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 Bush
Violates Terrorists' Nuclear Privacy
How dare the administration try to connect the dots!…
[by Mac Johnson] 12/27/05
Just over a week ago, the New
York Times revealed the shocking
news that the Bush administration has been spying on the
international communications of
suspected terrorists, thus setting off a rippling artificial scandal in the
Times private reflecting pool, the increasingly stagnant mainstream media.
Not to be
outdone, U.S. News and World Report put on its water wings
Friday and tried to create a splash of it own, by reporting that the same renegade Bush administration has been monitoring
radiation levels in the public air -- without a warrant! Gasp!
The power-mad Bushies have done this in a diabolical attempt
to get early warning of terrorists preparing to use a nuclear
or dirty bomb against an American city. According to the story,
this program is fraught with all sorts of subtle privacy issues.
Contributor
Mac
Johnson
Mac
Johnson is a freelance writer and biologist in Cambridge,
Mass. Mr. Johnson holds a Doctorate in Molecular and
Cellular Biology from Baylor College of Medicine. He
is a frequent opinion contributor to Human
Events Online. His website can be found at macjohnson.com [go
to Johnson index]
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Obviously, such warrant-less radiation monitoring creates a
searing civil rights crisis for the average American, who now
must live in fear, knowing that his private high-energy photon
emissions, personal beta-particle broadcasts, or even his confidential
radionuclide wafting could be subject to detection by the crass
and intrusive thugs of the federal government.
I mean, when
you don’t
have the right to leak radiation into the communal air from
a clandestine nuclear bomb, what rights
do you have really? Clearly, Bush is Hitler, but worse.
Let us examine
what this “far-reaching” and “controversial” program
of “questioned” legality entails. A technician in
a vehicle drives around Washington, D.C., or another high-risk
city, and samples the air with a little device. If the air is
not radioactive, he drives somewhere else. Disturbing!
The technician never kicks in a door, or even knocks on one,
but he does -- from a publicly-accessible area -- sample the
air. SHOCKING!
All this
raises very important privacy issues, such as: What if the
air was radioactive
for a perfectly harmless reason? Wouldn’t
detecting this radiation violate the privacy of the person contaminating
the air for this harmless reason? You can see what a slippery
slope this becomes really quickly.
Am I kidding
here? The article quotes Georgetown University professor David
Cole,
a “constitutional law expert,” on
this legal conundrum: "They don't need a warrant to drive
onto the property -- the issue isn't where they are, but whether
they're using a tactic to intrude on privacy. It seems to me
that they are, and that they would need a warrant or probable
cause."
Professor Cole did not explain, however, how exactly the right
to privacy would cover the emission of harmful, illegal radioactive
material into the common air. If ever there were a narrowly focused
and non-intrusive search, monitoring the air for radiation would
seem to be it. Name for me one legal personal activity for which
such monitoring would violate the expectation of privacy, or
what harm would likely result.
The reason many searches are regulated by constitutional law
is they can impose a significant burden upon the searched, and
the search can reveal much more than its target. For example,
having a policeman search your body cavities or rifle through
your personal possessions is potentially unpleasant and demeaning
and could lead to the revelation of personal information unrelated
to any legal investigation. But what can measuring roadside radiation
levels reveal -- other than your possession of materials causing
unusual roadside radiation levels?
Radiation
monitoring cannot detect whether you look at goat porn on the
Internet,
belong to the ACLU, voted for Ross Perot,
cheat on your spouse, or secretly prefer catsup to ketchup. It
cannot read your thoughts or fumble through your underwear drawer.
It can do only one thing: determine if you have a significant
source of radiation in your possession, which I believe is both
illegal and not healthy for children and other living things.
And it can do this one limited thing as an unnoticed drive-by
service. So you don’t even have to lose any personal time
or face social stigma.
But exposing
this alleged “invasion of privacy” is
what U.S. News has been reduced to in its eager quest for a Bush-bashing
warrant-less search “scandal.” For political expediency
and a desire to ape the New York Times, the 4th Amendment’s
guarantee against “unreasonable search and seizure” has
now been morphed into a guarantee against any search for Cesium.
You know, because high-level gamma emissions might be part of
someone’s protected political speech.
The degree
to which the mainstream media’s hatred of President
Bush has pushed it into a state of logical incoherence is simply
amazing. But even more amazing is that this incoherence is not
lessened even by the basic human desire to protect innocent people’s
lives. “Exposing” the government’s radiation
monitoring program in such detail will not help the public fend
off any real assault on our liberties. Neither does it contribute
to any significant political debate. It won’t even harm
Bush politically. All it does is inform our terrorist enemies
what measures we have taken to catch them before they can harm
us, and allow them to attempt more effective countermeasures. -one-
First appeared at Human Events Online
copyright
2005 Mac Johnson
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