We’ve been told by Administration apologists that we shouldn’t have anything to fear from enhanced phone and online surveillance, if we have nothing to hide. (The authors of the Fourth Amendment certainly didn’t feel that way, did they?) Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) brilliantly turned this line of thinking against the White House, by asking the House Oversight committee to subpoena the National Security Agency’s phone call metadata for communication between the White House and IRS:
Stockman’s office hand delivered a letter Tuesday afternoon to the Committee’s office requesting a subpoena “of all records of every phone call made from all public and private telephones of all IRS personnel to all public and private telephones of all White House personnel” collected under the NSA’s recently-revealed PRISM program.
“Obama assures the public he only collected this information to uncover wrongdoing and protect civil liberties. Clearly he would want us to use it to investigate this case, because otherwise he’d be lying,” said Stockman.
“If Obama has nothing to hide he has nothing to fear,” said Stockman.
“This case must be investigated fully, given admitted wrongdoing by the IRS, its potentially criminal implications and revelations the White House has been less than honest about what they knew and when,” said Stockman. “Obama says the PRISM program is perfectly legal, so there should be no problem whatsoever in providing the information on White House and IRS phone calls.”
“The only possible scenario in which the administration refuses to comply would be if it would reveal unconstitutional or illegal behavior,” said Stockman.
Time to put your money where your mouth is, surveillance state enthusiasts! Here is the full text of Stockman’s letter to House Oversight chair Darrell Issa (R-CA):
Thank you for your ongoing efforts to investigate abuses of civil liberties by employees of the Internal Revenue Service.
These abuses seem to indicate a larger, higher pattern of ideologically-driven harassment of Americans which Congress has an obligation to fully investigate with every tool at our disposal.
Frankly I am disappointed by revelations Obama administration personnel have been less than forward about what they knew and when they knew it.
As you know, recent revelations show the National Security Agency has been keeping an “ongoing, daily” log of every domestic phone call in the United States.
I respectfully request your Committee subpoena the records of every phone call made from all public and private telephones of all IRS personnel to all public and private telephones of all White House personnel.
If President Obama is collecting such information, he certainly would want us to use it. If he has nothing to hide he has nothing to be afraid of.
The point of all that NSA data-harvesting was to detect threats to the American people, and not just foreign threats, right? Well, the corrupt IRS represents just such a threat. Let’s find out if that mighty host of “rogue employees” was talking to any rogue employees at the White House. There doesn’t seem to have been much of an effort to round up all these “rogues” and press charges, or even get them safely away from our confidential data. Maybe the information Stockman wants would jolt those investigations into action.
