The Passport Breach: Hey, Accidents Happens

So, Barack Obama received a phone call of apology from Condoleezza Rice for the breach of his passport information.

The next day, Hillary Clinton received a phone call from Condoleezza Rice, apologizing for her private passport information being breached.

John McCain got one of those Condoleezza Rice Phone Calls of Apology ™, too, when the private information of his passport file was breached. The same day.

I am waiting for my call.

You, too, no doubt.

Operators are standing by.

I at least hope Secretary Rice has speed dial. It is going to be such a pain for her if not. Just consider what a total mess the past few days were, it being a holiday weekend and everyone out much of the time. I suppose she could have left messages, but those are so impersonal when dealing with a national security matter.

(I'm pretty sure it's a national security matter. I say this based on the understand that everything with the Bush Administration is a national security matter. At the very least, private, personal information about overseas travel seems much higher up on the Terror Alert scale than, say, six guys wanting to attack a military base without equipment.)

Needless-to-say, this breach is a big deal. It's hard to imagine that only three people in all the United States have had their private passport data accessed -- and that it was only just suddenly discovered the very same day, months later. ("Hard to imagine" in this case is a loose translation of "impossible.") But for all the people furious at having their personal files illegally accessed and put at risk -- Obama, Clinton, McCain, me, you -- you know who's really pissed off?

The poor official who is the Administration point man charged with convincing Congress that giving criminal immunity to the telcoms is a Really Good Thing.

If this sap's job was hard before, it just leaped up to a level somewhere between playing Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto with your nose while blindfolded and trying to find an ice cube in the Sahara Desert. It was bad enough explaining why a government that taps its citizens' phones and spies on its citizens' email shouldn't be required to prosecute industrial conglomerates who might break the law invading the privacy of the public. But now, he has to also figure out how to show why breaching the private files of presidential candidates isn't just the final plank of the Bush administration coffin for subverting America.

It's not that the Bush administration is "behind this" with the passports -- in truth, right now we don't know if there's anyone "behind this" or if it was just innocent acts, though it's not like the White House has built up many Trust Points. Sorry, any Trust Points. What this is, however, is another patch woven into the Bush Quilt. Attorneys, when building a criminal case, call it "pattern and practice." At the most "innocent," this is an administration which has shown itself oblivious to American privacy, opposed to American oversight, dismissive of American justice and the Constitution. An administration where the vice president, when told that the American public is against the Iraq War by two-thirds, answered, "So?" And when then asked, "You don't care what the American people think?," answered, "No." When that is your administration, it filters all the way through, seeping into every crack down to the basement. And at its most "innocent" allows interns to think it's okay to breach the private files of candidates for president of the United States.

And that's at its most "innocent."

Boy, howdy, just imagine being that official who has to convince Congress now that it should grant immunity to mega-corporations for invading privacy. A Congress, it should be noted, that likely assumes now its own private passport files may have been breached. Democrats and Republicans alike. But definitely the Democrats.

In all the news coverage of the passport breach, this aspect of the story has largely been overlooked, the impact on telecom immunity. But whether overlooked by the news -- at least for the moment -- rest assured that it isn't being overlooked by Congress when that poor soul comes knocking on the door begging.

It's one thing to turn a blind eye at "the other guy" being spied on by an administration waving its faux-flag of patriotism. It's another when you realized that you are now the other guy. We all are. We all have been.

Comments

[fpie]

Why would this make any difference? The more laws they break, the more bonehead moves they make, the more "stuff" that "happens" the more numb we all get to it (including Congress). After a while we all just say,"So?"(where did I hear that lately?). Every outrage just get's one upped by the next. It's like when the garage hasn't been cleaned for twenty years. You just can't figure out where to start so you just sigh and put it off for another day.
I just wish, dream that when the Democratic president and the super majority Democratic congress take office that these guys are hounded to their graves for what they have done to our nation. I dream of justice.

[syllepsis]

If we had a Congress worth the name, this would trigger an investigation that would bring down the Administration- as "innocent" as this little bipartisan breach of privacy might be.
If we had a Congress worth the name, the Administration would have been removed a long time ago.
Somewhere along the way, the concept of 'checks and balances' was lost, and we now have a Congress full of lawyers who can't get Administration officials to answer a subpoena.
Pathetic.

[Colaholic]

Apparently the security system is only set to detect celebrity breaches. No word on how or if they would know if someone were spying on the rest of us.

[hopeless277]

Move along. Remember, when Democrats do it, it's a crime. When Republicans do it, it's a mistake.