Bush’s new email spy powers
p2pnet.net News:- For quite a while it’s been tempting to suggest that, under the current Bush regime, America is slowly but surely taking on the mien of the USSR that was.
Too strong, though. Or is it? Because according to The New York Daily News, Bush’s newest incursion into citizens’ rights gives him, “sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant”.
Apparently, this happened just before Christmas, December 20, on to be precise, when Bush signed a postal reform bill into law and then, “issued a ’signing statement’ that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions”.
The story has White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denying Bush is claiming any new authority, going on:
” ‘In certain circumstances – such as with the proverbial ‘ticking bomb’ – the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches,’ she said. Bush, however, cited ‘exigent circumstances’ which could refer to an imminent danger or a longstanding state of emergency.”
Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures, but, “also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court’s approval,” adds The New York Daily News.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
The New York Daily News – W pushes envelope on U.S. spying, January 4, 2007
p2pnet newsfeeds for your site | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
January 5th, 2007 at 4:12 am
Whoa. Are we talking postal mail or electronic mail? In the former, the whole article makes sense. In the latter, the ‘powers’ are useless against any kind of half-decent encryption (as implied by the first poster).