Bush Panopticon
by digby
Just in case anyone thinks that good ole moderate Jeb! is one of those libertarian type Republicans who will take the national security state in hand here's a little dose of reality:
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Wednesday said he favors broader government surveillance of Americans, calling for private tech firms to cooperate better with federal agencies to “make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst.”
"There's a place to find common ground between personal civil liberties and [the National Security Agency] doing its job," the former Florida governor said. "I think the balance has actually gone the wrong way."
At a national security forum in South Carolina on Tuesday, the presidential hopeful addressed the ongoing battle between Silicon Valley and the Obama administration over whether law enforcement officials should have guaranteed access to encrypted customer data at major tech firms.
Bush said encryption “makes it harder for the American government to do its job” and called for “a new arrangement with Silicon Valley” to address what he termed as a “dangerous situation.”
Prominent tech CEOs — such as Apple’s Tim Cook — have argued for strong, universal encryption, in which even the company can’t see customers’ communications. Security experts support such calls, arguing that a guaranteed “back door” weakens worldwide encryption and compromises privacy.
I'm sure whomever the Democratic nominee is will not be a whole lot better. But I haven't heard any of them saying we need to spy on Americans even more than we are in order to root out "evil-doers in our midst." There's lots of evil in this world. In fact, the line between good and evil usually manifests itself inside each human being. That's a pretty sweeping edict right there --- if you declare war on evil-doers the government is going to be very, very busy.
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