Government isn’t just listening to phone calls

The Wichita Eagle
Posted by Phillip Brownlee - June 25, 2006

Are small government conservatives concerned yet about the secret government snooping? They -- and everyone else -- should be.






The latest disclosure is that the Bush administration has secretly been tapping into a global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years. The program is based on a broad new interpretation of Treasury Department powers, The Washington Post reported, and involves collecting information on international money transfers, including many made by U.S. citizens and residents.

The goal, which everyone can support, is to locate and track suspected terrorists. But the database's wide net mostly catches the private transactions of Americans and others who have nothing to do with terrorism. Many conservatives have shrugged off reports of government eavesdropping on international phone calls and snooping on e-mails, and of a massive government database of American's phone records. And they likely will point to Friday's indictment of seven terrorist wannabes in Miami as justification for the spying.

But they shouldn't be so complacent about a loss of civil liberties. At the least, shouldn't we demand that these programs have some congressional and judicial oversight, as Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan, has argued? Or how about putting it this way: Would conservatives still not care if it were President Hillary Clinton who was collecting all this private data and doing all this spying?

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