rise up Rochester

Today the House passed a Wiretap bill that grants immunity to telephone companies who help tap phones for the government. Apparently there have been more than 40 lawsuits against companies such as AT&T. Not all phone companies will be safe to tap wires, says one article–In the future, companies must produce a document from the White House that asked for help. (This was the compromise between democrats and republicans that allowed bipartisan support of the bill)

Link to the BBC report I gave above or read more at the NY Times online site. The article is called “House Passes Bill on Wiretap Powers.” It goes into much more detail–even providing us with the following quote from Bush: “The enemy that struck us on Sept. 11 is determined to strike us again.”

Yikes.

What’s next? Are they going to start offering people rewards to turn in their neighbors for being terrorists? It makes no sense that our government tells us the ‘terrorists’ hate us because of our freedoms, then they take away our freedoms. We know that this Bill allows the government to tap wires if someone is suspected of terrorist activity and if the government feels they could potentially lose important information if they don’t tap the wire during a certain period of time. What we don’t know is how the government identifies a terrorist–any anti-government speech could be taken for terrorist activity.

Here is a scary forum from Fox News’ website. When asked what limits, if any posters would put on NSA wiretapping one man responded: “None, the safer the better. I am one of the few that trust our government. If you have nothing to hide, what is the problem?” or how about, “The limits that are put on the NSA are the opportunities we give to the enemy.” While the forum does present some people who disagree with unlimited governmental powers, the majority agrees with the “no rights=freedom and safety” theory.

How do you feel about those comments? I’ll leave commenting to you.