Southern Bread

2006
08.11

Surveillance Pays Off

Category: Politics / Tag: freedom, liberty /

Don’t get me wrong. I hate government intrustion into my life, and I hate the thought of my actions being monitored by the government. But if their was ever a case for government surveillance programs, this foiled terrorist plot in England is it. While every liberal in this country has been trying to expose Bush’s secret surveillance programs for the last 2 years, England has made no apologies for monitoring everything from subway lines to traffic intersections and sidewalks.

Like I said, that freaks me out to no end, but it is also the sole reason this massive terrorist plot was thwarted and thousands of lives were saved on both sides of the pond. From the article:

“Twenty-one people have been arrested in London, Birmingham and the Thames Valley, the culmination of a covert counter-terrorist operation lasting several months.”

Well, in this country that “covert” operation would have been outed by the New York Times and given the terrorists plenty of time to get away and change their plans so as not to be caught the next time around. Another quote:

’Another senior Met officer, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, said “an unprecedented level of surveillance” led up to the arrests, and said the plot had a “global dimension”.’

That pretty much sums it up. In order to catch secret terrorists, carrying out secret plots using secret surveillance on us, we have to have secret programs, that carry out secret operations using secret surveillance of our own. It’s not rocket science unless you’re a liberal and then everything is rocket science.