December 18, 2013
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Page 7
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Disrespect for Our Constitutional Rights
The assault on the
freedom to report
by
J im H ightower
In the standard spy
thriller, our hero gets
captured by agents of a
repressive government.
They take him into a
dark interrogation room,
where the sadistic spymaster hisses: “We
have ways of making you talk.”
In real life, the director of our National
Security Agency hisses at journalists: “We
have ways of keeping you from talking.”
Well, not quite in those words. Gen. it... It’s wrong to allow this to go on.”
Russia — and it amounts to stomping on
Keith Alexander, the NSA’s chief spook
Holy Thomas Paine. Alexander says he our Fourth Amendment guarantee that
and head of U.S. Cyber Command, has thinks it’s OK for the government to spy
we’re to be free of “unreasonable searches
revealed his chilling disrespect for our on us. But he wants to deny the media the and seizures.”
constitutional rights to both free speech freedom to report on Big Brother’s sur­
That’s the real outrage we should be
and a free press.
veillance.
stopping. But our constitutionally clueless
In an interview, he called for outlawing
What country does this autocrat repre­ spymaster is doubling down on his dan­
any reporting on his agency’s secret pro­ sent? Alexander’s secret, indiscriminate, gerous ignorance by also stomping on the
gram of spying on every American: “I supercomputer scooping-up of data on First Amendment.
think it’s wrong that newspaper reporters every phone call, email, and other private
If this were a movie, people would
have all these documents... giving them business of every American is what laugh at it as being too silly, too far­
out as if these — you know it just doesn’t “doesn’t make any sense.”
fetched to believe. But there it is, horribly
make any sense,” he told Politico’s Josh
It’s an Orwellian, mass invasion of real.
Gerstein.
everyone’s privacy, creating the kind of
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower
Then came his spooky punch line: “We routine, 24/7 surveillance state our gov­ is a radio commentator, writer and public
ought to come up with a way of stopping ernment loudly deplores in China and speaker.
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