Warantless Wiretapping: I Confess, I Am Conflicted

Just to get the disclosures out of the way . . . as most of you know I would consider myself a left-leaning libertarian on the issue of government surveillance and what should and should not be allowed. Ah, but now I'm not as certain as once I was. I've just finished Shane Harris' The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State. It turns out the surveillance issue is not as cut and dried, not as black or white, good or evil, as the scanty media coverage has managed to convey.

For example, take wiretapping. Back in the good ol' days, a wire was connected at a telephone exchange to a very specific wing nut. Each wing nut on these switchers connected to an individual telephone line. Once that line was tapped with that wire, every time the telephone on the other end of that wire was picked up a recorder started documenting the phone's activity. The system was so specific as to be almost foolproof (unless one considers party lines, but perhaps that is another story).
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Let's say the local police had good reason to suspect Mr. X of wrongdoing, and were making a case against him. They would compile the evidence behind these suspicions and go to a local judge, who would either deny or (more probably) grant the request to have Mr. X's phone tapped. Thus the executive branch of our government (the police) would have to seek permission from the judicial system (the courts and judges) to investigate an individual they suspected of breaking the laws passed by the legislative branch (national and state congresses). Ah, the separation of powers. That's how it should work.

But Mr. Harris points out in his book that this system is not exactly broken, ( but not exactly functioning. )

Grandpa's Bear -- A Shot of Pure Kyoot

I hate to post too much, but I just found this picture of my grandpa's bear, Yogi.



One of my uncles heard a noise from the mountain behind the house. He and Grandpa (and maybe Dad as well, the stories get confused) returned with some firepower just in case and investigated. Yogi was alone in a den, not yet weened. His mother had been killed by hunters. (The climate on the Olympic Peninsula is very mild; bears sometimes emerge from their dens to feed in winter, unlike bears in harsher, colder climates with less plant growth in the winter.)

There are some great home movies of grandpa feeding yogi with a bottle when he was only a few inches long, and of Dad from his college years leading an older Yogi around on a leash for tourists from Seattle.

I'll have to do a bit more research, but I think Yogi's naming either coincided with or came just before the debut of Hanna-Barbera's character in 1958 (ahem) bearing the same name. I'll have to bend some ears come Father's Day to make sure about the year.

You older readers might have seen Yogi before. After he grew too big for the farm, he went to the Olympic Game Park and on from there to star in some of those wildlife episodes on The Wonderful World of Disney. Raised from a cub, he was easily trained for the camera. Rumor has it he retired at the Woodland Park Zoo. And I really need to digitize and post Yogi's old 8mm home movies. They're a blast.