http://rare.us/story/trumps-pick-to...ernment-to-spy-on-virtually-everything-we-do/
Not familiar with Pompeo, but not liking this so far
Not familiar with Pompeo, but not liking this so far
I want Donald Trump to be a successful president. I’m not eager to criticize him.
But watching his cabinet picks through my libertarian conservative lens, the president-elect is currently batting 500.
I have praised, to varying degrees, his choices of Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, Gen. James Mattis as Defense Secretary, Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary, and Rep. Mick Mulvaney as Budget Director. Fiscal hawk Mulvaney in particular is a real home run.
But Trump’s choice of Sen. Jeff Sessions for Attorney General should greatly concern anyone who cares about the Constitution and civil liberties. His reported choice of John Bolton for Deputy Secretary of State is worrisome for those who want to avoid another Iraq-style war. Trump’s pick for Homeland Security, Gen. John Kelly, is a retrograde drug warrior whose appointment coincides with a time in American culture when marijuana is being legalized in many states and becoming more socially acceptable.
Then there’s Trump’s reported CIA pick, Rep. Mike Pompeo.
When Edward Snowden first alerted us in 2013 that the U.S. government was collecting citizens’ metadata en masse, the public was outraged. When government officials were asked point blank by Congress if they were spying on Americans in this way prior to Snowden’s revelation, they lied.
Why would they lie to begin with? Because they knew it was wrong and illegal.
That’s why Snowden came forward with the information he had. He did us all a favor. Polls showed the majority of Americans reject mass blanket surveillance.
Mike Pompeo wants to execute Edward Snowden and firmly re-establish mass surveillance as the law of the land in a way that goes even further.
In an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal in January, Pompeo wrote (emphasis added), “Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database.”