Dave Lindorff: Spitzer Bust Provides a Warning Regarding NSA Spying

[babylonsister]

Spitzer Bust Provides a Warning Regarding NSA Spying
Submitted by dlindorff on Tue, 2008-03-11 15:08.

By Dave Lindorff



I have no sympathy for New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the hot-shot prosecutor of call-girl operations who was hoist on his own petard, as it were. I mean, what a jerk! And aside from the hypocrisy, what a fine message he was sending to his three teenage daughters about the role of women.

Having said that, Spitzer's bust should give pause to those in Congress who are ready to hand President Bush a free pass to continue his six-year campaign of warrantless spying on Americans.

We now know from yesterday's Wall Street Journal article that the spying Bush has been doing through the National Security Agency since early 2001 has included vast computer sweeps of not just internet and phone activity, but also bank and credit card transactions. These are sweeps of ordinary everyday people, with computers looking for odd transactions, or for codewords, or for transactions involving specific targeted organizations or addresses.

What nailed Spitzer, we now learn, was a series of bank transactions he had with the bank account of the Emperor's Club VIP callgirl operation.

Now reportedly, this particular investigation was being conducted by the IRS, which allegedly was investigating the Emperor's Club. Once the IRS discovered it had caught the New York governor in its web, it forwarded the case to the US Attorney General's Office, where it was pursued by the FBI, apparently on the instructions of AG Michael Mukasey. The investigation moved from monitoring the bank to monitoring phones, and Spitzer was captured talking to the Emperor's Club dispatcher. Bingo. Promising Democratic political career ruined.

Now the monitoring of the Emperor's Club was reportedly done with a court-ordered warrant. That's fine.

But this case shows us how people can get caught up by this kind of investigation really quickly.

more...

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/31708

[acmavm]

1. By just a couple minutes...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x344645

[EFerrari]

2. Wasn't Gonzalez AG at the time? Mukasey wasn't in yet. n/t

[democraticinsurgent]

3. Bring back the Jeff Gannon investigation

After all, fair's fair. Let's see those White House logs. Let's see the Secret Service bed check records. I want to know what Jeffy was doing at all those overnights at the White House.

C'mon Mukasey. We're waiting.

C'mon, MSM. What, this one was too hot for you?

Too bad, let's go.

;-)

[madokie]

4. I agree with the author on this

not to be taking away from what the governor was doing was wrong and he should have his day in court concerning it. I guess it goes back to the if you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about thinking. I say screw that, I'm not doing anything unlawful but I don't like someone spying on me either

[havocmom]

5. You and I have a right to fair representation too. If our reps know they have been spied upon...

who do they serve? You and I or the guys with the spy files?

It is damaging to democracy, IN THE EXTREME!

[madokie]

7. yes it is

what really pisses me off on this is we had this battle once years ago. I guess with people like this crew one has to keep on fighting the same battles over and over. I will not rest until I read that the little man and his hench men are going to get their day in court. Theres plenty of evidence to prove their guilt I want to see what they come up with to prove their innocense. It will be an OJ type defense where they try to descredit the evidence against them. This is going to be fun in the end, I am confident in thinking that cause the alternative to that is we have really lost our democracy of which I have a hard time wrapping my little pea brain around.

[JDPriestly]

6. Spitzer may be able to make this thing go away by addressing

violation of his civil rights by the NSA surveillance. The story about how they found his financial transactions does not make sense. It doesn't sound like he really made transactions so large that they should have shown up unless someone was scrutinizing his transactions very carefully in the first place. Think about how much money people spend on gambling debts without getting caught. People spend huge amounts for drugs and travel and expensive massages and no one asks questions. What were the exact amounts? $5,000 and less. That is just not that much money for a wealthy person.

Hey, we paid a lot more than that to a plumbing service to have our sewer pipe replaced just a few months ago. The plumbing company had a really strange name. I hope it doesn't set off an IRS investigation of us and the plumbing service.

(I think the strange plumbing service name has some religious reference. The plumbers were born-agains. Nice guys, but we paid them more for our plumbing than Spitzer paid for his and in one lump um. Uh-oh! Does that give the government grounds for a wiretap?)