Constitutional expert Stephen I. Vladeck – Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Scholarship at American University Washington College of Law – disagreed.
Here’s the exchange:
Rogers: I would argue the fact that we haven’t had any complaints come forward with any specificity arguing that their privacy has been violated, clearly indicates, in ten years, clearly indicates that something must be doing right. Somebody must be doing something exactly right.
Vladeck: But who would be complaining?
Rogers: Somebody who’s privacy was violated. You can’t have your privacy violated if you don’t know your privacy is violated.
Vladeck: I disagree with that. If a tree falls in the forest, it makes a noise whether you’re there to see it or not.
Rogers: Well that’s a new interesting standard in the law. We’re going to have this conversation… but we’re going to have wine, because that’s going to get a lot more interesting…
I saw him make that statement. I'll give him credit for calling "bullshit" on his fellow committee members for feigning shock at the scope of the NSA's surveillance activities, but when he actually stated in essence that the NSA must be doing something right because in the last 10 years, nobody being spied on without their knowledge came forward to complain that they were being spied on, my jaw dropped. I was like, "did he just actually say that?!?!" I kept waiting for him to say, "I'm just fuckin' with ya ..."
ReplyDeleteI couldn't believe it.
I've been waiting on the boys in the DC Friar's Club to let us in on the joke for several years now.
DeleteI don't know if much of the disbelief on 'the hill' isn't real. So many politicians get elected and go to Washington only to find themselves towing the party line... doing what the leadership says a I think that many of them are truly out of the loop even if we consider them 'insiders'.
DeleteI don't have a problem with the NAS doing everything they are doing ** Just as long as what they are doing is allowed by a legally constructed and approved law that I can read**. While many of them knew that the Patriot Act allowed for some things, I honestly believe that a good portion of them were intentionally kept in the dark as to just how many liberties groups like the NAS are taking in the name of the law.
I can only hope that this realization by some of the people in Washington will cause them to reconsider what they do their but their is way to much money and propaganda keeping them in line for me to hold my breath.
The government continues to trample all over our civil rights and this sense of entitlement by our government officials is what we get. I get the sense that this big ugly pimple is about to explode in a very visible mess. The real problem is the infection underneath the puss filled head that everyone winces at.
ReplyDelete