Obama Wants Your Neighbors To Spy On You

Sen. Cornyn Calls On White House To Immediately Stop Compiling Political Enemies List

Sends letter to President Obama expressing grave concern over new White House program to monitor speech of American citizens’ with opposing political views

Cornyn wrote. “You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. As Congress debates health care reform and other critical policy matters, citizen engagement must not be chilled by fear of government monitoring the exercise of free speech rights.”

–The full text of Sen. Cornyn’s letter is below–

Dear President Obama, I write to express my concern about a new White House program to monitor American citizens’ speech opposing your health care policies, and to seek your assurances that this program is being carried out in a manner consistent with the First Amendment and America’s tradition of free speech and public discourse.

Yesterday, in an official White House release entitled “Facts are Stubborn Things,” the White House Director of New Media, Macon Phillips, asserted that there was “a lot of disinformation out there,” and encouraged citizens to report “fishy” speech opposing your health care policies to the White House. Phillips specifically targeted private, unpublished, even casual speech, writing that “rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.” Phillips wrote “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

So I urge you to cease this program immediately. At the very least, I request that you detail to Congress and the public the protocols that your White House is following to purge the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and identities of citizens who are reported to have engaged in “fishy” speech. And I respectfully request an answer to the following:

· How do you intend to use the names, email addresses, IP addresses, and identities of citizens who are reported to have engaged in “fishy” speech?

How do you intend to notify citizens who have been reported for “fishy” speech?

What action do you intend to take against citizens who have been reported for engaging in “fishy” speech?

Do your own past statements qualify as “disinformation”? For example, is it “disinformation” to note that in 2003 you said: “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan”?

I look forward to your prompt response. Sincerely,

United States Senator

Sen. Cornyn serves on the Finance, Judiciary, Agriculture and Budget Committees. He serves as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee’s Immigration, Refugees and Border Security subcommittee. He served previously as Texas Attorney General, Texas Supreme Court Justice, and Bexar County District Judge.

3 Responses to “Obama Wants Your Neighbors To Spy On You”

1. Nameless Cynic Says: August 6th, 2009 at 7:46 pm Let me see if I got this straight. In 2005, when Cornyn was told about Bush’s domestic wiretapping program and he said it didn’t matter, that was nothing to worry about. But when Obama fights back against liars and smear merchants, and Cornyn makes up crap about “he’s gathering ISP’s!”, that’s cause for alarm?

So real spying is OK, as long as it’s done by a Republican. But imaginary spying is something to worry about, if it’s imagined that it will be done by a Democrat?

Do you also believe that chick on Glenn Beck who thinks that the Cash for Clunkers website gives the government total access to your computer?

How many “forward this to twelve friends” spams do you fall for?

2. Thanks for you comments Bill. First Bush was not spying on you or me or the average person. The program was set up to listen to people who were talking to TERRORIST. If you make calls to terrorist then you should be monitored. Glenn Beck said that the car dealers computer is a government computer while logged in to the site and EVERY file on it, including YOUR information can be copied transmitted to a foreign government, and archived. thanks again for reading my blog and if you haven’t read the constitution lately please do…it’s on the site and yo might realize that everything in there is being attacked. Michael

3. Bush’s wiretapping program was huge and unprecedented, and it was, in fact, the type of massive government conspiracy that the GOP is trying to promote here. Unlike the imaginary one that Cornyn (and now you) are trying to claim. And no, Bush’s program wasn’t just intercepting overseas communications: President Bush and his aides have confirmed that the NSA, beginning in late 2001, monitored electronic communications between the United States and overseas without warrants in cases in which one of the parties was believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda. But administration officials have recently acknowledged that the NSA program was broader, and intelligence sources inside and outside the government have described a vast effort to collect and analyze telephone and e-mail communications that were later scrutinized by the government for desired information. See? That’s the kind of thing that you should have been upset about, if you’d been paying attention two years ago.

Glenn Beck says a lot of things, and a remarkably small number of them stand the test of time. For example, he took a badly worded statement that the car dealer, by entering into a government program, was subject to oversight, and stretched it into another conspiracy. Let’s just apply a little logic here. Let’s assume that this whole thing worked just like Beck said it did. This was a website which only car dealers could apply to. Now, what would the government get if they took over the dealer’s computer, that they didn’t already have from the tax records? Control over the cost of a ‘72 Buick Skylark? How does that even make sense? It might interest you to know that not only have I read the Constitution, I spent 21 years in the military directly supporting it. But you are correct. It is under attack. And has been, for the last 8 years. But the attacks don’t come from the left. Sorry.