Make the List Public (Updated and recanted)

UPDATE 12/21/05 5:58:33 AM: Upon further thought on this matter, I’m going to publicly reverse myself and rescind my call for the list to be public. It was a poorly thought out decision on my part and I was wrong. People on the list should have access to it through FOIA or some other method, but they should have the right and the opportunity to do what they want with that information in private. I understand why people would want the list published, but I think now those reasons — embarrassing the Bush administration, among them — are outweighed by the right of people on the list to maintain some privacy. Lord knows they’ve had that violated enough already. Anyway, I will keep the original post available for archival purposes.

NEW YORK — I fully agree with Steve’s idea that the list of names of people who have been monitored under the NSA’s program to spy on people in the United States should be made public.

If there are specific individuals or numbers that a judge wishes to give ex post facto protection, I can accept that.

But this invasion of privacy in the case of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American citizens must be challenged in the courts. What Bush did is engage in an extra-legal act against the citizens he is paid to represent — and this is criminal.

Post the list. It should be made public because at this point there is NO NATIONAL SECURITY rationale to justify the monitoring of citizens in cases that have not been approved by a court. That means that all of those citizens monitored are innocent — and unwitting victims of this domestic spy campaign launched by George W. Bush.

Perhaps I’m indulging in paranoia, but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. I’m a reporter. In Baghdad. I have dealt with sources in the insurgency and the Mahdi Army. This administration and its agents in the embassy in Baghdad have long been hostile to the press and our work in Baghdad, especially when we try to tell the whole story of the insurgency — by talking with insurgents. And TIME has long had an aggressive approach to covering the insurgency.

Now, I don’t want to pump up my sourcing more than it is. My bureau chief, Michael Ware, deserves far more credit for his work on insurgents than I ever do. But because of my association with the magazine, I can only assume that my brother, mother, friends and others have been potentially monitored because of my activities. And based on my traffic logs, I know military and CIA people read this blog. Thus, anyone who has sent me email in the past two years is potentially on President Bush’s list. So pardon me if I take this a little personally.

Make the list public. Let my loved ones and friends see if they’re on it, and let them then be able to make the decision of what to do then. Because I can tell you truthfully that my brother et al. are not national security risks, and invading their privacy is doing nothing to make America safer.

UPDATE 12/18/05 11:32:58 AM: A good friend of mine, who’s very smart, makes the following, dissenting points:

Sorry, dude, not with you on this one. If I’m on that list, I want to be informed of the fact and the reason — and then to have the list utterly destroyed without the public ever seeing it. I have no interest in bearing a scarlet T for Terrorist, thank you very much.

Seriously, can you imagine the impact on some midwest Muslim if the White House put out a list saying that they had monitored his e-mail for possible terrorist activity? No official assurance of innocence would ever take away the smear. Indeed, I would expect some people on that list to end up dead.

Notify the people on the list, yes. Then, if they want to make the fact public, or to sue in open court, their call.

Points to think about. Discuss below…