purchases? Is that domestic?
Posted by: RustNeverSleeps at July 22, 2011 3:16 PM