Wiretapping

I saw a letter to the editor in the paper yesterday. The author was saying that a Democratic president would be weak on national security. He cited what a heck of a job Bush had done by strengthening the FBI and CIA and wiretapping domestically.

So this is where the author and I differ. Yes, it should always be a top priority to protect the people of this nation, but I also value privacy. I doubt we’ll be jumping straight from wiretapping to the Big Brother situation of 1984, but it’s still a dangerous path. There’s a reason the government used to be required to get warrants to wiretap, and that’s because we need our personal lives to be, well, personal.

Of course, I doubt that the government’s listening in on the average Joe’s conversation. They probably do stick to people they think are terrorists. But I have to wonder, if they have enough reason to believe they’re terrorists, shouldn’t they have enough proof to get a legal warrant to spy?

Though not near as drastic a situation as Japanese internment, I can still draws parallels between the two. The government wanted to keep the country safe, but in doing so they did some very wrong things. It corresponds to imprisonment of terror suspects in Guantanamo. If we have enough reason them to through them in a cell for the rest of their lives, shouldn’t we have enough evidence to charge them? The government shouldn’t have the right be judge and jury, and I genuinely believe that there are other ways to protect this nation.