Obama and Internet Wiretaps

If there is one area (beyond his indefensible unwillingness to spend political capital to push for the end to DADT) where Obama roundly and rightly deserves heaps of criticism, it is in the area of executive authority and his apparent willingness to embrace the Bush/Cheney notion of the "unitary executive." This idea basically posits that the US President has the authority to violate civil rights with impunity, to do so under the claim of national security, and to reserve for itself the right to define what constitutes a national security threat. Obama has been almost as bad as Bush in his embrace of this notion and in his unwillingness to restore some kind of balance and check on unbridled executive power.

The latest manifestation of this disappointing trend in the Obama administration is the push to expand the government's ability to more easily wiretap internet communications. Here's the Obama administration's lame defense of this move:

"We're talking about lawfully authorized intercepts," said FBI lawyer Valerie E. Caproni. "We're not talking about expanding authority. We're talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security."

Yeah, that's a comfort. The Obama Administration is content to use "existing authority," as if that is some kind of justification. What the Obama administration glosses over is that the "existing authority" is reprehensible. It's what Obama campaigned against and what those of us who elected him thought he would bring back into some kind of balanced alignment. We wanted him to restrain an unchecked executive authority and not make use of it himself, under the justification that the guy preceding him did it, too. Sad, pathetic, and reprehensible. Obama, we expected better of you.