Cooper then writes:
There are not a lot of signs, though, that Holder will be able to finish on a high note.
In terms of public perception, that may be correct. He's pretty much cornered himself into a box. While attempting to disassociate himself from the subpoenas for journalist's phone records, he's now faced with demands from agencies like the NSA to initiate criminal investigations into who leaked the secret FISA Court Order to the Guardian and Glenn Greenwald.
We now know that leaks are investigated, rightly or wrongly, with seizure of records of the reporters who dealt with the leakers. Holder insists journalists aren't the target, but what difference does that make, when they are the vehicle used to get the goods on the leaker. They may only be a secondary target, and there may be no present intent to charge the leakee (person who received the information from the leaker), but that doesn't make Greenwald or Rosen any less a "target."
When the Patriot Act was passed, I used to write that Congress is trying to instill the fear of terrorism in the heart of every American. If you've ever had a computer or mobile phone stolen, or your house broken into, think how violated that made you feel. I suspect that's the same feeling one gets when told that the Government has obtained all his or her phone records, social media account postings, contact list and interactions, and locations visited, online and in person. It's a feeling that makes you feel physically violated and sick to your stomach.
For people like Rosen and Greenwald, who are in the middle of leaks investigations targeting others, a criminal investigation means they will have to live with knowing that their most private thoughts, exchanged by email and telephone with sources and friends, have been combed through by Government agents who just had to sign off on a subpoena or apply for a rubber-stamped FISA warrant. All done with a stamp of approval from the Powers that Be in Congress.
The worst part is that the intelligence groups and FBI who obtain this information are sharing it with every Tom, Dick and Harry local police agency and every federal law enforcement agency.
This is why we had a wall between intelligence and law enforcement when it came to information obtained by one and not the other. The wall was a good thing for us, the people. It's gone now, obliterated by the Patriot Act and a host of other federal and state laws that lawmakers got sucked into believing will lead to discovering the terrorists among us.
President Obama says we should be prepared to make trade-offs of our civil liberties in exchange for greater assurances of being safer. But there's little evidence that these over-the-top surveillance measures or information sharing agreements make us safer. They just make us less free. Every time we compromise our principles under the guise of being safer from terrorists, the terrorists win. They have knocked another brick out of the foundation of our society and most fundamental values.
That's why it's hard to have sympathy with Eric Holder today. He seems to be in lock-step with President Obama, who has clearly lost his way in telling us we must make tough choices when it comes to our civil liberties. Data-mining the records of all Americans will not lead to finding the next Undie Bomber or Boston terrorist in time to prevent a planned attack. What it will do is infringe on the rights of millions of Americans who have always believed this kind of spying on our own can't happen here. It belittles our Constitution.
That said, Eric Holder is probably at the bottom of the blame chain. I doubt he sits around (like some others in Government) trying to figure out ways to spy on every American. But he didn't have enough of a backbone to put a lid on it, and now it's come to bite him in the as*.
Holder will leave on his own terms, and while his legacy may be tarnished, he'll still have a number of corporations and big law firms bidding for his services. He'll end up with a very lucrative career in the private sector. He'll have a good life and more time for his family.
As for the rest of us, until our Government does a major mind shift and puts back the wall between intelligence and law enforcement, our privacy rights are only to going to erode further. If Intelligence is looking for leads and connections among suspected foreign terrorists, there's no need to share their info with everyone from the FBI to local police in Poughkeepsie.
The FBI should go back to prosecuting bank robbers, high rolling hucksters, and corporate fraud, and keep its databases to itself. Only if intelligence stumbles on an imminent or active criminal plot, should it be allowed to share its information with law enforcement. Their functions need to be separate. Law enforcement is bound by the Fourth Amendment. Intelligence agents, who are looking for patterns and trying to prevent or predict terror attacks, and get orders from FISA, generally are not. The Patriot Act was nothing but an end-run around the Fourth Amendment. And unless a crime has occurred that specifically affects the Poughkeepsies of America, we should remove their access to the information. There's no reason for local cops to receive the intelligence data collected on law-abiding U.S. citzens thousands of miles from their jurisdiction.
