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Wiretap Whistleblower, a Life in Limbo?
Newsweek has an interesting report on Thomas M. Tamm, the individual who blew the whistle on the Federal Government's warrantless wiretaps. The piece takes a look at some of the circumstances leading up to the disclosure and what has happened since. "After the raid, Justice Department prosecutors encouraged Tamm to plead guilty to a felony for disclosing classified information — an offer he refused. More recently, Agent Lawless, a former prosecutor from Tennessee, has been methodically tracking down Tamm's friends and former colleagues. The agent and a partner have asked questions about Tamm's associates and political meetings he might have attended, apparently looking for clues about his motivations for going to the press, according to three of those interviewed."
You like your emphasis, don't you?
Indeed. We have to have more public oversight and judgement on what exactly are "matters of national security".
We also need stronger anonymous protection of whistleblowers and journalists who choose to let their sources remain anonymous so long as the whistleblower had reason to believe that the goverment(or corporation etc.) was involved in illegal activity.
Ideally, we should disband our intelligence services and rebuild them with much more oversight(as for the Department of "Homeland Security", we should tear it down and leave it that way). The FBI are pissing away astonishing amounts of money and resources for what is essentially a "takes a crook to catch a crook" racket which is stinking drunk from its own unchecked power. If they want to question the whistleblower with a lawyer present, fine...but they shouldn't be threatening his friends and family busting down doors while decked out in combat gear.
Thankfully, with Obama in charge things may or may not change for the better, but at least they won't get any worse. Shame on those of you who voted for the senile puppet McCain and his Brunette Barbie doll Sarah Palin.
There's something fundamentally wrong with you if someone opines the threat of death is chilling and your reply is "Howso?"
Bollocks.
The topic here is a chilling effect toward our freedom. Yes, you can get the death penalty for doing bad things. How is this chilling toward our freedom?
Maybe you're just against the death penalty, which would explain your self-righteous attitude. But that's beside the point here. The point is that the person I was responding to was engaging repeatedly in the question-begging fallacy, assuming Tamm did nothing wrong and that anything done to him in return was therefore "chilling." But it has not been established that Tamm did nothing wrong, and in fact, it is quite apparent that he committed a serious crime.
Tamm may have justification that mitigates punishment for that crime, and that will play a role -- perhaps completely exonerating him in the end -- but pursuing the investigation and possibly filing charges for such a clear felony case is not "chilling."
The only thing that would accomplish is an additional charge. If they are already doing something illegal, it has to go through some due process to determine that it is illegal. If it is classified, due process is blocked or at least impeded. I understand where you might think it is a good idea... and I don't think it's a "bad" one, but it wouldn't have stopped what we are seeing today. They only need to claim that they believed it was legal when they did it.
I mainly hope that Obama will sweep in and undo everything Bush did including the department of homeland security. FEMA became a part of homeland security and look what happened to it. Bush broke a lot of things that didn't need fixing. One thing I am afraid of is if Obama does "too good" a job of cleaning things up. It will likely make a lot of people angry just the way JFK did. If Obama sucks at being president, he will certainly live though... I am pretty sure of that. I don't think the US can be put back in order without making a bunch of people angry though.