Abuses and Abuses

I don't see any particular reason to think this business of illicit snooping into Barack Obama's passport records was some kind of administration plot. On the contrary, the fact that we're hearing about it and the perpetrators are being punished suggests it weren't. The administration dirty tricks plot, if there is one, would presumably involve its penchant for illegal electronic surveillance. Turning the spyglass on your political rivals has been the traditional use of oversight-free surveillance power in the United States and now that it's back it wouldn't exactly be shocking if we were to find out that the abuse is back, too.

And yet, nobody seems to want to talk about this aspect of the surveillance issue. It would, I think, be unserious to suggest that the Bush administration might abuse power in this way. To be sure, every administration for the period of four or five decades leading up to the Church Commission engaged in those kind of abuses to one degree or another but that doesn't make it any less outrageous to accuse Bush of harboring those kind of ambitions.

Comments

I am a bit less concerned about the possibility of the Bush administration itself doing the snooping, than I am about the possibility that these low-level employees were recruited by the RNC. They could also be unaffiliated, but enterprising individuals fishing for information of value that they can later sell on the opposition research market.

But so far, I'm inclined to accept the explanation given that this may be just a case of people filling their idle time by looking up the records of various famous people.

Posted by Dan Kervick | March 21, 2008 9:57 AM

Re Matthew's "that doesn't make it any less outrageous to accuse Bush of harboring those kind of ambitions. "
--------------
When was the last time the Justice Department mounted a major surveillance operation using Patriot Act Powers to bust a prostitution ring??

Boy, if those guys are trying to bust every whore out there, I bet they're really busy. I thought they were supposed to be looking for Al Qaeda.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/nyregion/21justice.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

"Bradley D. Simon, a veteran Justice Department trial lawyer who was federal prosecutor in Brooklyn throughout the 1990s, said that although it was rare for the department to use so many resources on the workings of a prostitution ring, the involvement of such a high-level politician must change the equation."
---------
Make that "such a high-level DEMOCRATIC politician"

Posted by Don Williams | March 21, 2008 9:58 AM

I think the peculiar crony hiring practices of the administration and the effort to get all branches of government to violate the Hatch Act encourages this type of breach. Were the contractors really fired or were they replaced so they weren't compelled to appear before the IG's office?
Once the records were breached the first time, you would have thought that a memo went out and the rules to new hires were clearly spelled out. Instead a pattern appears. Mere incompetence? Possibly. Or perhaps it was more of the wink and nod attitude of seeing the political opposition as unAmerican and therefore "fair game."

Posted by carsick | March 21, 2008 9:58 AM

Isn't it interesting that this story was a big deal on cable new last night but only made page 3 of todays' Washington Post. The most serious thing here is that the three fucktards who accessed the records were not government employees but were employed by outside private contractors. The extent to which State Department operations have been privatized should be investigated by Congress. The fact that employees of outside private contractors even had access to the computer files on which passport information is stored should be a wakeup call for a complete investigation of privatization of government operations and an overhaul of the A76 regulations.

Posted by SLC | March 21, 2008 9:58 AM

This administration is feeding black bag oppo research on Obama and Hillary to McCain. If you think otherwise you're deluded and hopelessly naive. Protestations this passport event is apolitical are feints to cover lies and crimes. Imprudent curiosity? Puhleez!

Posted by steve duncan | March 21, 2008 10:04 AM

I don't know if it qualifies as a particular reason to think there's more to this than "imprudent curiousity", but as pointed out at TPM last night, the dates of the "breaches" were the day after the NH primary, the day of the TX debate and the day the Wright business hit high visibility. Quite a set of coincidences, that.

Posted by stuck in 200 | March 21, 2008 10:05 AM

You're missing the point. This occurred three times and Obama was not notified until today. THAT is serious, and negligent, and wrong.

Posted by Craig | March 21, 2008 10:07 AM

There's no conspiracy here - or, better put, there's the very best kind of conspiracy here, the kind that's completely out in the open.

The Bush administration has put a huge amount of effort into hiring partisan operatives with loyalty first to the president and the party rather than the law, the constitution, or the country. They have placed these operatives in positions of significance in every governmental agency. This is known to everyone.

