EFF: Obama & Unprecedented Civil Liberties Violations

I can’t believe that some people still see Obama as some sort of “deliverer”.  He’s hailed as a civil rights hero, when really he’s continuing so many of the rightfully criticized policies of the Bush administration. As one who has criticized the Bush administration, I will continue to criticize the Obama administration. And for many of the same reasons, incidentally.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, who was never very friendly to the Bush administration’s policies, has delivered a DEVASTATING blow to the Obama administration with a recent post on their website about his administrations ruling on warrantless wiretaping. Thankfully the EFF has been principled in speaking up whether the boot squashing constitutional liberties is on the foot of Bush or Obama.

Here are a few particularly juicy quotes:

“The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes.

This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way.”

“The Obama Administration goes two steps further than Bush did, and claims that the US PATRIOT Act also renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws:”

“Again, the gulf between Candidate Obama and President Obama is striking. As a candidate, Obama ran promising a new era of government transparency and accountability, an end to the Bush DOJ’s radical theories of executive power, and reform of the PATRIOT Act. But, this week, Obama’s own Department Of Justice has argued that, under the PATRIOT Act, the government shall be entirely unaccountable for surveilling Americans in violation of its own laws.

This isn’t change we can believe in. This is change for the worse.”