US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that
could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or
directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did
just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show
was not unveiled by PRISM.
Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs
began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks
were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless
surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how
many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask
yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more
Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most
sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by
men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us
the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the
way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and
maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis
dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can
give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like
him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a
class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I
would have finished high school.
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