The President Who Boasts of His Love for Privacy Is Monitoring Your Car

Today on NRO

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Not since the 1930s and early 1940s have we seen so many malevolent empires on the rise. Barack Obama, Empire Builder.

BING WEST & OWEN WEST: U.S. air, aid, and advisers in Iraq are currently furthering Iran's interests, not America's. Obama's Confused Iraqi Policy.

MYRA ADAMS: A strong front-runner can crowd out better candidates. But having no front-runner may be even worse. The 'Wide Open' 2016 Presidential Race.

LEE HABEEB: Clint Eastwood's film is honest, the opposite of a simple-minded war movie. Why We Line Up for American Sniper

SLIDESHOW: SAG Awards.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

January 27, 2015

The President Who Boasts of His Love for Privacy Is Monitoring Your Car

What Obama said in the State of the Union address:

As Americans, we cherish our civil liberties – and we need to uphold that commitment if we want maximum cooperation from other countries and industry in our fight against terrorist networks. So while some have moved on from the debates over our surveillance programs, I haven't. As promised, our intelligence agencies have worked hard, with the recommendations of privacy advocates, to increase transparency and build more safeguards against potential abuse. And next month, we'll issue a report on how we're keeping our promise to keep our country safe while strengthening privacy.

You knew he was full of it, you just didn't know how much. This morning we learn:

The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists, according to current and former officials and government documents.

The primary goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to combat drug trafficking, according to one government document. But the database's use has expanded to hunt for vehicles associated with numerous other potential crimes, from kidnappings to killings to rape suspects, say people familiar with the matter.

Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the database for a variety of investigations, according to people familiar with the program, putting a wealth of information in the hands of local officials who can track vehicles in real time on major roadways.

The database raises new questions about privacy and the scope of government surveillance. The existence of the program and its expansion were described in interviews with current and former government officials, and in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It is unclear if any court oversees or approves the intelligence-gathering . . .

Many devices also record visual images of drivers and passengers, which are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities, according to DEA documents and people familiar with the program.

The documents show that the DEA also uses license-plate readers operated by state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies to feed into its own network and create a far-reaching, constantly updating database of electronic eyes scanning traffic on the roads to steer police toward suspects.

Here come the knee-jerk, right-wing administration critics to complain . . .

Sen. Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the government's use of license-plate readers "raises significant privacy concerns. The fact that this intrusive technology is potentially being used to expand the reach of the government's asset-forfeiture efforts is of even greater concern.''

For a lot of progressives, government surveillance of citizens without a warrant is only a problem when Republicans are in charge.

Don't Cry for Her, Argentina; Cry For Yourselves

I'll let Ace sum it up:

Twenty-one years ago, Argentina suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history when the AMIA building, a Jewish community center, was bombed.

It has long been believed that Iran was behind the bombing.

A prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, was about to deliver a report claiming that

Iran was in fact behind the bombing, and that furthermore the current

Argentine President had struck a deal with Iran to cover up their role in exchange for some payoffs in the form of oil.

That prosecutor turned up dead with a pointblank range shot from a .22 in the middle of his forehead.

"Suicide," the official investigators claimed.

"Murder," the entire rest of the nation whispered.

"A conspiracy to create a political headache for me," President Kirchner said.

She's a Hugo Chavez protege with, get this, a history of extra-legal action and poor-me conspiracy theories.

Did you ever read about the mad kings and insane monarchs of medieval times? Our modern world and democracy don't always generate much better results, huh?

Sure, madam president. Sure.

One week after an Argentine prosecutor was found dead on the eve of his testimony about an alleged government cover-up of a terrorist attack, President Cristina Fernandez has announced the dissolution of her government's intelligence agency.

Fernandez said she plans to shut down the SI, the Secretariat of Intelligence, in favor of a newly created agency, the Federal Intelligence Agency. She said it's time to reform the intelligence service because the existing one "has not served the national interests."

Fernandez announced the change in a national address Monday night, appearing on television while seated in a wheelchair next to a table holding a framed photograph of her with her late husband, former President Nestor Kirchner.

The stakes of this investigation are huge, as the Washington Post editorial board notes:

In fact, Mr. Nisman appears to have compiled considerable evidence that Ms. Kirchner and several other top officials attempted to strike a deal between 2011 and 2013 under which Iran would supply Argentina with oil in exchange for food, and Ms. Kirchner's government would seek the removal from an Interpol arrest list of eight Iranians wanted in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Both the charges and the prosecutor's death call out for an independent, internationally-backed investigation.

The stakes of the case extend well beyond Argentina. Mr. Nisman has alleged that senior Iranian officials were involved in planning or approving the community center bombing. According to Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald, Mr. Nisman said he had testimony that now-president Hassan Rouhani was one of the members of a committee that signed off on the attack.

This is the same Iranian president Rouhani who President Barack Obama called directly in a "historic" outreach effort to the regime in Tehran.

The Kasich Kase—er, Case

Yesterday's roundup of potential GOP presidential candidates caused a bit of a stir; I hear quite a few GOP consultants were forwarding it to each other and distributing it to the media. Of course, since I offered a "top tier" of Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, and Bobby Jindal, there's a good chance that all these consultants either work for or aim to work for Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, or Bobby Jindal.

The short version is that the three big-name "Establishment" guys -- Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and Chris Christie -- face a headwind in the form of skeptical grassroots conservatives who feel like they compromised the past two cycles and watched the allegedly more electable options fall short. These GOP primary voters are absolutely convinced that the 2008 and 2012 elections featured an "Establishment" Republican flopping once matched against a charlatan demagogue and hostile national media. I think any of those three is going to have to overcome stronger skepticism this time around than Romney did in 2012 and McCain did in 2008. Finally, the non-"Establishment" choices of 2016 are way better than the ones of 2012 and better than 2008 -- more experienced, more accomplished, better communicators, broader networks of supporters. Very few of these guys are treating their presidential campaigns as book tours with bigger fanfare.

One name that didn't get mentioned in yesterday's roundup was Ohio governor John Kasich. Any time you're a two-term governor of a really important swing state, reelected in a landslide, you're going to generate some buzz. He's got fans in some unexpected places, like Allen West. He's eliminated the estate tax, enacted a $5.3 billion income tax cut, and the Ohio unemployment rate is down considerably. (LeBron came back on his watch!) He's got that blue-collar bowling-league Middle-American style, which could contrast nicely with Hillary Rodham $200,000-per-speech-to-Goldman-Sachs Clinton.

But he's also got some areas of vulnerability from the Right. He's a big fan of increasing taxes on cigarettes, and he wants to increase the state's severance tax on oil and gas profits. He expanded Medicaid eligibility. The charter school experiment in Ohio has had some embarrassing failures and disappointments, and Kasich has been leading a crackdown on under-performing charter schools.

ADDENDA: Storm's not that bad, East Coast! Just look down the street!