These operatives of course are going to break the law and abuse their position for the party's and the president's gain. There's no need for Cheney to coordinate the crimes from a secret underground lair - the crimes are inevitable from the choice to stock the State department with College Republicans. And some get caught, and some slip their oppo research to the right people in the party.

It's like how the recent elections were stolen. The conspiracy didn't involve Diebold and Rove smoking cigars and twirling their mustaches, but the long-running effort of "tough on crime" and "tough of drugs" legislation to disenfranchise poor and minority voters in America. That all happened out in the open, but it determined the election nonetheless.

Posted by DivGuy | March 21, 2008 10:14 AM

Stuck, simple explanation for that "coincidence" The high visibility you yourself cited. It is likely that it peaked these peoples curiosity and they decided to look at his record. Honestly for the number of people that have access to these records, 3 times in 3 month isn't that high.

yes he probably should have been informed but the reason he was not probably had to do with the fact that there is nothing of any particular value beyond his ssn in those records.

Also the fact they are contractors is irrelevent. State has so many contractors that do jobs that use to be government, but in reality there is no difference. These people went through the same vetting as a government employee in a similar position.

Posted by nathaniel | March 21, 2008 10:16 AM

Stuck, simple explanation for that "coincidence" The high visibility you yourself cited. It is likely that it peaked these peoples curiosity and they decided to look at his record. Honestly for the number of people that have access to these records, 3 times in 3 month isn't that high.

yes he probably should have been informed but the reason he was not probably had to do with the fact that there is nothing of any particular value beyond his ssn in those records.

Also the fact they are contractors is irrelevent. State has so many contractors that do jobs that use to be government, but in reality there is no difference. These people went through the same vetting as a government employee in a similar position.

Posted by nathaniel | March 21, 2008 10:17 AM

I will not adjudicate to Bush's malice anything that can be imputed to Bush's stupidity.
Is it OK now, Matthew?

Posted by No malice | March 21, 2008 10:17 AM

I see that the people who accessed the records were outside contractors, but I don't think that takes away from my point.

Allowing private entities - usually chosen, again, for political ties - access to sensitive government records will have the same effect.

Posted by DivGuy | March 21, 2008 10:18 AM

I'm going to take the liberty of cross-posting something from johndeebo's diary on DKos:

This is what Hillary Clinton's campaign said in a memo they released on March 12:

"As a potential Commander-in-Chief, do you think it’s legitimate for people to be concerned that you have traveled to only one NATO country, on a brief stopover trip in 2005, and have never traveled to Latin America?"

Now the question is, how did Hillary Clinton campaign know about the countries that Obama visited?

It's circumstantial evidence, at most. But it is interesting.

Posted by Ted | March 21, 2008 10:19 AM

...that doesn't make it any less outrageous to accuse Bush of harboring those kind of ambitions.

I don't understand this reasoning, or if this is satire it is too subtle. To modify Douglas Adams, this administration is not above cheating to win political advantage in the same way that the sea is not above the sky.

Posted by Marshall | March 21, 2008 10:23 AM

"And yet, nobody seems to want to talk about this aspect of the surveillance issue."

Not surprisingly, Glenn Greenwald is talking about this very aspect. I can't say it any better than he does:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/21/obama/index.html

Be sure to note his own personal experience with, apparently, the same database.

Posted by Jim Wilson | March 21, 2008 10:34 AM

Unmentioned until now is the obvious possiblity these three breaches are just the tip of the iceberg. Doesn't it make sense there are unknown intrusions into files? Or known transgressions that are more serious and the hope is offering up sacrificial firings will divert attention elsewhere? You can also bet the exit interviews of the two terminated employees left them feeling very lucky not to be on a plane to a shallow grave in Syria.

Posted by steve duncan | March 21, 2008 10:37 AM

Makes me wonder what kind of other stuff, is taking place in plain sight: http://theseedsof9-11.com

Posted by Peggy McGilligan | March 21, 2008 10:50 AM

Just a quick follow-up on the Clinton angle. It's not surprising that her campaign would know where he *has* traveled, especially in recent years. That's easily documented.

But how exactly do they know that he has not *ever* traveled to other places? Negative claims are difficult to prove. So where do they get their confidence about this negative assertion?

I'm just askin.

