The eighth of the continuing series of op-eds I’ve done for LFS, this originally cleared September 21st.
Back in August civil liberty activists were appalled to find that the Obama Administration was openly encouraging supporters of the Democrats’ health care plan to report items they thought inaccurate to an e-mail address set up for that purpose. Hundreds reported getting unsolicited e-mail messages from the White House, purportedly to set them straight on the facts as Obama’s team presented them. After much initial public outcry, the flap over the “flag@whitehouse.gov” e-mail address dwindled down.
A new report made the news this week, however, and this time the crosshairs have been trained on a number of popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. It was revealed that the White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its respective social networking sites but is not advising users or asking for their consent about the data collection. This runs counter to the vow made by President Obama back in January that he would make an “unprecedented” effort to “establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration” during his tenure.
The practice is defended by Obama’s apologists, saying that the information is required to be collected by the Presidential Records Act (PRA). But the PRA, which dates back to 1978, only requires the collection of “documentary material”, meaning “all books, correspondence, memorandums, documents, papers, pamphlets, works of art, models, pictures, photographs, plats, maps, films, and motion pictures, including, but not limited to, audio, audiovisual, or other electronic or mechanical recordations.” Eventually it may be up to a court to decide whether comments left on a social networking website fall under any of these categories but in the meantime it provides a chilling effect on discourse, particularly on that critical of Obama’s policies.
Another development in this area finds President Obama seeking to extend three provisions of the PATRIOT Act, further angering supporters who were enraged with the original adoption of these restrictions under former President Bush.
Obama asked Congress last week to consider extending three portions of the PATRIOT Act dealing with the seizure of certain business records, roving wiretaps, and apprehending so-called “lone wolf” terrorists. While this administration still seeks to close down the holding facility at Guantanamo Bay, try suspected terrorists on our soil and grant them as non-citizens and enemy combatants full Constitutional rights for their defense, conservatives rightly fret that these tactics could be used to further stifle lawful dissent.
It’s not a difficult step to take from fighting the real threat of Islamic terror within our borders to perhaps something akin to this situation. Imagine a businessman and TEA Party organizer who made a comment on the White House Facebook site opposing socialized medicine or some other initiative thought to run counter to Constitutional government. Would it not be out of the realm of possibility for Big Brother to run through his business records in order to harass him into silence? The next step could be listening in on his private conversations as a perceived “lone wolf” threat.
This example, mythical as it may be, was certainly an argument for making the PATRIOT Act a temporary one. Placing the reins of our nation in the hands of an appeaser can be the prelude to taking an act enhancing national security in a time of threat from without and standing the intent on its head. A President who twists “love thy neighbor” into “love thy enemy” and “hope and change” into “snitch on our opponents” deserves to be stripped of as much power as legally possible.
Michael Swartz is a Liberty Features Syndicated Writer.
