The DOJ booby trap

A common theme both here at WorldNetDaily and on the air with talk
radio has been incrementalism: government’s slow, consistent chipping
away at the very foundations of liberty and freedom upon which this
country was founded.

The list of grievances delineated in our Declaration of Independence
included the various “usurpations” the colonists had suffered at the
hand of a tyrannical King George.

Liberty and freedom have been the nexus of myriad rebellions,
revolutions, and academic philosophical debates. From the fields of
Scotland to the moors of England, and from the original 13 colonies to
the Balkans, liberty and freedom, even more than home and hearth, have
been principles worth fighting for, worth sacrificing for, and even
worth dying for.

Revisionist anti-constitutional, would-be controllers continue to use
the incrementalism tools to erode, undermine and abrogate the very
Constitution to which they have sworn an oath.

An often-quoted 1759 line from Benjamin Franklin is, “They that can
give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve
neither liberty nor safety.” He had cautioned us against the temptation
of allowing a federal nose into the tent. He understood (as few today
do) that if you permit a small compromise to essential principles, you
have established a precedent for further “small bites.” One drop of
water will not split a granite boulder. However, the consistent dripping
of water over time will split the hardest stone as surely as a
sculptor’s hammer and chisel.

In 1994 (only 235 years from Franklin’s admonition, and a nanosecond
in geological terms) FBI Director Louis Freeh said, “The American people
must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for
safety and security.” Wait a sec Louis, ole Ben said if we do that we
don’t deserve either what you want us to give up, or what you
claim will be our reward.

This usurpation of privacy, liberty and freedom has remained a
consistent goal of the Clintonistas. The national ID tool returns again
and again with lunar reliability. The drops of water crash off the
granite of our inalienable rights again and again, only to be swept away
by diminishing reason and principle. The anti-constitutionalists again
and again reach for what is just beyond their grasp. They routinely lose
the national ID battle, and come back. They lose the privacy battle, and
come back. They abuse power under the color of authority, consistently
and routinely, only to occasionally get slapped down, but they come
back. I find myself hating their objectives, but admiring their
determination.

The latest assault includes administration plans to ask Congress for
police authority to secretly enter folks’ personal computers and crack
their security codes.

According to last week’s Washington Post, the so-called Justice
Department has drafted legislation (the Cyberspace Electronic Security
Act) which would permit investigators to receive a sealed warrant from a
judge to enter private property, search through computers for passwords
and override encryption programs. The plan calls for a judge to sign
sealed search warrants as an administrative forward to obtaining further
court permission to wiretap, extract information from computers or
conduct further searches.

Peter Swire is the White House chief counselor for privacy — yeah,
the same White House that has routinely assaulted the privacy of
thousands from the Filegate flap to the criminal White House database to
RICO violations, excoriation of the Privacy Act, abuse of power under
the color of authority by using the IRS, FBI, NSA, CIA, and other
“government” agencies for blatant political and personal gain. A smarmy
Swire told the Post the administration supports encryption as a way to
provide privacy for computer users (to everyone except “us” apparently).
“But it has to be implemented in a way that’s consistent with other
values, such as law enforcement. … In this whole issue we have to
strike the right balance.” BULLFEATHERS! Who determines the “right
balance”? Who decides what is “consistent with other values”? And by the
by, whose values?

These anti-constitutional, anti-privacy, anti-liberty, and
anti-freedom SOBs (supporters of Bill) have, since landing, been trying
to create law to require computer companies to give police a “back door”
key into computers regardless of any encryption software. This isn’t
new, and it is not original to Clinton’s gang. PROMIS software was
stolen by the government, converted to government use, and is currently
in use in hundreds of banks globally.

Over 250 Congress critters have signed on as co-sponsors to
legislation to prohibit mandating these back-door devices on computers.
General counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, David
Sobel, says this “strikes at the heart of the
Bill of Rights.” He’s got that right.

Last year in all federal and state courts combined, judges only
issued 50 warrants for so-called “surreptitious physical entries.” This
latest DOJ plan “would make police break-ins far more common than they
are now.”

Basically, this insidious plan would “allow investigators to
booby-trap your computer ahead of time” by disabling encryption. No
doubt the reason/excuse for this legislation is the frustration
investigators bump into when finding encrypted data on bad guys’
computers.

Now we are going to hear a lot of “I don’t do anything illegal, so
what do I care.” If (and this is a very significant “if”) we could
reasonably expect only bad guys would be targeted, many would accept
this incremental assault to privacy. However — reality check — you
can’t. Who gets to decide what a “bad guy” is? Is it a convicted
criminal involved in criminal commerce? Is it a political critic that
has offended the administration? Can or would the administration use the
FBI, NSA, et al. to target current or potential political critics? The
Western Journalism Center and over two dozen other conservative groups
have already been attacked by the IRS in what evidence indicates were
“political audits.”

“Kill ’em all, and let God sort them out” was a popular piece of
graffiti in an unpopular war. This Cyberspace Electronic Security Act
would in effect destroy the concept of privacy, and gift to dubious
federal control a power that never was and never would be enumerated by
any reasonable person.

Thomas Jefferson (who would be spinning in his grave over this kind
of garbage) once said “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according
to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but
the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the
individual.”