Posted by Ted | March 21, 2008 10:50 AM

To think this is an imprudent act by rogue contractors after all these years is truly deluded. I operate on the theorem that given a possible universe of explanations for a particular administration action, the most morally pessimistic, politically cynical, and criminally corrupt will inevitably be proven correct.

This theorem has NEVER been proven wrong.

Posted by rustam | March 21, 2008 10:51 AM

Right on, Yglesias.

Posted by socctty | March 21, 2008 10:54 AM

DivGuy, the contract companies themselves could have been chosen for political reasons, the employees they hire are not hired for any political reason. They are just people willing to do a job.

ted, your implication is beyond silly and instead just stupid. The records that were accessed will not tell anyone what countries anyone visited. The only way to tell that is to check the stamps in the passport itself. The records only contained idenity information and any information related to investigations that may have occured relating to the issuance of passports.

Posted by nathaniel | March 21, 2008 10:59 AM

If George H.W. Bush's or Mitt Romney's records were accessed, you can bet that an IG and FBI investigation would have begun after the very first breech.

Posted by carsick | March 21, 2008 10:59 AM

Nathaniel -- if you're right about the records, then you're quite right that my question is ill-informed. (I'll pass on both "silly" and "stupid," if you don't mind.)

I don't know what this sort of file contains. How do you know? Is it possible that "investigations related to the issuance of passports" might contain, precisely, a record of someone's foreign travel? Once again, just askin -- so please skip the ad hominem assaults and just tell us what you know.

Posted by Ted | March 21, 2008 11:12 AM

I don't understand this reasoning, or if this is satire it is too subtle.

It is subtle, but wonderful. I can almost forgive him for "it weren't".

Posted by Matthew | March 21, 2008 11:15 AM

The only way to tell that is to check the stamps in the passport itself.

Is this really true? That the only recorded information about where we go upon leaving and entering the country is that little bit of ink on paper? No electronic capture of that info? That seems awfully hard to believe, in this day and age.

Posted by Brad L | March 21, 2008 11:19 AM

I think it's absolutely certain that the administration is using lack of surveillance oversight to snoop on political opponents. As I learned from the Nixon years, one's worst fears will often be confirmed, when it comes to Republicans. And this probable spying also explains rather nicely the collapse of the Democrats in Congress, after the promise of the mid-term elections in '06. Why such a loss of backbone, in so many areas? Well, one explanation is: It's the blackmail, stupid!

Posted by Philip Graham | March 21, 2008 11:22 AM

As a former Foreign Service Officer, let me inform all that (a) the push for efficiency led to the creation of a centralized ppt facility in NH during Clinton's turn and it's likely the contractor is the same one selected then (b) there really isn't much in anyone's passport records that would be of interest -- just old photos and addresses, etc. There's nothing in them that could be used against a political opponent except perhaps an embarrassing photograph from yesteryear. Certainly there wouldn't be anything like "I'm a secret Muslim" or "My intention in going overseas is to attend a madrassa."

Posted by Traven | March 21, 2008 11:23 AM

Re Nathanial

"Also the fact they are contractors is irrelevent. State has so many contractors that do jobs that use to be government, but in reality there is no difference. These people went through the same vetting as a government employee in a similar position."

Mr. Nathanial is totally full of crap. The outsourcing of government operations to private contractors under A76 procedures is subject to abuse. Just for the information of Mr. Nathanial, two of my former supervisors in the government agency for which I worked were sent to jail for taking bribes from private contractors in exchange for contracts. I somehow doubt that this was an isolated event.

Posted by SLC | March 21, 2008 11:24 AM

This article explains what is typically found in your passport file:
http://www.iht.com/articles/1992/11/28/file.php?page=1

Posted by carsick | March 21, 2008 11:27 AM

I never said the contracts themselves were not subject to abuse and fraud, they are. But the people who the contractors actually hire to work the jobs (now that they have already wont he contract and have their moeny) are just random people. I have been and know plenty of government contractors, they all did the same thign I did, apply for a job. When you think government contractor for the most part what you should be thinking are government workers. The only difference is the government is paying more for them and they are easier to higher and firer then a GS employee.

