MUMBAI COULD HAPPEN HERE BECAUSE ...

WE HAVE BECOME COMPLACENT - THAT'S DANGEROUS. Complacent about the real threat of another Terrorist Attack aka 9/11 in the USA. Ray Kelly is the Police Commissioner in New York City. Mr. Kelly is in a position to know what is possible, but are the authorities listening? Ray Kelly's Wiretap Alarm says not nearly enough to prevent an attack similar to Mumbai, India.

India's three days of carnage stand as another warning about how easily terrorists can perpetrate a major attack. So when top New York City counterterrorism officials declare that U.S. intelligence laws are shackling their powers to prevent the next Mumbai, it ought to raise more than eyebrows.

After reading this article please ask yourself if total privacy is worth the loss of life this privacy allows? Or should we give up some reasonable amount of personal privacy to save lives by preventing the Terrorists from using American Legal Procedures to Handcuff the authorities? So when Mr. Kelly speaks are the right people listening? NO!

Instead, almost nobody seems to care. Seven years without an attack on the U.S. mainland has created a growing public complacency. And the anti-antiterror lobby has exploited that complacency to assail and constrain critical Bush Administration intelligence programs, making it harder to intercept terrorists before they strike. As a consequence innocent Americans may be killed.

We need to open our collective eyes to how much the success of the Bush Administration has wrought. President Bush, despite the Democrat Liberals, have been able to prevent further attacks similar to 9/11 and Mumbai. But the success has come at the price of reducing the perceived danger.

What Democrats have done, in essence, is to insert an unelected judiciary into the wartime chain of command. As Mr. Kelly notes, this is producing a "lack of accountability" and "the lack of transparency into the inner workings of the FISA process." If some faceless FISA judge denies a surveillance request from Mr. Kelly and New Yorkers die as a result, that judge will answer to no one. Under current FISA rules, we won't even know who that judge is. Meanwhile, the very Members of Congress who insisted on FISA's limitations will blame the executive branch that they put under the supervision of those anonymous judges.

There is no supportable justification for the current restrictions on warrant-less wiretaps for communications which originate or end outside the USA. Those afraid of losing their privacy due to Government Warrant-Less Wiretaps in these cases are generally the same people who gladly use services like "On-Star" and "Lojack". Both these services allow 24-7 monitoring of our driving. We surrender our privacy for this Intrusion, but not to prevent Lives From Being Lost. Remember this "Big Blue Button" privacy mentality when NSA, FISA and Warrant-Less Wiretaps are attacked.

Personally I trust Ray Kelly a Hell-of-a-lot more than the Liberal Congress.