"All I want is to be left alone..."

For those of us blessed/cursed with a memory of 80s pop star Rockwell, it was funny a few years ago when the satirical newspaper The Onion based one of its stories on his single hit single Somebody's Watching Me. Rockwell complained about feeling like he was under surveillance all the time, and he was backed by a high refrain sung by Michael and Jermaine Jackson:

All I want is to be left alone
In my average home...

I always feel like somebody's watching me,
and I have no privacy.

In FBI Discontinues Surveillance of Rockwell, The Onion reported on the agency's completion of 15 years of undercover work, with then-FBI director Louis Freeh stating:

We have finally determined to our satisfaction that Rockwell poses no significant threat to national security.

If only this were still just a joke!

Fresh from victories such as the Congressional cave-in on FISA warrantless wiretapping, the Bush Administration is making another grab for surveillance power. U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey is pushing to give the FBI expanded (but secret) powers to spy on American citizens, for the flimsiest reasons.

The only good news for those of us in Massachusetts is that Sen. Ted Kennedy is once again in the lead on this issue. Last week, along with Sen. Russ Feingold (Wis.), Sen. Richard Durbin (Ill.), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Kennedy signed a letter asking Mukasey to delay issuing the new guidelines until they have been made public and until there has been time for Congressional, national security and civil liberties experts to weigh in on them.

We agree, and we've written a letter to Sen. Kennedy, which points out that the new guidelines seem like a major step backward toward FBI abuses of the past, such as surveillance of civil rights and anti-war activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Please join us in writing Sen. Kennedy to say thank you, writing to Attorney General Mukasey to say "hold on" -- and please spread the word.