Saturday, March 01, 2008

Spying on Ordinary Americans

In a response to a headline once again asserting the claim that "Ordinary Americans" are being spied upon by the government via our telecommunications companies... Morgan boils it down in this paragraph:

I think it’s high time we had a serious debating or reckoning about what exactly an Ordinary American” is. If I’m born in Pakistan to a Jordanian father and a Palestinian mother, grow up in Saudi Arabia, get recruited by Al Qaeda, work my way up in the structure to the point where Osama bin Laden trusts me to do some plotting with other terrorist officers over a cell phone which, while I’m using it in Syria, sends some signals over a network where American telecommunications interests could reveal a record of my calls to the CIA — maybe not getting sued for it — um…does that make me an “Ordinary American” even though I’ve never personally been to America?

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