Americans may disagree on the fiscal cliff, on immigration policy or on a host of other questions, but every American understands that any policy that threatens our way of life including our the right to privacy, our right to free speech and to be secure in our persons must be regarded with the greatest suspicion. Secret policies carried out in secret and without legislative oversight threaten the very foundation of our democracy and must be subject to the most rigorous controls.


A number of recent developments provide certain agencies including the FBI, the defense Department and the CIA with the power to intervene in our lives in ways never contemplated by our founding fathers. Operating without oversight or control, they have amassed information on a scale never before contemplated through the process of electronic interception and mining of data sources of the most personal nature.


As one example of the exponential expansion of secret programs, the number of drones actively employed in the Middle East has increased from less than a hundred at the inception of the program so to more than 7,000 in just a few year. The casualties inflicted have more than matched that growth. The death of 178 children, along with those of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent men and women, has now been confirmed. It has been reliably reported that at least one American born teen ager was the target of such an attack. It is time to challenge the right of the administration to maintain secrecy about the legality or legitimacy of this program as well as others that pose a threat to our Constitutional rights and guarantees.


Frederick Feied, Phd.

It’s not unreasonable to know what’s being done in our name.