Whatever Happened to "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"?

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." Ben Franklin

Can you imagine what old Ben would have thought about this?

In a striking but unnoticed extension of domestic surveillance, the little-known National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency deployed a U-2 spy plane on the region affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to track hazards to public health.

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In a way, Shorrock suggests the visible mission of the U-2 over New Orleans is akin to the visible mission of the U-2 over the Soviet Union -- a tip of the iceberg in a much larger program that most of America knows nothing about.

He notes that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' recent testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee for the first time confirmed the existence of various other domestic surveillance programs beyond those first disclosed by the New York Times, similarly intimating the domestic flyovers are more subversive than simply being used for weather catastrophes.

And the Democratically controlled Congress just handed BushCo. even more authority to use the full panoply of U.S. spyware on you and me.

Without court oversight.

All hail Ceasar Executivas Unitarius.