Glenn Greenwald: Authoritarians Who Cheered Bush Surveillance State Today Cry Over Sanctity Of Email

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/18/privacy

What does Sarah Palin have to hide in her Yahoo e-mails?

The same authoritarians who cheered on every last illegal act of the Bush surveillance state today cry over the sanctity of e-mail privacy.
Glenn Greenwald

Sep. 18, 2008 | Some adolescent criminal (in mentality if not age) yesterday hacked into a Yahoo account used by Sarah Palin for both personal and business email, and various sites -- including Gawker -- posted some of the emails online. While the bottom layers of the right-wing noise machine (the kind that make you run for the shower after reading them) are moronically describing the hacker(s) as "liberals" and "left-wing," nobody actually has any idea of their identity, let alone their political leanings (if any). The available evidence strongly suggests the hacker is loosely part of an assorted band of Internet pranksters ranging from the juvenile to the psychopathic. Conventional political agendas ("Vote Obama!") don't exactly appear to be their interest. Either way, whoever did this committed a serious crime -- it's rather revolting to see screen shots of someone's inbox splattered across the Internet -- and the hacker should be apprehended and prosecuted.

Still, it's really a wondrous, and repugnant, sight to behold the Bush-following lynch mobs on the Right melodramatically defend the Virtues of Privacy and the Rule of Law. These, of course, are the same authoritarians who have cheered on every last expansion of the Lawless Surveillance State of the last eight years -- put their fists in the air with glee as the Federal Government seized the power to listen to innocent Americans' telephone calls; read our emails; obtain our banking, credit card, and library records; and create vast data bases of every call we make and receive and every prescription we fill and every instance of travel and other vast categories of information that remain largely unknown -- all without warrants or oversight of any kind and often in clear violation of the law.

The same political faction which today is prancing around in full-throated fits of melodramatic hysteria and Victim mode (their absolute favorite state of being) over the sanctity of Sarah Palin's privacy are the same ones who scoffed with indifference as it was revealed during the Bush era that the FBI systematically abused its Patriot Act powers to gather and store private information on thousands of innocent Americans; that Homeland Security officials illegally infiltrated and monitored peaceful, law-abiding left-wing groups devoted to peace activism, civil liberties and other political agendas disliked by the state; and that the telephone calls of journalists and lawyers have been illegally and repeatedly monitored.

And the same Surveillance State Worshipper leading today's screeching -- Michelle Malkin -- spent the last several years deriding those who objected to the President's illegal spying program as "privacy crusaders" and "constitutional absolutists" and "civil liberties absolutists".

Shouldn't these same people be standing up today and insisting that if Sarah Palin has done nothing wrong, then she should have nothing to hide? If Sarah Palin isn't committing crimes or consorting with The Terrorists, then why would she care if we can monitor her emails? And if private companies such as Yahoo can access her emails -- as they can -- then she doesn't really have any "privacy" anyway, so what's the big deal if others read through her communications, too? Isn't that the authoritarian idiocy that has been spewed since The Day That 9/11 Changed Everything -- beginning with the Constitution -- to justify vesting secret and unchecked surveillance powers in our Great and Good Leaders?

And then, even better, there is the righteous outrage over the fact that this hacker engaged in what they call . . . . "illegal surveillance." Why, whoever broke into Palin's Yahoo account broke the law, and we all know that that can't be tolerated! Bill O'Reilly last night called for the FBI to arrest not only those who did the hacking, but also those who own and manage Gawker ("a despicable, slimy, scummy website"), simply for posting the emails. This is what O'Reilly said:

It's a felony -- a federal crime -- also a crime in Alaska -- to hack into people's private correspondence . . . We have no privacy left in this country anymore. The website knows the law, and says "you know -- I'm going to do it anyway. I dare you to come get me."

Indeed. What kind of grotesque monster would invade people's private communications even though they know it's illegal to do that? It's almost like this despicable criminal-hacker did something like this -- from Scott Horton's Harpers interview yesterday with The Washington Post's Barton Gellman:

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The same Bush cheerleaders indeed are screaming the loudest.

It's like Rush Limbaugh screaming about sexism. Absurd.

I didn't even think of this...I wish I had!!

Crocodile tears like I've never seen.

It's so obvious now he's said it.

This quote really says it all: "The same political faction which today is prancing around in full-throated fits of melodramatic hysteria and Victim mode (their absolute favorite state of being)..." Yeah, they're sooooo oppressed by the Left! :eyes:

you need to read the article it's great.

They will never, ever understand the concept of hypocrisy 'cause they've been trained from birth to carry two more incompatible thoughts in their heads without getting a headache.

They have no trouble with:

Thou shalt not lie.
George Bush lies.
Therefore George Bush is good/godly/whatever superlative.

They ALWAYS act in good faith. If they claim they simply must spy on the public, well that settles it.

Authoritarianism=patriotism. It truly is pathetic.