I'm Looking Through You

The Bush Administration can say whatever they want, but because of the stories emerging today about this enormous database that the NSA has compiled of everyone’s phone records (or so it seems...probably not much of an exaggeration at this point), I would say that they can do “data mining” at this point from now until very nearly the end of time, and all of it in violation of FISA law.

(And by the way, as Atrios and others have mentioned, kudos to QWEST for being the ONLY telecomm company to STAND UP to this gang that is breaking the law at every turn in an effort to ultimately remove all of our privacy rights and change EVERYTHING this country has stood for since its inception.)

How appropriate, then, that it turns out that John Lennon told Dick Cavett on his late-night talk show 34 years ago today that his phone was being wiretapped by the FBI.

This Democracy Now transcript of a program that aired last December (to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Lennon’s murder) provides extensive details on Lennon’s activity during the early 70s, including the company he kept and the activities in which he participated. Also, here, and here are links to FBI files on Lennon and the Beatles which are interesting as historical curiosities I suppose, but which give you a look into what our intelligence agencies were looking for at that time (all spurred by a $75,000 Lennon donation to a group that Nixon and his people were afraid would cause a disruption at the Republican National Convention that year).

(I should also point out that I would not receive one dime if you choose to buy the transcripts.)

As you read through the material (particularly the Democracy Now transcript), I would ask that you consider Lennon’s struggle to fight deportation and its context against our own. A Republican president trying to maintain his support resorted to tight surveillance on an individual who had not broken any law (excluding the minor pot bust in Britain, of course) though the person being watched was trying to hold the head of the country responsible for imprisoning others not thought to be guilty of a crime (felony anyway: in Lennon’s case, the “John Sinclair” episode...10 years for two joints?) and conducting an unpopular war that was going badly in the eyes of much of the United States and the rest of the world.

The more things change...