Div I appogize for my tone if you are truely ill informed but your post stuck me as quite tin foilesqe. There are no records of where you have traveled in your passport files. At most there is a record of you entering a leaving the US. Think about it, when you go to another country all that happens is a stamp is put in your passport. Yes some counties scan your passport and they have records, but if they are ever given to the US (and i doubt they are) it would be highly sensitive and not entered into an unclass file.

Posted by nathaniel | March 21, 2008 11:35 AM

The fact that it's three different people makes it smell a little funny to me. 3 different people all got curious? And not a single person got curious about McCain or Clinton?

I agree, however, that the big deal is that Obama was notified over two months after the first breach.

Posted by Monster | March 21, 2008 11:40 AM

Div I appogize for my tone if you are truely ill informed but your post stuck me as quite tin foilesqe.

It's a good thing you're here to make sure no one gets unserious!

To be clear, I don't think that the people passing or writing the "tough on crime" laws did so merely out of a desire to throw elections. That's just the real effect. Likewise, Bush didn't hire cronies for the crimes they'd commit, but to help out his friends and out of an ideological opposition to technocracy. But the effect is nonetheless seen in the real crimes committed.

Posted by DivGuy | March 21, 2008 11:45 AM

Getting paranoid, but justifiably so, given the Bush admin's timing on Orange alerts and so on, I see another motive here that I've not seen mentioned: it seems likely to me that they released this info precisely *now* because they want to help Obama control the news cycle for the next few days with a story that will elicit sympathy for him.

Consider that, without this story, all we'd be hearing about Obama all weekend would be polling that showed that the speech on race had not helped him very much with independents and Reagan democrats, plus more playing of Wright clips leading into the Sunday talk shows.

Instead, the effect of the Richardson endorsement gets an additional boost from anti-Bush feeling among Democrats, news about polling reverses gets buried, Obama perhaps rides out the storm of Wright and heads towards the nomination, since at this point, only Wright seems able to derail him. And it's been clear for a while that the Repubs would rather run against Obama.

I mean, why release this *now*? And you saw how the cables chased it like the proverbial little kids' soccer ball. With this gang, I simply do not believe in coincidences unconnected to what's going on in the polling and the news cycle.

Posted by Kevin E. | March 21, 2008 12:05 PM

Is this really true? That the only recorded information about where we go upon leaving and entering the country is that little bit of ink on paper? No electronic capture of that info? That seems awfully hard to believe, in this day and age.

Maybe, maybe not. If you drive around Europe you won't even get stamps in your passport. If you fly, it is probably on some TSA list (but do all foreign airlines share this ?).

But I have certainly gone through borders where no record was made of my transit, even if the guard stamped my passport.

Posted by Marshall | March 21, 2008 12:06 PM

Is this really true? That the only recorded information about where we go upon leaving and entering the country is that little bit of ink on paper? No electronic capture of that info? That seems awfully hard to believe, in this day and age.

Maybe, maybe not. If you drive around Europe you won't even get stamps in your passport. If you fly, it is probably on some TSA list (but do all foreign airlines share this ?).

But I have certainly gone through borders where no record was made of my transit, even if the guard stamped my passport.

Posted by Marshall | March 21, 2008 12:08 PM

" It would, I think, be unserious to suggest that the Bush administration might abuse power in this way."

Are you kidding? Unserious? As someone posted, the entire culture of the administration and the party surrounding it is set up to abuse power in this way. How can you not be concerned that they're not "legally" listening in on high-level "opposition" phone calls?

Posted by jojoba | March 21, 2008 12:12 PM

" It would, I think, be unserious to suggest that the Bush administration might abuse power in this way."

Are you kidding? Unserious? As someone posted, the entire culture of the administration and the party surrounding it is set up to abuse power in this way. How can you not be concerned that they're not "legally" listening in on high-level "opposition" phone calls?

Posted by jojoba | March 21, 2008 12:13 PM

" It would, I think, be unserious to suggest that the Bush administration might abuse power in this way."

Are you kidding? Unserious? As someone posted, the entire culture of the administration and the party surrounding it is set up to abuse power in this way. How can you not be concerned that they're not "legally" listening in on high-level "opposition" phone calls?

Posted by jojoba | March 21, 2008 12:15 PM

Sorry for the double post above. Can't say why that happened.

What is in your passport file is sufficient for a pretty good identity theft - Social security numbers, date of birth, etc. It might not be scandalous, but it could be used to do some pretty sleazy things that would appear to come from the victim, and of course would serve as a good basis for further snooping (such as, into tax or financial records).

