| | Rove: Don't worry about government taking away rights
 John Kasich, guest-hosting for Bill O'Reilly this week, ventured a bit off the Fox News reservation, giving voice to the myriad concerns over the expansion of power President Bush has concentrated in the White House over the last eight years, particularly when it comes to his extraordinary ability to spy on Americans.
Unfortunately, Kasich's questions ended up serving as little more than a prelude to former White House political aide Karl Rove's paternalistic reassurances that Americans need not worry about silly things like their civil liberties because the government is there to protect them.
ROVE: [...] The Terrorist Surveillance Program [aka warrantless wiretapping]. After 9/11, it became clear that using e-mail and satellite telephones and long-distance telephones that the enemy was able to communicate inside the United States, and that we had the technical abilities to intercept their messages as long as they passed through US networks. And should a battlefield commander, should the commander in chief in a time of war use those abilities in order to get information? You bet. It has protected our country, and the fact of the matter is that when Barack Obama had a chance in the middle of last summer to vote against reauthorizing those powers ... he voted for them, as did Senator Biden.
KASICH: Here's the thing. You're a conservative, I'm a conservative. When government has power it never gives it back, unless you take a crowbar and pry it out of the government's hands. Have you ever worried that too much authority to eavesdrop, to spy, to look at things was going to be very intrusive? And that you and I, our liberties would be disrupted and we would never get them back again. Has that ever worried you?
ROVE: It has but only because, but that's not a worry we should have because look the Terrorist Surveillance Program intercepts messages from people abroad. It's not designed to listen in on Americans talking to their neighbors. The only way that you can take a US citizen and listen in on their phone is to go get a court order.
KASICH: The only thing I get concerned about is once you get it can you ever get it back. OK, let's unpack this just for a second.
First off, Rove's memory is faulty. Biden voted against the expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but his description of the warrantless wiretapping program's capabilities also falls short.
It should be noted that Rove can't possibly know the full capabilities of the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program because he lacks the necessary security clearances. And if he had been briefed on the program's capabilities, he would be precluded from discussing it on national television.
For that matter, no one who's fully aware of the ultra-secret program's full capabilities has ever gone public. But based on the picture amassed through disclosures by an AT&T whistleblower and others suing telecommunications companies and the government for violating the 4th Amendment, it seems clear the NSA's capabilities stretch far beyond the narrow collection Rove insists the government is engaged in.
Former AT&T technician Mark Klein has testified that the NSA is able to conduct "vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the Internet" from a secret room it maintains in the company's San Francisco office. Some believe the agency has an equally robust ability to intercept telephone communications, although the capabilities are unknown.
Rove's insistence that Americans "not worry" about the NSA's reach because of "court order" requirements should provide little comfort. While it remains the case that a court order would be required to admit any evidence from domestic surveillance into a US court, it's undeniable that the mechanisms to conduct such surveillance exist independently of their legal justification.
Furthermore, similar court orders -- from a secret FISA court -- were previously required for all eavesdropping conducted by the NSA within US borders, but Bush authorized the NSA to ignore those requirements. Perhaps the only comfort that can be derived is in the recognition that the current administration will be out of the White House in less than a month.
This video is from Fox The O'Reilly Factor, broadcast Dec. 22, 2008.
Download video via RawReplay.com
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