Index

Turn the Lawyers Loose

I have commented in various ways about how little use I have for the destroyers and drones in our society.  I don’t have a lot of respect for people who do nothing but stir up trouble and profit from it, or make themselves rich by handling other people’s money without contributing anything of any substance.

I suppose this NSA train wreck is a chance for at least some lawyers to prove they have a reason to exist.  We know that the NSA has been collecting too much data on too many people for no reason except that they could.  The brakes have failed on the “Intelligence” functions of the federal government, and since this comes solidly under that destroyer category I mention in my profile, I have no compunction about sicking other destroyers on them.

I would like to think that a FOIA request for all of the data they have on me or any other individual would be enough to add a little pressure, but the feds have gotten so good at brushing these things off that they wouldn’t notice.  The FOIA is not enforced, but a few million requests might keep their public face busy enough to cause a few high-profile fumbles in the public lies…umm…“public relations” area.  Even little stuff at this point can be useful additions to the fire that needs to be built.

I have heard where some criminal defendants’ lawyers have been trying to subpoena the NSA’s records, hoping that they refuse and that refusal will get their clients off.  Good luck with that.  I would like to see some bigger thinking going on - something like a grand jury subpoena of NSA records in a high-visibility federal corruption case; a Tom DeLay or Rod Blagojevich level case would be a good start.

Using (or trying to use) NSA data in a public corruption trial of a high-level Bush official (Dick Cheney would be a sentimental favorite) would be massively poetic justice.  Something like that would stir up enough crap in the court system to push a higher-level court to deal with at least a tiny bit of the NSA’s criminal behavior.  Like I said before, sunshine is this vampire’s worst enemy, so the more attention they get - in the court system or anywhere else - the better.  Sooner or later some judge is going to have the cojones to stick the “official secrets” excuse where it belongs, but it is going to require a pretty high level court to make the NSA monster notice.

My personal problem with this whole fiasco is that it is no surprise.  Ronald Reagan’s misbegotten presidency represented a huge step change in this sort of thing, but in many ways the government has been showing increasing disregard for the welfare of its citizens and their needs since after World War II, and now the moneyed class has essentially free reign - a fascist state in all but name.  Fascists require complete and detailed information and control of all of the “citizens” of the state - anybody who doubts me can go look at the records the Nazis kept on their citizens back in the pen-and-paper days - so this NSA activity is one of the hallmarks of a fascist regime writ large.

While there are still any remnants left of the democracy we started with, we need to use them to at least slow down the fascists where possible - that seems to be the only fighting chance we have left.