The Man Called Petraeus knows whereof he speaks
by digby
What’s that old saying about a conservative being a liberal who’s been mugged and a liberal being a conservative who’s been arrested? Well, what would you call a CIA chief who’s privacy has been invaded:
The former head of the Central Intelligence Agency is cautioning Canadian officials to keep in mind the delicate balance between security and privacy when crafting new laws.
In an interview with CBC Radio’s The House, retired U.S. general and former CIA director David Petraeus said that balance should be at the heart of an open and transparent debate.
“The general thrust of this always has to be, again, to strike that proper balance between taking measures that, at the end of the day, are in some cases intrusive, that is what surveillance is all about after all, and yet allow the freedoms as much as is absolutely possible, to the citizens of a country that prizes those freedoms greatly,” he said.
Following the tabling this week of a bill that would give the Canadian Security Intelligence Service more powers, the government has promised that there’s more security legislation coming. Already, critics, including Canada’s privacy commissioner, have warned the government not to go too far.
No, the General isn’t exactly climbing over the barricades to dismantle the NSA but he doesn’t sound like Panetta, Alexander or Hayden either, all of whom would be lecturing the Canadians about keeping the babies safe from the boogeyman.
Maybe he would have always spoken this way but you have to wonder if the fact that details of his private life were poured all over the media might have made him just a teensy bit skeptical of government spying power. Was it absolutely necessary for the FBI to go as far as they did with that tawdry business? I don’t know. But I do know that if it happened to you or to me we wouldn’t like it. If your sex life isn’t private then nothing is.
And, by the way, we’re a long way from “balance” right now.
“Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, [Alexander’s] approach was, ‘Let’s collect the whole haystack,’ ” said one former senior U.S. intelligence official who tracked the plan’s implementation. “Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”
None of that has changed. That’s the program. Note the “whatever it is you want, you go searching for it.”
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