Posted by Marshall | March 21, 2008 12:20 PM

Sorry for the double post above. Can't say why that happened.

What is in your passport file is sufficient for a pretty good identity theft - Social security numbers, date of birth, etc. It might not be scandalous, but it could be used to do some pretty sleazy things that would appear to come from the victim, and of course would serve as a good basis for further snooping (such as, into tax or financial records).

Posted by Marshall | March 21, 2008 12:23 PM

What the hell is it with all the double posts?

Posted by steve duncan | March 21, 2008 12:37 PM

What the hell is it with all the double posts?

Posted by steve duncan | March 21, 2008 12:38 PM

:-D

Posted by steve duncan | March 21, 2008 12:41 PM

and yeah, now they are reporting that all of the presidential candidates had their files access as I am sure did a number of other famous people. Can we say employee curiosity?

Posted by nathaniel | March 21, 2008 12:42 PM

Re Nathanial

"But the people who the contractors actually hire to work the jobs (now that they have already wont he contract and have their moeny) are just random people"

Obviously I can't speak for every government agency, but in the one I worked for, certain people were designated as principal personnel and their names were written into the contract. If, after winning the contract, the contractor desired, for some reason, to change one of these individuals, a contract modification and approval by the contracting officer was required. However, my agency was notorious for its conservatism in interpreting the federal regulations so that possibly other agencies are more liberal.

Posted by SLC | March 21, 2008 12:48 PM

SLC, it sounds like you are talking about higher level contracts. In the agencies I have worked for almost all of the admin people hired in the last 5 years are contractors. That is what we are talking about here, most people doing data entry for passports are hired by a contracting firm that won the contract to fill hundres of positions.

Posted by nathaniel | March 21, 2008 1:13 PM

I'm not sure that the fact that all three candidates were involved tells us, clearly, that this was innocent curiosity. HRCs file was glanced at (once) by a trainee last summer -- in a "test search" that was part of the training exercise. McCain's was examined (this winter) by one of the same people who looked at Obama's files. And Obama's files were examined three times (this winter and spring).

I draw no conclusions from this, and I agree that it's unclear what exactly anyone would gain from these files. I'm just noting some facts.

Posted by Ted | March 21, 2008 1:19 PM

PASSPORTGATE II

deja vu 1992 Billary taking a page from GOP playbook

Hmmmm ..despite three separate breaches the news only reaches Condi Rice, now?

NOTE: This tactic was used against Bill Clinton in 1992. In 1992 the initial reports were also portrayed as innocuous (Hillary and McCain also had breaches they are telling us):

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE0D8143EF936A25753C1A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

But there were hints that partisan politics were behind the intial report:

Officials of two of the news organizations involved, The Associated Press and Hearst Newspapers, said they had asked for Mr. Clinton's visa, passport, draft and citizenship records because of claims made to them by Republicans that Mr. Clinton, the Democratic Presidential nominee, had tried to renounce his citizenship in the 1960's...
The [State] department also confirmed that Elizabeth Tamposi, the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, a political appointee of Mr. Bush's former chief of staff, John H. Sununu, took personal charge of the records search, an extremely unusual move for someone in her position.

Upon further investigation we learned initial reports were highly misleading:

Here's what they did to Bill in 92.

Passportgate

In 1992, for instance, George H.W. Bush’s White House pulled strings at the State Department and at U.S. embassies in Europe to uncover and to disseminate derogatory information about Bill Clinton in the final weeks of the campaign.

The Bush assault on Clinton’s patriotism moved into high gear on the night of Sept. 30, 1992, when assistant secretary of state Elizabeth Tamposi – under pressure from the White House – ordered three aides to pore through Clinton’s passport files in search of a purported letter in which Clinton supposedly sought to renounce his citizenship.

Though no letter was found, Tamposi still injected the suspicions into the campaign by citing a small tear in the corner of Clinton’s passport application as evidence that someone might have tampered with the file, presumably to remove the supposed letter. She fashioned that speculation into a criminal referral to the FBI.

