On Tuesday, July 29, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback issued the following public statement regarding the Beijing Olympics:
The Chinese government has put in place a system to spy on and gather information about every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying. This means journalists, athletes' families and other visitors will be subjected to invasive intelligence gathering by the Chinese Public Security Bureau.On CNN the next day, the earnest senator elaborated his concerns:
Your internet communications can all be monitored in a real time basis by the public security bureau of the Chinese government. I think they’re clearly intent upon spying. They’re going to be spying.Really. This is the same Republican Senator who voted for the FISA law last month, effectively giving the President unrestricted authority for warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens.
Without a trace of irony intended, I would like know what Brownback is accusing the Chinese government of doing that the U.S. government is not doing to its own citizens this very moment. FISA allows the U.S. government to monitor all communications going in and out of the United States and to listen in on them without a warrant. Since "journalists, athletes' families, and other visitors" will also be sending emails, faxes, and making phone calls from China back to home, what the Chinese are doing, by our own standards, is perfectly legal and moral.
Brownback has responded to the question. He maintains that what the U.S. does and what China will do are different.
We don't put the hardware and software on hotels. If there is a targeted individual that seems to be a likely prospect of terrorists, they must go through the FISA court and ask for a court to determine that there is probable cause to be able to listen in on that information.
What a joke. If the President used FISA warrants, I would have no problem with with the FISA law. The problem with FISA is that it excuses the president from obtaining a warrant in the case on international calls -- a huge loophole that can be, and doubtlessly is, widely abused.
Besides, what is the use in arguing fine points of the law with the Chinese? We authorize warrantless wiretapping and so do they. Does anyone with a brain think China, or any other government in the world, really cares how Sam Brownback and the Republicans interpret U.S. law? I know I don't, and I'm an American.
FISA, after all, is intended to combat terrorism. The Olympics would certainly qualify as an attractive terrorist target. China not only can, but should suspend civil rights during a time of terrorist threats, if we are to believe the Wall Street Journal, who said this on July 25, 2008 in its infamous "Batman" editorial:
[George W. Bush] sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.We have been through this ad nausem concerning U.S. torture policy. When you maintain that your own situation excuses you from accepted ethics, you should not be surprised when an enemy makes the same argument.
Guiding China to a more democratic government is one of the most important diplomatic missions of our time. FISA, and the thinking that goes with it, takes the moral high ground away from the U.S. in this quest. If we use FISA to nab a few terrorists, but at the same time miss a golden opportunity to goad China in the right direction, we are aiming to win a few battles at the expense of losing a very important war.
When Ronald Reagan said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," he could say that because the United States did not have an analogous wall. With FISA on the books, what can we realistically say to the Chinese?