If President Bush wishes to hand out any more Medals of Freedom in his final years in office, I have a nominee in mind. Unlike the past recipients, who ironically were part of some of the biggest failures in the United States' modern history, this man deserves to win the highest civilian honor because his company took a stand in the name of freedom.
If you're reading this, you've probably never heard of Joseph Nacchio, and I hadn't either until the story broke last week about the National Security Agency's expansive documentation of Americans' phone records. To attain these phone records, the NSA began soliciting major corporations such as Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T to turn over the records, and for the most part, the companies have.
So why does Nacchio deserve recognition?
Because as the former Communications CEO of Qwest, a phone service provider, under his direction Qwest was the only company to stand up to the government and respect the privacy rights of its customers.
While other communications companies were busy capitulating to the government, Nacchio foresaw the problems with what the NSA is doing. As mandated by Communications Act of 1934, telephone companies are prohibited to give out the private information of their customers, and traditionally, companies have only done so after a court order was issued.
Not anymore it seems.
Regardless of party affiliation, it is commonly accepted that the government should have some leeway in monitoring suspected terrorists' phone conversations to Middle Eastern countries. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is a great starting point for us to use in the process of catching suspected terrorists. It gives law enforcement agencies flexibility in pursuing suspects, while at the same time, providing a legal protection to control abuses of power.
If an agency wishes to monitor the phone conversation of a suspected terrorist, it can do so, and then it has three days to get a warrant approved. The act even created a special panel of judges to administer these warrants, and it is a rare occurrence when one is denied.
The troubling matter is the scope in which the NSA is operating on. The phone records turned over by these various companies have compromised the privacy of millions of Americans. Although Bush claims that the government is only monitoring for national security purposes, invading the personal lives of millions of people is highly disturbing and very un-American.
And if it gets to the point where this amount of people in this country are necessarily having to be monitored without any check by other branches of government, then we've already lost this War on Terror.
This is why terrorism is such an effective weapon. It undermines the ideals of the republic that opposes it. If Bush really believes his own na+
he surely isn't doing us a favor by restricting that freedom.
Nonetheless, the biggest problem with the NSA is the total lack of oversight on the actions of the government. I wonder if this lack of oversight has been intentional? Perhaps the administration knew that they could never get Congress to go along with a program that allows the NSA to monitor millions of people?
Regardless, if we wish to empower the government with special privileges in monitoring suspected American citizens, then we must only concede if there is Congressional oversight and FISA is dutifully followed. Anything else would be destructive to our own national values.
And while I've remained ambivalent about John Kerry for some time, in a speech last month, he found the perfect words to characterize this debate:
The true pessimists are those who cannot accept that America's power and prestige depend on our credibility at home and around the world. The true pessimists are those who do not understand that fidelity to our principles is as critical to national security as our military power itself. And the most dangerous defeatists the most dispiriting pessimists are those who invoke Sept. 11 to argue that our traditional values are a luxury we can no longer afford.
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Thomas Hill