Within hours, someone from the Bush camp leaked word about the confidential FBI investigation to reporters at Newsweek magazine. The Newsweek story about the tampering investigation hit the newsstands on Oct. 4. The article suggested that a Clinton backer might have removed incriminating material from Clinton’s passport file, precisely the spin that the Bush people wanted.

Immediately, President George H.W. Bush took the offensive, using the press frenzy over the tampering story to attack Clinton’s patriotism on a variety of fronts, including his student trip to Moscow in 1970. With his patriotism challenged, Clinton saw his once-formidable lead shrink. Panic spread through the Clinton campaign.
The Bush camp put out another suspicion, that Clinton might have been a KGB “agent of influence.” Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times headlined that allegation on Oct. 5, 1992, a story that attracted President Bush’s personal interest. “Now there are stories that Clinton … may have gone to Moscow as [a] guest of the KGB,” Bush wrote in his diary that day.
The suspicions about Clinton’s patriotism might have doomed Clinton’s election, except that Spencer Oliver, then chief counsel on the Democratic-controlled House International Affairs Committee, suspected a dirty trick.

“I said you can’t go into someone’s passport file,” Oliver told me in an interview. “That’s a violation of the law, only in pursuit of a criminal indictment or something. But without his permission, you can’t examine his passport file. It’s a violation of the Privacy Act.”

After consulting with House committee chairman Dante Fascell and a colleague on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Oliver dispatched a couple of investigators to the National Archives warehouse in Suitland. The brief congressional check discovered that State Department political appointees had gone out to Suitland at night to search through Clinton’s records and those of his mother.

Oliver’s assistants also found that the administration’s tampering allegation rested on a very weak premise, the slight tear in the passport application. The circumstances of the late-night search soon found their way into an article in the Washington Post, causing embarrassment to the Bush campaign.

Not Letting Go

Yet still sensing that the loyalty theme could hurt Clinton, President Bush kept stoking the fire. On CNN’s “Larry King Live” on Oct. 7, 1992, Bush suggested anew that there was something sinister about a possible Clinton friend allegedly tampering with Clinton’s passport file.
“Why in the world would anybody want to tamper with his files, you know, to support the man?” Bush wondered before a national TV audience. “I mean, I don’t understand that. What would exonerate him – put it that way – in the files?”
The next day, in his diary, Bush ruminated suspiciously about Clinton’s Moscow trip: “All kinds of rumors as to who his hosts were in Russia, something he can’t remember anything about.”
But the GOP attack on Clinton’s loyalty prompted some Democrats to liken Bush to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who built a political career in the early days of the Cold War challenging people’s loyalties without offering proof. On Oct. 9, the FBI complicated Bush’s strategy further by rejecting the criminal referral. The FBI concluded that there was no evidence that anyone had removed anything from Clinton’s passport file.
At that point, Bush began backpedaling: “If he’s told all there is to tell on Moscow, fine,” Bush said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I’m not suggesting that there’s anything unpatriotic about that. A lot of people went to Moscow, and so that’s the end of that one.”
But the documents I obtained years later at the National Archives revealed that privately Bush was not so ready to surrender the disloyalty theme. The day before the first presidential debate on Oct. 11, Bush prepped himself with one-liners designed to spotlight doubts about Clinton’s loyalty if the right opening presented itself.
“It’s hard to visit foreign countries with a torn-up passport,” read one of the scripted lines. Another zinger read: “Contrary to what the Governor’s been saying, most young men his age did not try to duck the draft. … A few did go to Canada. A couple went to England. Only one I know went to Russia.” If Clinton had criticized Bush’s use of a Houston hotel room as a legal residence, Bush was ready to hit back with another Russian reference: “Where is your legal residence, Little Rock or Leningrad?”

PuhLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE!!!
This is NO coincidence...Obama has been a world citizen since childhood...stay tuned folks. We already know about his highly ambitious kindergarten essay, lol...it is about to get far worse..manufactured dirt is hardest to disprove. We may need the FBI to stop this one.

Posted by vicissitudes | March 21, 2008 2:16 PM

I take it as a given that Obama's and in fact most national politicians electronic communications are being captured routinely. Why would one think otherwise? I mean it may not be true but it borders on the insane not to suspect that it is true.

As time passes it will likely be even more probable for that is the inevitable path of a widespread surveillance regime.

Posted by rapier | March 21, 2008 3:58 PM