GroundReport | United States | A Little Rant on the Spitzer Case, a Longer One on America

A Little Rant on the Spitzer Case, a Longer One on America

by Tristan Weisgal Wermus April 03, 2008

Like many Americans, I have followed the Spitzer case. Trying to look beyond the "entertainment value" of the affair, I tried to understand why he had resigned and more importantly, how he had gotten caught.

I actually had trouble understanding if the FBI was surveiling the prostitution ring and they happened to catch Spitzer or if they were following Spitzer and happened to discover the ring. I didn't really dig into my misunderstanding thinking "whatever, it is one or the other, I guess the FBI had a good reason". But I recently came across very disturbing information about the actual logisitic of the case.

Indeed, the fact of the matter is that under the Patriot Act, any "suspicious" financial transaction is automatically reported back to the Federal government. Not a suspicious transaction involving public funds or offshore banking accounts, just any money transaction from any personal account at an American bank. So citizen Eliot Spitzer, with his own checking account, spent "too much" money all of a sudden and was legally put under a federal investigation.

Now, of course, a prostitution ring is illegal but I am not debating that issue. My concern is that the Patriot Act was passed under the pretense to fight terrorism and in essence it has only been publicly used to force a Democratic governor to resign (they use rendition for "terrorist" suspects, they don't even bother with the Patriot Act).

How many "crazy terrorists" has the Patriot Act help arrest? Where is the line drawn when a citizen screwing a hooker falls under it's statutes? The Bush administration claimed it would only apply to terrorism... I am fearful that America is becoming a totalitarian regime (you are thinking that statement is a little extreme). But think about it, if one lives in a country where any "suspicous" activity is reported back to some central computer/office, it doesn't matter that we are in a democracy or that we are not all in goulags, what matters is that we are being surveyed and that those of us who subscribe to "non-acceptable" newspapers or those of us who organize local political meetings can be put in check. The Civil Rights movement would have surely fell under the statute of the Patriot Act. Who draws the line? Whoever happens to be the Commander-in-Chief at any given time? How do we stop this when the Supreme Court has historically ruled that most matters concerning "national security" are at the sole discretion of the executive branch?

This is not a Democratic or Republican debate, this is a new form of dictatorship in which you centralize the people's choice of rulers (two parties that essentially work together to a certain extent), you give the ruling figure broad and sort of vague powers (Patriot Act, Executive privilege, the right of military intervention, national security claims,...) but you give the Parliament (perhaps the closest representative of the people) clear and defined powers (to limit their scope of action) and a check that can be used constantly (the veto power of the President) while theirs can't really (empeachement). Now, the final touch is the "democratic process" because in school, the only broadly taught defintion of a dictatorship is that there are no elections, and with that settled, public opinion will never think that they are in a dictatorship... Nazi Germany and Communist Russia could have learned something